AV Club Interviews Anthony Bourdain

Anthony Bourdain interview
An interview with celebrity "bad boy" author and chef, Anthony Bourdain. They talk travel, tv, food, restaurants, and celebrity chef culture.

Jamie Oliver in Globe and Mail

Globeandmail.com : Salty chef, Spicy Tongue
Jamie Oliver, The Naked Chef, dishes on his celebrity chef critics,
His side-projects include training programs for unemployed disadvantaged students to become cooks and chefs, and his attempts to revolutionize school lunches with healthy food.

Jamie also gives some thoughts on his favourite restaurants in different cities (Tojo's and Vij's in Vancouver).

Food 2.0: Chefs as Chemists

New York Times: Food 2.0: Chefs as Chemists
An overview of some of the most recent development in the cooking world, where chefs are using techniques and ingredients from chemistry to develop a new style of cooking.

$200 for all the essential kitchen tools

A No-Frills Kitchen Still Cooks - New York Times (permalink)

Kitchen tools are expensive, right? In a great article in the Times by Mark Bittman, you find out how to get everything you need for less than $200.
Mark Bittman tells you which utensils, pots and pans are essential for your kitchen at home, and where you can buy them at an inexpensive price. Even though the chefs on TV have flashy, expensive tools, these are not what they use in their restaurants, and you don't need them to do be effective in the kitchen. You can also save by shopping in restaurant supply stores, rather than department stores and "cuisine" shops.

I absolutely love to cook and have plenty of professional cooking experience, but I wish I'd read this article when preparing the gift registry for my wedding.

Today's Link source: Reddit

Sublime cooking blog

cookthink blog

The internet is great for people that love to cook. Google is great for finding recipes: type in the name of the dish you want to make, type in "best" and "recipe", and you'll have a few options to choose from. I use the word "best" in the search, because I think that if somebody declares their strawberry jam recipe to be the best, it's much more likely to be a good recipe.

Other than Google, I don't actually have a favourite recipe website.

That said, I've been checking out the cookthink cooking blog, and I'm quite impressed. Apparently, they're in some kind of beta mode, but currently they have interesting and relevant musings on cooking, without any of the pretension. The entries are focused and simple, but sublime. Simple, digestable recipes and ideas that are kind of like getting a little bit of cooking school every day.

Free Jamie Oliver (Naked Chef) Cookbook

Feed Me Better - School Dinners Pack (pdf)

UK (naked) chef, Jamie Oliver, was upset by the unhealthy junk food that was served in school cafeterias. Spurred on by new school food standards, Jamie researched, he experimented and he did some shows about it. Jamie also came up with some solutions, that is, menu plans. Today's link is essentially a free cookbook of healthy, inexpensive, easy-to-prepare meals that are scalable for groups of different sizes. Hmmm... a free Naked Chef cookbook. Interesting.

Sure, some of the recipes are better than others. I think I'd enjoy the Chicken Tikka Massala and the Slow-Cooked Balsamic Beef more than the Sausages and Mashed, but this is a really great resource! Imagine if you had to cook for a large group of wonderful people at a camp, a retreat, a big family dinner or even a school, I'm sure this recipe book could be an excellent resource.