[]typepad To glimpse at dinners past look into the The Deipnosophists. Written in the second century during Roman times, Athenaeus, the author, used a dinner among friends as a setting to discuss matters literary, philosophical and culinary. At one point one of his guests challenges: My friend, a great deal has been said already By many men on the art of cookery So either tell me something new yourself Unknown to former cooks, or spare my ears…

Apple and lavender are the ingredients for the sixth TGRWT, a food blogging event being hosted by african vanielje. This month there was no room for experimentation, so my first attempt is what I’m submitting. I wanted to try a savory dish and as it was brunch time, I made something to go with the frittata that was also on the menu. Apple subjee with pancetta A subjee is the hindi term for a vegetable dish.…

I still have all my fingers. But that is thanks to the Demiurge and not my smarts. Three hours in the emergency room and five stitches later I was back to the kitchen. How a knife cuts so well is one of the wonders of material science. Steel is not a neat arrangement of atoms, but a complicated structure. The strength of the steel is what allows the atoms of one material to tear through another (like a block of cheese or an unfortunate finger).…

Temptation. Sometimes it’s fine to yield. I stumbled on a math problem while writing the entry for TGRWT #5 and I can’t solve it. What is the most efficient way to cut diamond shapes from a square? Making the cut Baklava and kibbeh are usually cut into diamond shapes, which is a little harder to do than squares or rectangles. My mom eyeballs her way through a zig-zag patterns. The perfectionist in me wants to get some edible inks to print a guide for the knife to follow.…

TGRWT is a food blogging event started by Martin Lersch. The idea is to develop a new recipe using ingredients that theory predicts should go together well, but for which there may be few or no recipes. The ingredients for the TGRWT #5 event are beef and chocolate and it is being hosted by Le Petite Boulanger. At first, I thought the challenge simple, after all mole uses beef and chocolate.…