food finds

Lately I've been reading a lot of food blogs while I'm at work. What? It's research for my job! Sort of...Anyway, I think blogging has revolutionized the way a lot of people think about cooking. A passionate home cook posting photos of their kitchen accomplishments and having the freedom to go into detail about the intricacies of recipes, experiments, ingredients, and techniques puts a vast amount of useful information at your fingertips at no cost to the reader. I'm always looking for new ideas or even just for insights into popular recipes. Just look at the crazy internet frenzy over the recent No-Knead bread recipe from the New York Times. Before I even had the chance to try the recipe out, I had read dozens of fellow cooking enthusiasts weighing in on all aspects of the recipe - from what pot they thought worked best, to elements that they thought were mistakes but actually worked, to minor adjustments that gave better results - saving me perhaps half a dozen less than perfect bread loaf attempts before I would have come to the same conclusions. These food bloggers are my true people.

One of the most beautiful and interesting blogs out there is Smitten Kitchen, and the other day I tried out a roasted tomato pasta sauce that she adapted from Epicurious.com. Hello. I used the dependably ripe grape tomato, and as I didn't have the time(or energy) to whip up a batch of fresh pasta that day, I just picked up a pack of fresh fettuccine at the Italian grocery store here in the Chelsea Market. The incredible depth of flavor that oven-roasting the tomatoes brought out was sublime. It would be just as good topping some toasted crusty Italian bread as an appetizer.