Foodista Best of Food Blogs Cookbook: 100 Great Recipes, Photographs, and Voices
Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing
Publication Date: October 2010
Featured Recipe: Cider-Braised Pork Shoulder with Caramelized Onion and Apple Confit
“As the first grassroots cookbook to emerge from social media, The Foodista Best of Food Blogs Cookbook features competition-tested recipes from foodie-favorite Web site Foodista.com. The site’s goal is to build the world’s largest high-quality online cooking encyclopedia that offers followers everything from recipes to cooking instructions. Foodista.com bloggers worldwide were invited to submit their favorite blog posts, recipes, and photos to compete for a spot inside this cookbook. Winning entries were selected from all over the globe and include recipes such as Smoked Salmon and Mascarpone Calzone, Spiced Wine-Poached Persimmon, Prosciutto-Wrapped Broccolini with Basil Crisps, and Snickerdoodle Ice Cream.”
C&B&R Featured Cooks Chris & Karen, the peche
If you were to look in our browser bookmarks, you would find it filled with links to recipes from blogs across the web. We cook almost exclusively from other people’s recipes, and our bounty of links to recipes is our own personal treasure chest of food, overflowing with food we love and food we know we will love. We covet our links, considering them our stock of ammunition against boredom and sad food.
This book is like a giant cannonball of tastiness, hurtling toward your kitchen, demanding you make them. You want to make this food.
What’s so inspiring about this collection, divided by course, is the variety of viewpoints coming from the contributing food bloggers. Most exciting for us going through the recipes was realizing we hadn’t heard of 75% of the contributing bloggers, and we know a lot of food bloggers (at least their sites and their food). This book reminded us that the world of food blogging is a powerhouse of innovation and creativity. And really good food.
We tried three different recipes, things we would never think to make if we weren’t reviewing the book, and we loved each one of them. Full-on love. Another reminder to move outside of our culinary comfort zone and taste the world. And now, we have 100 blogs we want to get to know even better.
The first recipe we made was Cider-Braised Pork Shoulder with Caramelized Onion and Apple Confit from Lynda Balslev at Tastefood. This is full-on happiness with deep, rich flavors. We would make this again for a weekend dinner when guests are coming over and there’s a chill in the air. We served it with celery root puree, and that added another level of flavor. Garlic mashed potatoes would be perfect, too, as suggested on Tastefood.
Cider-Braised Pork Shoulder with Caramelized Onion & Apple Confit – Photo Credit: Lynda Balslev
Next up was Luscious Thai Chicken Pineapple Curry from Nancy at Spicie Foodie. Wow. Just wow. This was so much fun to make, and the lineup of ingredients made our mouths water was we lined them up before we started cooking. We had most of the ingredients on hand, so this was so simple to throw together at the last minute. A good sign–we were sad when the bowl was empty. We’ll make a double recipe next time.
Ingredients for Thai Chicken Pineapple Curry – Photo Credit: Karen Thornton
Thai Chicken Pineapple Curry – Photo Credit: Karen Thornton
Last was a real treat from Brittan Heller at The Suitcase Chef. [Editors’ Note: The recipe for this treat can be found here.]
We will be working our way through the rest of this book. Happily.
Thank you for sharing this. Very inspiring post! I want to try the Cider-Braised Pork Shoulder with Caramelized Onion and Apple Confit. Awesome post!