Dancing Spoon

Everything's Relative

How "local" is local? Seen at our Whole Foods Market. In Swampscott, MA.

June '08 Foodies' Book

Foodies Books for

The Saucier's Apprentice: One Long Strange Trip through the Great Cooking Schools of Europe
by Bob Spitz

The education of a barbarian in the temples of haute cuisine.
In the blink of an eye, Bob Spitz turned fifty, finished an eight-year book project and a fourteen-year marriage that left him nearly destitute, had his heart stolen and broken on the rebound, and sought salvation the only way he knew how. He fled to Europe, where he hopscotched among the finest cooking schools in pursuit of his dream. The urge to cook like a virtuoso, to unravel the mysteries of the process, had become an obsession.

Spitz hit the fabled cooking-school circuit in a series of idyllic European villages, and The Saucier's Apprentice is a chronicle of his exploits. Combining an outrageous travelogue with gastronomic lore, hands-on cooking instruction, hot-tempered chefs, local personalities, and a batch of memorable recipes, Spitz's odyssey recounts the transformation of a professional writer—and lifelong kitchen amateur—into a world-class cook. 30 illustrations.

For more details or to buy click here.

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Flatbreads & Flavors
by Jeffrey Alford
"Two people caught in the grip of wanderlust," as Alford and Duguid describe themselves, this American- Canadian pair has traveled for nearly two decades, singly and together, throughout Asia, Europe, the Mediterranean, North Africa, and North America. As they have pursued their passions for travel photography and culinary research, they have found around the world a shared and nourishing element of culture and cuisine: flatbreads, the simplest, oldest, and most marvelously varied form of bread known to humankind. Immersing themselves in local cultures-from the Malaysian island of Penang and the high Himalayan passes of Tibet to the market stalls of Provence and the pueblos of New Mexico -- Adford and Duguid have studied bread baking and cooking with local bakers, in family kitchens, with street vendors, and at neighborhood restaurants and cafes.

For more details or to buy click here.

2008 Cookbook Winners

2008 Best Books

The IACP Cookbook Awards
The IACP Cookbook Awards annually celebrate the year's most outstanding food and beverage publications. The awards program was created to encourage and promote quality and creativity in cookbook writing and publishing and to expand awareness of culinary literature. The IACP Cookbook Awards have become the industry's most coveted acknowledgment of excellence in the cookbook publishing world.

Cookbook of the Year
Fish Forever: The Definitive Guide to Understanding, Selecting, and Preparing Healthy, Delicious, and Environmentally Sustainable Seafood
Author: Paul Johnson
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Inc
Editor: Justin Schwartz
For more details or to buy click here.

Chefs and Restaurants Category
Morimoto: The New Art of Japanese Cooking
Authors: Masaharu Morimoto
Editor: Anja Schmidt and Susan Wyler
Publisher: DK Publishing
For more details or to buy click here.

New: 4.11.08 Books for Cooks

Releases New

Food & Wine Annual Cookbook 2008: An Entire Year of Recipes
Almost one million subscribers heartily agree: there’s always something delicious going on in Food & Wine. And it’s all here in the annual cookbook, which includes every recipe published in the magazine during 2007 more than 600 of them accompanied by scrumptious-looking photographs. The contributors remain absolutely stellar, cuisine’s finest, including such cookbook authors, chefs, and food luminaries as Jacques Pepin, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Paula Wolfert, and Al Roker. Plus, this year’s volume is organized seasonally, so it’s even easier to find the right recipe for the right occasion.

For more details or to buy click here.

Mastering Knife Skills: The Essential Guide to the Most Important Tools in Your Kitchen
By Norman Weinstein

As the number of gourmet home kitchens burgeons, so does the number of home cooks who want to become proficient users of the professional-caliber equipment they own. And of all kitchen skills, perhaps the most critical are those involving the proper use of knives.

Norman Weinstein has been teaching his knife skills workshop at New York City’s Institute of Culinary Education for more than a decade— and his classes always sell out. That’'s because Weinstein focuses so squarely on the needs of the nonprofessional cook, providing basic instruction in knife techniques that maximize efficiency while placing the least possible stress on the user’s arm. Now, Mastering Knife Skills brings Weinstein’'s well-honed knowledge to home cooks everywhere.

For more details or to buy click here.

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Newsletter

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Stress Free Wine Shopping

Wine About

by David Haley

Our lives are filled with difficult decisions made on a daily basis at work and at home. Buying wine should be a fun learning experience not a gut wrenching episode of intimidation when entering a wine store. Here are some tips to make your wine buying experience enlightening and enjoyable.

Look
Sounds easy but looks are sometimes deceiving. Good retail stores are well laid out with comfortable surroundings that lend themselves to browsing. Wines should be well merchandised with descriptions of the characteristics and attributes in an easy to read format. Your first observations are usually correct. If the store is not clean and well organized head for the door.

Relax, It's Black Friday

Shopping Holiday

Target 6am, Kohl's 4am, our Kitchen Store, whenever.
Better wrap that post-Thanksgiving turkey sandwich to go, because you're going to have to get up real early Friday morning. Black Friday, the day after  Thanksgiving, is the traditional beginning of the holiday shopping frenzy and this year the big boxes are off to an even more ridiculous start than usual.

Target, Macy's, and Kmart want you to be at their stores at six am; Best Buy, Circuit City and Sears want you to start shopping at five am; and the award for the absolutely most ridiculous opening hour is shared by Kohl's and JC Penny: four o'clock in the morning! That's not the day after Thanksgiving, that's still the night of Thanksgiving!

But you can turn off that alarm clock. We're Foodies and we don't follow the herd. We know how to enjoy life. Pour yourself another cup of coffee, or even another glass of wine because you can now do your holiday shopping when it's right for you.

We're online 24/7. We're on your computer. We bring your purchases right to your door. And FREE Shipping on most orders over $25.

Find your perfect culinary gifts for all of your favorite Foodies.
Click here to go to The Kitchen Store at Dancing Spoon

Seed Newsvine

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Have a question or comment? Email me here

Our Kitchen Store Grand Opening!!!

 

We're really excited to announce the GRAND OPENING of Foodie's Emporium, our new online kitchen store. It's filled with thousands of hard to find kitchen and cooking gadgets, products, and ingredients.

In Foodie's Emporium at DancingSpoon you'll find those perfect kitchen things, like chardonnay smoked sea salt, bamboo cutting boards, Dutch Ovens, truffle oils, knife sets, an oh-so-cool French Press, gourmet pastas, and every whisk* you might ever need!

And to make buying quick, easy, and secure, we've teamed up with the most trusted name in online shopping, Amazon.com. You can shop and purchase with confidence using your existing Amazon.com account, or create a new one right in our store. Buy with Amazon.com security.

Shop  Foodie's Emporium where you'll always find that perfect kitchen thing you've been looking for! Check out  Foodie's Emporium. Click here! And right now we're offering FREE shipping on orders over $25 on qualifying items: and most items qualify.

PS: We'd love to know how you like our store and how we can improve it for you. Please add your comments, click here.

Thanks, J. MIchael Wheeler

The Palm Peeler

Stuff Cool

A better mousetrap? We think so. We've got a drawer full of vegetable peelers, and frankly, they all leave something to be desired. Meet your newest kitchen gadget: the Palm Peeler.

It's a peeler that slips over your middle finger with the peel blades beneath. That means that the peeler is an extension of your palm, hence the name. And that gives you great control over the peeler.

Peeling slices of ginger is alway tricky. Last night I took a two inch slice of ginger and within moments, using the Palm Peeler, I had a perfectly naked slice ready to be minced. ( I was making a marinade for grilled chicken: minced ginger and garlic, some mirin (rice cooking wine), soy sauce, balsamic vinegar, a touch of molasses and Tabasco.)

The Palm Peeler is an inexpensive and very cool kitchen tool. It comes in three colors: avocado (shown), cherry, and stainless. Try it and it will become your peeler of choice!

 

Farmers in the City

Food Slow

If you live in the Boston area, wander into the parking lot of the Whole Foods Market in Brighton on Tuesday afternoons this summer and fall. Each week a local farmer will be setting up a portable ‘farm stand.’ You’ll be able to chat with the people who grow the food and learn about their local farms and agriculture in Massachusetts.

Working in cooperation with Whole Foods Market, Slow Food Boston has invited “local heroes” to bring their fresh, locally grown produce directly to consumers in Brighton.  Farmers taking part in this cutting edge program include Spencer Brook Farm, Allandale Farm, Silferleaf Farm, Butter Brook Farm, The Herb Lyceum, Nourse Farm, Siena Farms, Hutchins Farm, Belkin Family Lookout Farm, Old Frog Pond Farm, Natick Community Organic Farm, Many Hands Organic Farm and Land’s Sake.

Each week you’ll be able to meet a different farmer and buy their products directly from them. Whole Foods Market is donating the space and the time and so the money you give to the farmer, stays with the farmer.

Slow Food Boston is the local branch of the international organization Slow Food, a group dedicated to creating a community of people who believe in a promoting a better food system, one that is ‘good, clean and fair’. For more information see www.slowfoodboston.com

Keep Your Knives Sharp

Stuff Cool

At its foundation, cooking really only needs a few tools. They should be as good quality as you can afford and you should take care of them. This is especially true of your knives.

Here're the basics of knifedom. Knives are for cutting. To cut they need to be sharp. When you use a knife it becomes dull. You need to sharpen your knives.

Here's what happens. Through usage, a knife's edge actually wears away. To bring back the sharpness to the knife you must remove a small amount of material from the sides of the knife. That's what a sharpener does.