1. Don’t play this French animated music video until you’re ready to have its catchy song about having “un café” stuck in your head:

2. Best thing on LTHForum lately: a woman asks how to make better pasta sauce than her husband’s Americanized recipe, and the result is a mostly friendly little symposium on good techniques.
3. I’ve never been a big fan of framboise, the Belgian raspberry lambic beer sold here, along with a similar cherry one, Kriek; they’re a little too much like drinking pancake syrup, in part because they’re usually made not with fruit, but with an industrial extract. The one I did like a lot one summer in Bruges was peche, the peach version, which was much subtler, but it’s harder to find over here. Anyway, Lottie + Doof finds a good use for framboise: sorbet.
4. Good Food has a special short podcast about pie running alongside its regular podcast; the best one so far is this talk about forgotten pie recipes (hmm, seems like I saw a video podcast that touched on the same subject), though I’m not convinced all of these are as lost to modern cooks as they say. Still, it includes mention of the mock apple pie made with Ritz Crackers which Cathy Lambrecht actually made once:

5. Nick Zukin (aka Extramsg) has a post that amusingly explains why granola-y Portland (Oregon) seems so hostile to molecular gastronomy, and how one place might sneak it by them as molecular locavorism.
6. Go have an English countryside zen moment by looking at these pictures of what’s growing there in early summer, at a blog called Nordljus.
7. These two posts at the Vietnam-based blog Noodlepie seem to make an appropriate pair: in one he pleads guilty to being exactly the New York Times’ parody of the obsessed blogger, in this one he rips ex-Timeser Mimi Sheraton for her parachute-journalism piece on the best pho in Hanoi.

ONE MORE: If you haven’t heard about the Speakeasy event at the Palmer House organized by Phillip Foss and featuring top chefs including Mike Sheerin (Blackbird), Koren Grieveson (Avec), Ryan Poli (Perennial) and David Carrier (Kith & Kin) among others, with hooch by all the local distilleries and set in the spectacular vintage Empire Room on August 5, go here to find out why you should attend this benefit for Paramount Room beverage manager Shawn Koch in his fight with a rare form of brain cancer.

1. Okay, I have to admit that I was slightly skeptical when Kevin Pang’s first report on the ChiTrib’s Cheap Eats beat was about ramen… at Takashi. I did worry that he might be using Cheap Eats to invade Phil Vettel’s expense-account-exalted turf. But all fears are dispelled by this dish-by-dish account of what to eat in Chinatown and where to find it, the sort of thing which in the pre-iPhone age you would have paid cash money to get laminated and keep in your wallet.
2. From Reason, the actual Pentagon specs for a US government brownie.
3. This represents some kind of perfect convergence of online foodie obsessions: Jonathan Gold writes about a secret menu Thai burger at Jitlada, the LA place first sussed out by Erik M.
4. Fan of geometry? Fan of Subway? This story is for you: Subway To Tesselate Cheese.
5. What happens when smorgasbord meets gastric bypass surgery, from Dinosaurs and Robots.
6. The Old Foodie is a blog devoted to historical (Victorian and Americana, mostly) recipes and foodways. The pseudo-old fashioned writing might be a little tough to take at times, but I enjoyed reading about sweet chicken pie, bitters, the origin of “Pig and Whistle” as a tavern name, and so on. (There was a chain of restaurants in the mid-20th century of that name; my great-uncle Earl worked for them as an accountant, and I have his Pig & Whistle retirement watch. I couldn’t let this go by without mentioning that.)
7. Guess the 100 games which inspired these 100 cupcakes. Your boss won’t mind if you do this instead of work.

1. Chicago charcuterie blogging! Jared van Camp of Old Town Social is the latest chef to pick up the blogging toque; this is a cool post about making boudin after a visit to New Orleans.
2. And more Chicago charcuterie blogging! Low on the Hog is a blog currently making nduja (part 1, part 2). (h/t Art at Pleasant House)
3. Interesting piece on Good Food about whether Los Angelenos appreciate their eclectic and rich culinary bounty, or if they’re too afraid to go east of downtown to check it out, and go to bed too early to have a genuinely lively scene. I’ve wondered that too, or whether it’s just the nature of big cities that people mark off big chunks of territory as no-go (you could certainly make the same claim about Chicago and the south and west sides, for instance— or about the hours at which we roll up downtown’s sidewalks). Anyway, it’s at about 30 minutes in; there’s also rather ironic contrast with the piece right before it, about an oh-so-hiply-green restaurant where they accept your vegetables in trade (but turned up their nose at Jonathan Gold’s kumquats the first time he tried it).

4. Macarons being the hot pastry of the moment (I’m writing something about them for publication right now), here’s an account from a couple of years ago of the new line from, and working in the kitchen of, the golden rock god of Paris macaron-makers, Pierre Herme.
5. How do you pair beer with Vietnamese food? Hell if I know, but I’d love to hang with the guy in these photos for a couple of hours and find out. (h/t Jeff Pikus)
6. A Chinese food blogger talks about how China’s internet censorship affects food blogging, complete with a recipe for cornmeal cakes which played a role in the Boxer Rebellion.
7. Cool video made for the 50th anniversary of the Annecy (France) animated film festival— featuring, naturally, a cake:

1. Reason, a libertarian magazine, has had a bunch of stuff lately about food-nannyism, a rich subject to be sure. This video was inspired by reports of New York cocktail-renaissance hotspot Pegu Bar getting in trouble with the health department for serving a cocktail with a raw egg in it. Actually, the egg was perfectly legal, but apparently the bar didn’t harsh the customer’s mellow sufficiently for bureaucratic tastes before serving it. Here, a Virginia mixologist talks about where his art runs into antiquated regulations:

This one (actually made by another site but picked up by Reason) talks with a pizza chain owner about the practical effects of the menu-calorie-count requirements specified in the health care bill:

But maybe the most interesting piece was this examination of TV-nutrition heartthrob Jamie Oliver; it’s not a slam piece, but it does suggest that Britain’s nutrition policy is being largely driven by a bit of a ditzy celebrity:

…for all his purported expertise in combating obesity—it was his work in this area that won him the TED Prize after all—there exists a very real question whether Oliver really understands healthy eating or even believes his own most basic dietary recommendations.

The current issue of his magazine Jamie (Feb./Mar. 2010) recommends several school lunch recipes the magazine bills as “wholesome meals to take to school.” The magazine’s suggested meal for Thursday is a tuna Waldorf pita with hot vanilla milk, an oaty biscuit, and a banana. According to the nutrition information provided in Jamie, this youngster’s lunch contains an astonishing 1,183 calories, 55 grams of fat (20 of them saturated), and 65 grams of sugar. That’s 73 calories, 12 grams of fat (11.5 saturated), and 3 grams of sugar more than the same student would get from eating both a McDonald’s hamburger Happy Meal (hamburger, fries, Sprite) and a Chicken McNuggets Happy Meal (McNuggets, fries, Sprite)

2. Everybody was talking about Michael Nagrant’s piece on publicist-for-the-new-millenium Ellen Malloy in that Time Out cultural clout issue, including the subject herself, but the one I found equally interesting (and more dispiriting) was the one on the guys who produce those neighborhood street fests in Chicago, and why market logic dictates that they’re all the same and don’t reflect their actual neighborhoods in any way.
3. You’ll never guess what the latest hot secret ingredient in Chinese food is!
4. Easily the best thing on LTHForum at the moment is this thread about what you would put in a care package from Chicago; forget Pizzeria Uno and check out recommendations for all kinds of ethnic sausage and the like (posts from Habibi, JeffB and Sazerac especially recommended).
5. “It’s the closest you’ll come to holding a fresh dinosaur egg.”  And what is it?  It is an emu egg, used in an omelet. (H/t Dan “Waffleizer” Shumski)
6. Taste of Beirut is a gorgeous blog about Lebanese food, well worth working your way through; I was fascinated by this Swiss Chard Cake (and the discussion of jarred grape leaves and why Swiss chard can be a better substitute).
7. What to do with your leftover ice cream spoons from a trendy ice cream parlor with chic little spoons (Istria Cafe in Hyde Park comes to mind).

1. I’ll start with things I found by checking out the people who link to me. First, Clever Food Blog has an interesting post on a tasting event featuring only foods with histories and recipes stretching back 1000 years…
2. While Eating Video Games is a blog by a guy who went in (with his brothers) on La Quercia’s Acorn Edition 3. Here he starts telling the story of what he did with the first of his pig parts, mentioning two of my videos along the way (hint: the other one involves a pig’s head). The story continues here.
3. Martha Bayne has a bunch of posts on the Family Farmed Expo last weekend, at the Reader; the most interesting one (to me) is on whole hog cooking, with some tart quotes from Rob Levitt of Mado; she also has some good observations on the panel about shared kitchen licensing, though since the city refused to participate, it doesn’t sound like the discussion itself amounted to much.
4. Paupered Chef goes on an LTH-like Italian sub crawl and identifies two Chicago faves.  At least one is no surprise to me.
5. Something’s been done to these photos of a floating market near Bangkok so they’re unnaturally sharp and colorful, but they’re pretty fascinating all the same.
6. Thanks to Serious Eats, I’ve played Sushi Cat way too much lately. Well, it is one of those so-simple-it’s-brilliant games….
7. Design For Dreaming is a crazily elaborate 50s General Motors promo film from the 1950s; it’s all pretty cool if you like retro stuff, but at least jump to about 3:10 to see the kitchen of the future (and note that that’s where the heroine is taken to recover when the car of the future proves too much for her feminine nerves!)

Cheesemaking video will go up Monday. In the meantime, here are some links of terror to tide you over.

1. This commercial is just so desperate to capture the excitement of Star Wars, and it knows it’s not happening:

2. Questions You Were Unlikely To Ask: Where can I get that Chicago classic Garrett’s Popcorn, or at least a Southeast Asian knockoff, when I’m in the Philippines? Kubiertos answers the question.
3. James Lileks discovers a document revealing what the Heinz 57 Varieties actually are. I bet you never knew. I bet they don’t make 15 of them today. (Heinz Peanut Butter? Heinz Breakfast Wheat? Heinz Cream of Oyster Soup? Those were all real.)
4. Seattle cocktail blogger Cocktail Chronicles recounts what he didn’t blog about in 2009, and why.
5. Here’s a post for a wintry day: an Italian food blogger called Briciole visits Hawaii.
6. What’s the difference between me doing something on sustainable seafood and Steve Dolinsky doing something? I’m not sure, but it involves a ticket to Paris (gotta work on that end of the business model). Anyway, he attended the Seafood Summit and reports at his Vocalo blog here here and here, and in a podcast in the middle one, all worth checking out.
7. Here’s the kind of Flickr Group that Flickr was invented for: The Sugar Frosted Cereal Museum. There does seem to be a big nostalgia thing in cereal right now— I actually found Quisp at Strack & Van Til a few weeks back. What’s funny to me about this commercial is how Borscht Belt Jewish it is— Quisp talks like Jerry Lewis (it’s actually Daws Butler, the voice of Yogi Bear and many others), while the scientist is right out of old Dr. Krankheit routines from vaudeville. That’s one thing that’s sure changed about TV since the 60s. Bonus points if you can name the announcer who has the last line at the end. Trust me, you’ve heard his voice many, many times (and no, it’s not Orson Welles).

1. Apropos of Chaise Lounge reconcepting as The Southern, I was going to mention chef Cary Taylor’s new blog, but then there was this whole list of links to Chicago chefs who blog, from Ellen Malloy, so check ‘em all out.
2. Jonathan Gold gives some smart tips on how to find good authentic ethnic food starting about 15 minutes into this Good Food episode:

There’s also an interesting bit on home charcuterie around 50 minutes in.
3. Department of Pushing the Envelope #1: Kennyz (headcheese taster in SFOB #4) contributes a quease-inducing post on frying up a big batch of bull testicles for dinner…
4. Department of Pushing the Envelope #2: Saucisson Mac tries to make andouillete, the French sausage made of intestines stuffed in intestine (I had it once in France; tasted fine till it cooled to the consistency of surgical tubing) and, well, he won’t be making that again.
5. You’ve probably run across this (parody) video on how to make a perfect cup of coffee, which has some laugh-out-loud moments, but just in case you haven’t…

How to Brew a Good Cup of Coffee from Ben Helfen on Vimeo.

6. Lots of macaron porn at the blog Paris Breakfasts, just keep scrolling till you see yet another geometric arrangement of brightly-colored cookies.  The post on the Paris flood of 1910 is pretty cool, too.
7. CHOW chows xiao long bao— without spilling. It’s amazing watching how fast this guy can seal them up by hand:

1. Video from the Seoul, Korea fish market I found on Vimeo. The same guy has one entitled “Hagfish, God’s Grossest Creatures,” but I’ll let you find your own way to that one (if you read the sequel to Gorky Park, you will have vivid memories you may not want to reactivate).

Jagalchi Fish Market: Best of Reel from Seoulful Adventures on Vimeo.

2. Edible Geography is one of those blogs that’s so learned that you just wonder, where the hell did these people come from?  Can they really have been writing “5 Wines to Match With Chili Dogs” until this blog opened up and they started cranking out sociological treatises on New York’s bodegas and on-the-scene reports on Algeria’s efforts to stave off a dust bowl?  (My favorite for sheer weirdness is the one on efforts to spot insect infestation in grain silos by sound using hypersensitive listening devices that can tell one bug scratch from another— it’s like something made up for the Museum of Jurassic Technology.) H/t Sharon Bautista.
3. LTHer Michelle Hays figures prominently in Monica Eng’s latest account of the culinary black hole that is school lunch. (Foodies mourned the loss of Eng as a food section writer when she moved out of that department, but in fact we’ve gained someone treating food seriously as a social/political/public policy area.  To the food media discussion with Michael Nagrant last week, this is exactly what something like the Trib should be doing, reacting to a changing environment for its existing food section content like reviews by branching into new territory that it’s suited to doing better than almost anybody else.)
4. Cool photos and video of mochi-making (a New Year’s Day tradition) at Arlington Heights’ Mitsuwa Market, on a Chicago blog called She Simmers.  The best part starts close to the minute mark:

5. Serious Eats recently revived memories of this 2007 post, which had me laughing at my desk, in which Robyn Lee investigates the dark and exclamation-point-ridden world of products imitating not just butter, but the perkiest imitation butter, “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter!” The comments also point to this, from the British TV comedy The Vicar of Dibley:

6. As you’ve probably heard all over, Fruitslinger, that great read about what the guy who sells you an apple at Green City Market is really thinking, is no more, and from its ashes rises… Waffleizer? Well, it’s a fun idea, anyway, to create a place for people to experiment and have fun with perhaps the least threatening of all foods.  (“Mr. President, the threat level is… Waffle.”)  I may know more about what’s ahead here than I’m letting on.
7. Here’s a warm-feeling trailer for a movie about a community garden/farm project in Detroit.  You can probably pretty much get the whole movie from this trailer, but it’s nicely done.

Trailer ‘Grown in Detroit’ from Mascha Poppenk on Vimeo.

Lots of people I know have been active lately, so this is a bonus-length holiday edition full of either stuff from people I know, or at least, suggestions for stuff for people you know. Like this first one:
1. Economist/Atlantic blogger Megan McArdle has an economist-thorough guide to good gifts for cooks at (naturally) various economic levels…
2. …which goes especially well with this Serious Eats thread about worst foodie gifts ever.
3. Of course, one foodie gift no Chicago foodie should be without is the charmingly retro Soup and Bread Cookbook, offshoot of Martha Bayne’s soup nights at The Hideout, including the hummus soup contributed by none other than me (which came in for praise here). Hugh Amano has a post inspired by it as well here.
4. And working our way through old blog-friends at the holidays, Art and Chel Jackson (I’m guessing the former since it’s meat-based) posted a terrific long post on beef, what the different kinds (grain-fed, grass-fed, etc.) are, what the practices of more conscientious producers are, etc. Really a great in-depth look that could easily have been a magazine piece, and yet, thanks to the internet, you can read it for free. (Um, like a magazine piece.)
5. Helen Rosner contributes to this roundup, not of the year’s best cookbooks, but of the decade’s, which strikes me as more interesting in a longer-view kind of way. (Though I think the list is too heavily weighted toward big chef cookbooks— I mean, tell me there aren’t 100 times as many people getting use out of, say, Bakewise or The Perfect Scoop as Alinea or The Fat Duck Cookbook. Still, that’s where the fun comes in, fixing someone else’s list with your own choices….)
6. Need a new Christmas cookie recipe? Here are 25 pretty-looking possibilities, from Recipe Girl. Diet pills to get you wired up enough to bake 25 different kinds of cookies not included.
7. It must be pie week, because The Reader has a cover story on mincemeat pie, its controversial history (involves liquor and prohibition, not to mention murder and nightmares) and why we don’t make it any more (no mystery to me; people don’t have the parts laying around like they used to).  Also in the Reader, Mike Sula has been writing about mangalitsa pork of late; here’s an account by Signature Room chef Pat Sheerin about watching the slaughter (note mention of Sky Full of Bacon video that his brother Mike Sheerin was in partway through).
8. Though if you are the sort to make old school Christmas desserts involving things like suet, you’ve probably already knocked off a few Christmas puddings. So raise the stakes a little with the Imperial War Museum’s recipe for wartime-deprived Christmas pudding.
9. Do we owe it all to shellfish?
10. This has some laughs:

We are thankful this year for people who put weird stuff on the Internet. Which pretty much sums up most of these. See ya after the T-day holiday, and new podcast coming soon.
1. I didn’t realize until the other day that Ho-Ka, nationally known as a source of pretty natural turkeys for T-day, is just in Waterman, not far west of Chicago, which in fact I had visited with the kids just a few weeks ago (in search of a BBQ place which turned out to be catering-only). The FAQ and this page on Ho-Ka’s site have some interesting things to say about why they raise their turkeys in a respectable way that nevertheless doesn’t qualify them to use any of the usual buzzwords (natural, organic, heritage, etc.)
2. Okay, speaking of BBQ, you’ve probably seen this, but just in case you haven’t:

3. Weird Thanksgiving Science: the problem with a giant pie is that as the pie scales up, you won’t have crust edges to most pieces. Well, what would scale up in area and increase the amount of crust at the same time? A 768-sided fractal pie, naturally.
4. Speaking of weird… Chicago pizza guy Daniel Zemans finds a cool-looking 60s pizza joint in Highwood (somewhere on the north shore, beats me)— but then he gets perverse and orders the hamburger pizza. Yes, it gets as bad as you might imagine.
5. Here’s an interesting video from Liza de Guia, whom I’ve featured before, about a women who tries to reconstruct and recreate historical recipes. Note that she does not use the joke about hoecakes from Hollywood Shuffle, as I would have, inevitably.

The Historic Gastronomist: Giving Recipes an Afterlife from SkeeterNYC on Vimeo.

6. There’s a lot of people making scary bad food on the internet for the alleged purpose of being allegedly humorous, like this site that tries to plate fast food elegantly, which is one joke and just never that funny, but once in a while a sort of sublime perfection is reached, so I dare you to follow this post from The Ridiculous Food Society of Upstate New York (where I also found #7), and make hot dog bao as T-day appetizers. (This gives the background on the mini hot dogs, and is pretty interesting in its own right, not just more goofiness.)
7. This speaks for itself. Be sure to turn your speakers up, especially if it’s late at night and others are sleeping, or you’re surfing the web at a public library.