Eater - All |
- Austin Bakeshop Owner Sarah Lim Shares Her Experience on ‘Queer Eye’
- Emmy-Winning Docuseries ‘The Migrant Kitchen’ Widens Scope to the Entire Nation
- Who’s Really Behind Joanna Gaines’s Perfect Peanut Butter Brownies?
- 25 of the Very Best Drinking Glasses
- This Oysters and Grits in Bourbon Brown Butter Recipe Is an Exercise in Simple Decadence
- How Master Butcher Dario Cecchini Created a ‘Republic’ of Meat-Lovers in Italy
| Austin Bakeshop Owner Sarah Lim Shares Her Experience on ‘Queer Eye’ Posted: 12 Jan 2022 01:13 PM PST  |
| Emmy-Winning Docuseries ‘The Migrant Kitchen’ Widens Scope to the Entire Nation Posted: 12 Jan 2022 10:02 AM PST  The PBS series highlights innovative chefs across the U.S. who've been inspired by the immigrant experience You might not immediately associate Portland, Oregon, with Russian food. Likewise, agricultural sustainability is probably not the first thing that comes to mind when you think of the fight for independence in Puerto Rico. That will change, however, after you watch The Migrant Kitchen, the PBS SoCal award-winning docuseries that's dedicated to exploring and celebrating the chefs who are inspired by their cultures' oft ignored foodways. Previously focused on cooking only in California, season four of The Migrant Kitchen widens with episodes based in Brooklyn, New York; Houston; Los Angeles; Portland, Oregon, and Puerto Rico. On Wednesday, KCET — the California PBS affiliate that produced the series with food publication Life and Thyme — announced:
In addition to Yao, episodes feature Bonnie Morales of Portland's Kachka, José Enrique of Jose Enrique Restaurant in San Juan, Chris Williams of Lucille's and Jonny Rhodes of Indigo, both in Houston, and Brooklyn's Jenny Kwak of Haenyeo and Sohui Kim from Insa. Those of us outside of southern California can stream The Migrant Kitchen on PBS.org, the free PBS app, kcet.org, and linktv.org. The first new episode, "Los Angeles," centers Yao as he draws on his "experience growing up in the San Gabriel Valley, fusing his heritage with produce from Southern California's cutting-edge farmers while educating diners on the nuances of this unique regional cuisine." It premieres January 25 on the KCET website, January 29 on Link TV, and January 31 on PBS SoCal, PBS.org, and the PBS app. |
| Who’s Really Behind Joanna Gaines’s Perfect Peanut Butter Brownies? Posted: 12 Jan 2022 08:24 AM PST  The New York Times credits the "Fixer Upper" star for this transcendent peanut butter and chocolate combination, but both the comment section and Gaines herself say otherwise It is important that I begin by assuring you that Joanna Gaines's brownies are delicious. More than delicious, actually, they are perfect. Like some of my favorite pastries, they benefit from a slight chill, which in this case further defines the layers; the frosting becomes like a hardened chocolate shell, the peanut butter middle layer remains creamy, and the foundation of brownie goes from chewy up top to pleasantly crumbly where it meets the pan. Just thinking about a bite, let alone taking one, leaves me breathless. Is there a more harmonious confectionary relationship than the one between peanut butter and chocolate? This recipe provides more proof — after Reese's cups, any sort of no-bake peanut butter bar or cookie, and the delectable midwestern Buckeye — that no, there is not. That such a perfect creation came from Fixer Upper's Joanna Gaines — Waco's Shiplap Queen and co-creator of Silos at Magnolia Market (more popular with tourists in Texas than the Alamo) — had me shaken and skeptical. At the risk of questioning Gaines's bona fides, Fixer Upper's aesthetics tend more towards a commercialized and phony down-homey-ness in which kitchens are decorated in cold grays and exposed lumber, with walls covered in giant clocks or signs from Gaines's Target line that yearn to be seen as antiques. But here are these mouth-watering, transportive peanut butter brownies, which taste like they came from a handwritten recipe card found in the organized chaos of a grandma's kitchen, with decades-old appliances that only she knows how to operate. I first saw the brownies when they occupied the hero spot on NYT Cooking's homepage carousel. Beyond the chewy, chocolatey, peanut buttery allure, I was struck by how easy they looked to make. It is not a perfectionist's recipe; there are no sharp lines of a more intricately crafted dessert bar, or flaky, easy-to-fuck-up pastry. In the photo, the peanut butter oozes out of the square, and the top layer of chocolate bulges unevenly, as though it was spread in a hurry by someone less invested in making something beautiful than getting a bite into their mouth. This was a recipe for me, I thought, my jaw on the floor; so I clicked, at which point my jaw remained on the floor for an entirely different reason. "Joanna Gaines of Magnolia Table in Waco, Texas, developed this recipe for a layered treat that combines the best of a brownie, a candy bar and an ice cream sandwich," read the Times' introduction. As a fan of both celebrities and cooking, I must say I tend to find the intersection of those two things reliably annoying (despite the fact that I own several celebrity cookbooks), so the implication that Joanna Gaines should be a trusted source for recipes simply because she was known for tearing down kitchens walls felt questionable and instantly bothered me. Take a look at a social media-savvy celebrity of any fame level and you'll see proof that we have assigned a sort of ill-conceived pseudo-transitive property to famous people in our society. Twitter users are repeatedly trying to tell me Stanley Tucci is some kind of genius for making a negroni even though it's just three liquids you stir together in a cup. Reese Witherspoon seems to think her twang makes her a biscuit expert despite the fact that every biscuit recipe is the same exact level of good unless you're my late grandmother, in which case they're perfect and inimitable. We've been conditioned to believe that just because a celebrity (let's call them C) is good at the thing they became famous for, be that acting or singing or saying things on a reality show that can be clipped and used out of context to the delight of people in your group chat (let's call that f) that they should also be good at any number of other entirely unrelated things, like designing athleisure or recommending books or cooking meals we'd also probably enjoy (skills we can call g). But here was the New York Times of all places, screaming at the top of their lungs, that yes, Joanna Gaines equals both f and g. Well, I thought, we'll C about that! Perhaps it was unfair of me to expect so little — or, more accurately, something so specific — from a celebrity, but my eyebrow's raised position was justified once I scrolled to the comments section. There, near the top of the Times' ranked list of "helpful" notes, was this writeup from a reader named VT:
Though I was thrilled to see something resembling proof that the recipe was not Gaines's invention, an acute awareness of my susceptibility to confirmation bias led me to apply the same doubt I thrust upon her to the anonymous commenter. So I found and purchased a used copy of Southern Living's hardcover collection of every recipe published in its 1992 issues. A week or so later, it arrived at my doorstep, looking brand-new, apart from an inscription on the inside cover written in tight, formal cursive that reminded me of my grandmother's hand. "To: Robin / From: Fay," it read alongside a chapter and verse from the bible: Job 23:10-12. I then flipped to the index, and in a "Cookies" subsection labeled "Bars and Squares," I found it: "Brownies, Frosted Peanut Butter. Page 272." The recipe isn't quite identical — Southern Living's developers called for margarine instead of butter, chunky PB as opposed to creamy, and nearly double the sugar — but the similarities, down to the ingenious idea of melting marshmallows into the chocolate, are striking. Did Joanna Gaines steal this recipe and claim it as her own?! Maybe! Thanks to an overabundance of time alone with my thoughts — a gift or curse of the pandemic, depending on the day — what I had now was a full-blown obsession, and one that would soon gain strength thanks to streaming culture and a big old chunk of luck. In January of 2021, Discovery Inc. launched Discovery+, a streaming service that offers access to shows from the libraries of networks like HGTV, Food Network, TLC, and Discovery Channel. Beyond those robust archives, it's also the future streaming home of Magnolia Network, a Chip and Joanna Gaines-centric rebranding of the cable channel formerly known as DIY Network. To build up hype for its summer 2021 launch, Discovery+ teased a handful of those shows on the service, including a cooking show hosted by Joanna herself, Magnolia Table. As a fan of both cooking television and white noise, the show was instantly pleasurable to me — in large part because her lack of experience, the "Stars Are Just Like Us" of it all, is part of the concept — but when she began a segment with an introduction to peanut butter brownies, it became something more: research. "There's a version of this in my second cookbook, and a friend actually shared this recipe with me. So we call these Lucy's Peanut Butter Brownies," Gaines says in her sun-drenched Texas kitchen. (Isn't it funny that this family successfully changed the national reputation of Waco from the home of a botched FBI raid to the platonic ideal of folksy, kid-friendly American interior design? Just something to think about.) Anyway, thanks to Gaines's comment, I bolted to my Brooklyn Public Library app to find a copy of Magnolia Table, Volume 2. To my surprise, or maybe not, a copy was available for immediate check-out, and I quickly flipped my thumb to the dessert section. In her introduction to Lucy's Peanut Butter Brownies, she offers the family friend even more credit. "'Best Friend Brownies' is what my friend's mom, Lucy, calls this sweet treat," Gaines writes. "Anytime a friend of hers is feeling down or could just use a little something sweet, she makes a batch. Over the years, many of her friends have asked her for the recipe so they could do the same. I'm grateful to share it here, as I am convinced there is no better match than peanut butter and chocolate." With that, straight from Gaines's mouth, I now had three potential origin stories: a) The recipe trickled down from Southern Living to Lucy or someone in Lucy's direct orbit, b) The recipe trickled up from Lucy or someone in Lucy's direct orbit to Southern Living, or c) the recipe was developed by multiple different people coincidentally, because combining chocolate with peanut butter via the science of baking is by no means novel. While I now knew how the recipe came to Joanna, I knew it would be next to impossible to definitively confirm how it made its way to Lucy. Oh well! That's life. But one answerable question did remain: Why was Gaines credited as the "developer" in the Times, when she'd been so open about Lucy's authorship elsewhere? I reached out to food reporter Julia Moskin, who wrote the recipe's introduction, to find out. Moskin responded to my questions via email, and chalked the whole thing up to semantics. "The definition of 'developing' a recipe is hard to pin down, even in the culinary world," she wrote. "In the cookbook, Joanna Gaines refers to what she does as 'recipe development' even though she's clear that this particular recipe was handed down from a friend. In that topnote, I was reaching for an alternative to 'created.'" Got it! Great. But despite Joanna's acknowledgment that the recipe was not her own, was she in violation of the law for publishing a recipe that was nearly identical to one published some three decades ago? This was a question for a lawyer, so I called one up. Corinne Chen is an attorney at New York City-based firm Romano Law who specializes in IP and trademark law, and helped me understand that phrases like "recipe development" are used because it is nearly impossible to claim authorship over a recipe, at least in the eyes of the law. "The reason recipes are not copyrightable is because [they're] an idea and a process," Chen told me over the phone last year. "You would think, Oh, I'm writing down the ingredients! I'm writing down how to do it step by step! But those are seen more as instructional… and not really deemed as creative." What is copyrightable, she explained, is creative expression — the personal histories, photos, and illustrations that accompany a recipe in your favorite cookbook or on a food-centric Instagram feed. And in many cases, isn't that what you're really looking for when choosing a cookbook to buy or a recipe Instagram account to follow? Magnolia Table: Volume 2 is as much about the recipes as it is about aesthetics and vibes. This is a book for people who want to emulate the Gaines family — from their big marble island, to the way Joanna never hides her contempt for Chip, to the friendships she's made with generous neighbors like Lucy. Upon reaching the end of this great brownie journey, which physically took me no further than my neighborhood grocery store, I felt I'd wasted my time. Joanna Gaines is not a cookbook plagiarist, nor is she even remotely lacking when it comes to the gray area of creative attribution. The brownies ended up in her cookbook the way recipes tend to end up anywhere, floating from one satisfied and generous home chef to the next. There was nothing titillating about this story, nothing scandalous or spicy; there was only sweetness. Layers of it. Decades, even. Eager to make yet another batch of the Best Friend Brownies (the name I decided was best) and perhaps put my own spin on the dish, I recently revisited the version published in Southern Living. This time, however, I remembered to look up the bible verse under Fay's inscription. While I don't fully remember the story of Job, the passage felt significant even out of context. "My feet have closely followed his steps, I have kept to his way without turning aside," he says. "I have not departed from the commands of his lips, I have treasured the words of his mouth more than my daily bread." Sounds to me like someone who understands the value of creative expression. Bobby Finger is a writer and co-host of the podcast Who? Weekly. His debut novel, The Old Place, will be published this fall. Marylu E. Herrera is a Chicago-based collage artist with a focus on printmaking and collage. |
| 25 of the Very Best Drinking Glasses Posted: 12 Jan 2022 08:01 AM PST |
| This Oysters and Grits in Bourbon Brown Butter Recipe Is an Exercise in Simple Decadence Posted: 12 Jan 2022 06:30 AM PST  In partnership with YesChef, chef Edward Lee puts a briny twist on a Southern classic "Shrimp and grits is one of the iconic dishes of the South," says chef Edward Lee. Here, he puts a delicious spin on it with his recipe for oysters and grits in bourbon brown butter. "The flavor of bourbon and the flavor of the oysters is a pairing that really works nice together," explains Lee, a celebrated chef, restaurateur, and cookbook author based in Louisville, Kentucky. The recipe, which Lee teaches in his class for YesChef, a subscription-based streaming platform offering cinematic cooking classes taught by world-renowned chefs, has a simplicity that its name belies: It uses only a few ingredients and comes together easily. And to cut down on cooking time, the grits are first soaked overnight, which allows them to be prepared in the time it takes to make the recipe's other components. Because there are such few ingredients, each one is the star: the creamy grits, made with only some chicken stock and butter; the bourbon brown butter, which showcases what Lee describes as bourbon's "perfect mix of sweetness and smokiness"; and the oysters, which are briefly poached in the brown butter, leaving their insides creamy.  While the pairing of bourbon and oysters may sound fancy, "bourbon's history has always been sort of a working man's history," Lee points out, and oysters were once considered to be a cheap, widely accessible food. Pairing this "historically sort of blue-collar food with this blue-collar drink," he says, works not only in terms of flavor profile, but also culturally. Finished with a splash of hot vinegar to cut its richness, the dish is a testament to the ever-evolving beauty of Southern cooking. — Eater staff Oysters and Grits in Bourbon Brown Butter RecipeServes 4 Ingredients:For the creamy grits: 1 cup dried corn grits, stone-ground For the bourbon brown butter: ½ cup butter (1 stick) For the hot vinegar: 1 jalapeño pepper, sliced thickly For the oysters: 5 oysters Instructions:For the grits: Step 1: Transfer the dried grits to a bowl and cover with cold water and let soak overnight or for 8 hours. Step 2: Strain and retain a little of the starchy water from the grits. Step 3: Move the grits to a medium pan and add the chicken stock. Step 4: Cook over medium heat for approximately 40 minutes while frequently stirring and tasting for even cooking. Step 5: Add a little water or stock as needed. Step 6: Once cooked, sprinkle salt, add butter, stir, and set aside. Step 7: Vigorously stir the grits until extra creamy and serve in a bowl with a small dollop of butter. For the bourbon brown butter: Step 1: Heat a cast-iron pan over medium heat and melt the butter. Step 2: Let it cook until it's deep brown and smells toasted. Step 3: Turn the heat off and let it cool for 1 to 2 minutes. Step 4: Slowly add a little bourbon at a time to the browned butter. Step 5: Allow the alcohol to burn off and evaporate the water. Step 6: Add salt to bourbon brown butter and finish with lemon juice. For the hot vinegar: Step 1: Add the jalapeño pepper, Thai bird chilis, star anises, and ginger into a jar. Step 2: Pour the rice vinegar, shake, and let it marinate for at least a week at room temperature or up to 1 month in a refrigerator. For shucking the oysters: Step 1: Prepare the oysters and wrap them in a towel with the cup side down and hinge end peakingout. Step 2: Press the tip of an oyster knife into the hinge and apply pressure. Step 3: Once the knife is in, twist it until the top pops open. Step 4: Run the oyster knife along the top edge of the shell and cut through the attaching muscle. Step 5: Gently scrape the oysters into a bowl, reserving all liquids. For poaching the oysters: Step 1: Warm the bourbon brown butter over medium-low heat and add and gently poach the oysters. For plating the finished dish: Step 1: Vigorously stir the grits until creamy and serve. Step 2: Top the creamy grits with poached oysters and drizzle bourbon brown butter over it. Step 3 (optional): Use a spoon to round your dish with a small amount of hot vinegar. Step 4: Garnish with fresh dills and chives. |
| How Master Butcher Dario Cecchini Created a ‘Republic’ of Meat-Lovers in Italy Posted: 12 Jan 2022 06:01 AM PST  The chef's infectious passion for meat is on full display at Antica Macelleria Cecchini in Panzano, Italy "I've always done this for the pleasure of it," says master butcher Dario Cecchini at his shop Antica Macelleria Cecchini in Panzano, Italy. "Because my dad, my grandfather, my great-grandfather were all behind this butcher stall. We need some money to live on, but when they ask me, 'you work everyday?,' I say I've never worked a day." Cecchini's passion for the art of butchery — as well as his enthusiasm for feeding patrons of his shop, teaching curious wannabe butchers, and serving food at his various restaurants around the Chianti region of Italy — are all part of what makes him one of the world's most respected chefs. This short documentary follows a day in Cecchini's life, as he breaks down and prepares selections of local meat for his shop, greets and sells cuts to visitors (often sharing a taste and a glass of wine with them), teaches a "Butcher for a Day" class, and hosts a dinner at his restaurant Officina della Bistecca, right next door. "When you eat here… nothing is like ornately plated, everything is so simple: Large cuts of meat that just stand alone," says LA chef Nancy Silverton, a guest at dinner on this particular night. "Dario is just full of life. I mean his personality is infectious, and his philosophy is probably the most important part of who he is." Some of the patrons at dinner talk about getting their passport stamped, but they're not referring to any official travel document: Cecchini's "passport" for fans of his shop creates his own "Republic" of friends, devoted diners, and general appreciators of his work. "It's not possible for us to bring all of the people we care deeply about here to Panzano," he says. "So I decided I needed to create a Republic of the heart," he adds, welling up with tears. With their hands over their hearts, those in the shop that day line up to get their little red book stamped by Cecchini, thankful for a memento that symbolizes his affection for his work and those who enjoy it. "Doing this job every day, like I have been doing for 45 years, is a little bit of goodwill, a little bit of luck, and also a little bit of inspiration," says Cecchini. "It's a feeling, it's not an algorithm. It's not a code, a rule. The rule is flesh, it's blood… it's the nobility of matter. Fantastic. This is meat." |
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