This meat sauce sounds delicious and different enough from our other family ragu recipes to at least give it a try. I like the use of sage and rosemary. We don’t use a lot of those herbs here although I like the flavor they bring to a dish. — Douglas
I had been living in a corner of southern Tuscany, in the Maremma, for a few months when I began noticing pasta alla buttera (translation: cowboy pasta) here and there—on countryside menus and at various sagre, outdoor food festivals that are especially good places to try regional dishes. I made a mental note to add another job-description-pasta-sauce to a quirky medley of a list that included things like spaghetti alla carbonara and pasta alla boscaiola, named after the charcoal burners and woodcutters that apparently invented and championed the dishes based on what readily available ingredients they had.
“The Incredible, Edible Egg” — as the old advertisement used to say. I found several different recipes I want to try from this article. My favorites include Shakshuka Focaccia, Bacon & Egg Ramen. Savory Ris-Oat-to with Poached Egg by Ali Conklin, and Sheet Pan Eggs by Ali Slagle. To be honest, I’m still reading my way through all the recipes and I might find even more I like. — Douglas
In culinary school my cooking instructors touted the importance of eggs: The traditional chef’s toque is rumored to have 100 folds, one fold to represent the hundred ways to prepare an egg. We’d be forewarned that sometimes the skills test given during line cook interviews would simply be to cook an egg.
Regardless of technique and form, it’s undeniable that eggs are an indispensable ingredient, well suited for any time of the day. Here are 29 of our favorite ways to use them:
Watch stone carver Anna Rubincam as she goes from measuring a live person (essentially creating a geometric model of their face) to a clay model to a finished stone portrait in three weeks.
These short food videos have become part of my regular YouTube viewing. Babish tries to emulate foods from various TV shows and — when the show’s food is totally inedible — creaates a recipe you might actually want to make at home. Yum! — Douglas
Dev Shah is a man who cares a great deal about food – so much so that he spends the better part of his afternoons scouring the internet for the very best taco truck. With season 2 delving even further into a culinary storyline, it only seemed appropriate to welcome back Master of None with Dev’s victory over pasta carbonara.
I love seeing old technology like this at work even in today’s age. Sure, I am a technology lover and wouldn’t want to have to print everything like this, but as an art form (and a complex technology in its own right) it is amazing to watch both the process and the results. — Douglas
Digg traveled to Bowne and Co. Stationers, two fully-functioning 19th century letterpress printing shops in NYC, to see how manuscripts, invitations, advertisements, and other paper goods were printed before you could just press a button and have something spit out results.
With a foot in the contemporary world and a foot in the historic, Bowne and Co. bridges the past and the present with handmade pieces made for the modern era with stunning results.
This is something I learned through experience, but it is always great to have some research and science to back it up! — Douglas
What’s the role of salt in cooking? Is it important to add it at certain times? Most recipes (and culinary schools) advise seasoning food with salt early in the cooking process, not just at the end. We decided to investigate this conventional wisdom to see if the timing of seasoning makes a notable difference.
Some more cheap tricks to kick your photography up a notch. My favorites are using a beer cozy to protect an unused lens and using the cheap circular fluorescent to create a large ring light. — Douglas
Some interesting collective wisdom in this round up of tips from 500px and their Twitter followers. For me, one thing I need to return to us shooting in RAW mode again. Problems with RAW in Photos on the Mac had me turn it off for a while, but I think those issues are solved and signal a return. — Douglas
If you’re anything like me, then you tend to learn things the hard way—through personal experience. I’ve learned that life will continue to present you with the same lesson until you learn it.
We took to Twitter to ask 500px followers: What’s the best photography advice you wish you knew when you were a beginner? The 500px community jumped at the opportunity to share their photography wisdom.
Something to remember when life gets a bit too crazy. — Douglas
On a recent Sunday, I found myself overwhelmed. It was my last free day between several consecutive weekends of travel, visitors, and weddings. The morning had ticked away, and my boyfriend and I had groceries to buy, paperwork to file, a house to tidy, and something to do at Home Depot. As I contemplated how to productively use the afternoon, my chest tightened. I stepped outside for a gulp of fresh air. There, an idea struck.
“Let’s go to the beach for two hours,” I said. “Then we can do our stuff.”
I was still feeling stressed while I packed my bag, and even while we sought out a spot on the sand. But eventually—maybe when I spotted some dolphins past the breakers, or dunked into a cold, oncoming wave—the stress dissipated. I didn’t do much reading at the beach, or really much of anything. I mostly stared at the water, got wet, laid on a warm blanket, then moved to a chair. After two hours, we folded up our blanket, drove home, and divided and conquered our tasks for the rest of the afternoon. And you know what? They weren’t so painful. It was actually kind of pleasant to surrender to the rhythm of paperwork, while the sun sank lower in the window.
Check out these ways to kick up your brownie game. — Douglas
Where do your brownie loyalties lie? Are you Team Fudgy, Team Cakey, or Team In-Between-y?
I’m a fudgy-as-a-truffle gal myself (Alice Medrich’s Best Cocoa Brownies are my old faithful, preferably straight from the freezer)—but today, we’re not here to discuss that age-old question.
Instead, we’re here to take you brownie purists and turn you into brownie hedonists!!!! eccentrics. Your ordinary brownies might be extraordinarily good, but consider these tweaks—in the form of swirls, sprinkles, drops, and swooshes (smears, if you prefer)—for when you want to give your brownie a night on the town, complete with facial glitter (that’s still a thing, right?) and a thick coat of mascara.
