Last week saw the premiere of The Taste, ABC's food reality TV show starring judges Anthony Bourdain, Nigella Lawson, Ludo Lefebvre, and Brian Malarkey. What sets the new show, being billed as "a cooking competition unlike any other," apart from other food reality TV shows? PopSugar's Michelle Manning sat down with judges (and executive producers) Bourdain and Lawson to find out.
When Anthony Bourdain and Eric Ripert joined with Éclat Chocolate to create the Good & Evil 72 Percent Dark Chocolate Bar ($18), the question on everyone's mind was this: what could possibly cause such a skinny chocolate bar to have such an astronomical price tag? Is it embellished in gold? Do half the proceeds go toward a respectable charity? Does the bar contain youth-restoring properties?
The high expense is due to the fact that the bars are made using pure Nacional, a single-origin Peruvian cacao bean, which the bar claims to be the rarest variety in existence. In addition, the chocolate travels to three different countries before it makes its way to your doorstep: the beans are hand-selected in Peru, then shipped to Switzerland, where they roast in a 135-year-old Swiss conching machine. The chocolate is blended with cacao nibs made from the same Peruvian beans, then molded into Good & Evil chocolate bars in the United States. While it's more common to dole out more dollars for a Premier Cru wine, splurging on chocolate is a lesser-known phenomenon. We sought to find out if the chocolate bar is worth its steep price tag. Our conclusion, when you keep reading.
Talk about starting off with a bang: last night, the 2012 New York City Wine & Food Festival kicked off with a comedic roast of Anthony Bourdain by celebrity chefs and comedians, and it seemed like just about every star chef who's seen a camera was there to sling mud at the food personality who made his name slinging mud. As pal Sarah Silverman told Bourdain in a prerecorded video message: "There's gonna be a lot of great lines tonight, and you can't snort any of them."
Great lines indeed. It was a rare opportunity to see another side of the stars of Food Network, who puts on the yearly festival; everyone from the bubbly Rachael Ray to the modest Eric Ripert cracked a dirty sex joke (or 10). Although Bourdain was the subject of the roast, there were plenty of other subjects of interest, primarily Guy Fieri's douchiness, Mario Batali fat jokes, and Ray's inability to cook. Catch up with the best lines you missed from last night's shockingly irreverent, profanity-filled comedy roast of Anthony Bourdain.
Source: Flickr User Julien Haler
It's our favorite time of year: the holiday season! The festive six weeks are packed with food celebrations, crazy parties, and the annual unveiling of Simon Doonan's iconic and amazingly creative windows for Barneys! This November, Simon was inspired by the food industry to craft "A Foodie Holiday," a display that showcases how fashion and food collide. It features some of our favorite Food Network celebrity chefs — from Rachael Ray to Anthony Bourdain, no culinary personality was overlooked! Plus, we chatted with Jamie Oliver, Paula Deen, Emeril Lagasse and more at the unveiling.
To celebrate, we've teamed up with Barneys and our sister site, ShopStyle, to bring you an awesome giveaway worth $5,000 in prizes! We are giving away the following must haves: a Fornasetti Box of Chocolates Plates, an Editions de Parfums Coffee Society candle, a Jonathan Adler Fondue Set, an Armand Diradourian Out to Lunch Pillow, and an Illy Francis Francis X1 Iper Espresso Machine! That's not all — we're also giving away a grand prize to one very lucky winner: a gorgeous and extravagant Valextra travel bag, handpicked by Simon Doonan himself!
Entering is easy — all you have to do is click through the slideshow, add your email at the end, and you'll be entered to win. Check out the official rules here. Good luck!
Graduate schools are a great way to switch careers or advance the one you have. I talked about the most common reasons to get a grad degree, and my new school series will give you a quick glimpse of what options are out there.
Think you have what it takes to be the next Anthony Bourdain? Well, why not start off where he did, at the Culinary Institute of America, a cooking school that's based in New York. As a graduate, you'll be part of the school's elite alumni network, which boasts of Alinea's Grant Achatz, Chipotle CEO Steven Ells, Iron Chef's Cat Cora, and the list goes on. Jennifer Purcell, one of the associate deans at the CIA, told me more about the famous culinary school.
SavvySugar: What can a typical student expect to experience at the CIA?
Jennifer Purcell: A class day may start at 7 a.m. and end around 1:30 p.m., and that’s for a kitchen course. [Expect to] stand on your feet and cook, and kitchens are warm! They can be long days, but we also have sit-down lectures, courses and classes, but the bulk of our coursework is culinary. You’re in the kitchens, and repetition is key, because it’s how you build your skills. The classes are sequential so your building blocks of starting with basics and you build on those throughout the program until you end up in the CIA's four public restaurants. The whole experience is to synthesize all of your training and put it into action in a live restaurant.
To find out about the common misconceptions people have of cooking schools, read on!
