Just Hungry

Since I barely have time at the moment to write properly here at the moment, here are two newish food blogs that I have been happy to discover, for your reading enjoyment:

We Must Eat is a 4 months old blog by Motoko in L.A. Motoko-san is a Japanese-American who used to live in Europe for a while and whose husband is European (French). She also loves M.F.K. Fisher. Hmm...is she my long-lost cousin? :) She writes with an elegant style which is very appealing. continue reading...

I am still buried in work and I haven’t surfaced yet. But anyway! It seems that there is yet another cooking show starting tonight in the U.S. on NBC, called Celebrity Cooking Showdown. It features your usual array of D-list “celebrities”, working with some of your usual gang of Chefs That Like To Appear On TV.

I ask the question though…do you care at to see “celebrities” cooking? Do you care if they can even cook or not? I don’t, in the slightest. continue reading...

This is a slightly shorter review than usual because I am buried in work. However, that doesn't mean this wasn't a very good episode. As a matter of fact, for me it was the best episode of the series so far. We finally got to see the contestants create food that really looked exciting and delicious and top-quality-restaurant-ish, as a collective. And, my girl Lee Anne won the elimination challenge, finally! continue reading...

I've been so busy these past few days with work, that I haven't had a chance to write up the essays and recipes in the queue for this site. So, this is just a short note. continue reading...

The James Beard Foundation Cookbook Award nominee list is out now. I've only read a couple of these, but can recommend them highly. The first, Hungry Planet, is not a cookbook, but rather a fascinating book about food and the way people around the world consume it and buy it. I wrote an in-depth review of it previously.

This week's episode had an overall theme of fusion cuisine...I think. The main elimination challenge was about making street food, but more on that later. Let's review the blind taste testing challenge first. continue reading...

Some people have emailed me about the Food Destinations event, so I wanted to answer them here in case other people had the same questions. continue reading...

Today is April Fool's Day of course. Every year this day rolls around I remember the best food-related April Fool's hoax ever: the Swiss Spaghetti Harvest documentary broadcast by the BBC. continue reading...

This week's Top Chef was about convenience foods. As much as I'd like to make food from scratch using the freshest of fresh ingredients all the time, the reality is that during the week at least I just whip up stuff that I can make quickly. I'm sure this is the case for a lot of people, especially if you work full time and/or have kids. And sometimes, we don't even have the time to go shopping, and have to fall back on whatever we have stashed in the pantry or freezer. continue reading...

Reading the IMBB 24 "Make It In 30 Minutes" entries hosted by Too Many Chefs, it struck me that a lot of the participants were sure to include a dessert in their meal. When I was ruminating over what to make it never even entered my mind that I should make a dessert, because I'm not a dessert person. continue reading...

The theme for this week's Top Chef episode titled Nasty Delights, was making food that looks disgusting into something delicious. But the other theme, which seems to be developing as a major emphasis in this series, was the importance of the chef as a marketer and promoter of his goods. continue reading...

MasterChef is the BBC cooking contest program to find the "best amateur chef in the UK", ended last Friday. The winner was Peter Bayless, a 60 year old former advertising executive. His selection was quite a surprise to a lot of people, and the discussion about this on the BBC Food message boards has been quite heated, to put it mildly.

Well, I had managed to avoid getting a cold all winter, but the recent wild temperature swings here brought on a full-blast case of coughing, fever and other unpleasant things, which came to a climax over the weekend. Thankfully I had my cans of Ricolatee (Ricola Tea). continue reading...

First off, an apology to regular readers...I've had a pretty bad cold this week, which meant mainly staying in bed with a box of tissues, drinking gallons of herb tea and feeling sorry for myself. But even though I don't have much of an appetite I still enjoy watching food shows. So here is my episode 2 review of Top Chef. (This is the cooking contest show that airs on Bravo TV in the U.S., and is also available for purchase/download from the iTunes Music Store.

[Update: As many people have pointed out in the comments I now know that it's puntarelle or catalogna. So no more need to comment or email me about it - thanks!]

I'm starting out the week with a mystery. What is this vegetable? continue reading...

Warning: this entry contains major spoilers for the first episode of Top Chef.

Top Chef is a new reality show that airs on Bravo TV in the US. It's a cooking contest show where contestants vie for the privilege of being crowned Top Chef. (And some prize money too.) The first episode is being offered for free on the iTunes Music Store. (Note, it's free but you still need a U.S. credit card to download it.) continue reading...

Seven weeks ago, when the second season of the UK food contest show MasterChef Goes Large started, I set myself a personal challenge: to play along and make a dish (or for the last week, 2 dishes) with the list of ingredients provided in the Invention Test that was the first part of the preliminary rounds. I've made 26 different dishes, based on 23 different ingredient lists (I skipped one day). continue reading...

continue reading...

continue reading...

I've been plugging along at the Masterchef Ingredient Challenge mostly without hitch, but this list of ingredients just stumped me: continue reading...

continue reading...

Ack! Because of the schedule changes brought on by the Olympics, I totally missed tonight’s episode of MasterChef (for Thursday, Feb. 22nd - the 4th day of the preliminaries).

If anyone watched and/or taped it, and has the ingredient list, can you let me know, either here in the comments, or by email to maki at makikoitoh dot com. I would really appreciate it - thanks!!

[Update:] I have the list now- thanks!

continue reading...

The latest brouhaha to hit the world of food blogs is this article in Food and Wine Magazine in which Pete Wells criticizes what he calls "cheese-sandwich meanderings". While it's easy to dismiss the entire article, which is not the best example of journalism to ever exist, I think there are some things to be learned from his off-hand comments about food blogs.

My comments here are, of course, my opinion only, and my focus is on personal food blogs rather than food blog aggregators and the like. continue reading...

Will you be staying in or going out for dinner tonight? If you are staying in, the best Valentine's Day present may be a meal cooked by the partner in your relationship that doesn't normally do the cooking.

Here are some easy to prepare yet impressing looking - and of course, delicious - dishes from the archives of Just Hungry: continue reading...

Isn't this one of the prettiest cheese labels you have ever seen? I found this cheese being sold at one of the many cheese stands that set up at the Wednesday market here in Zürich continue reading...

Yes my friends - Swiss stainless steel triumphs over food disaster! Here is a picture of the pot that got a little bit singed a few days ago.

It had to be soaked for about 4 days, and scrubbed a few times to get all the black bits off, but it's as good as new now and back in regular rotation.

The ingredients for Day 3 of the MasterChef preliminaries were: continue reading...

continue reading...

If you don't normally read my personal site, and you're interested in an account of when I worked at a New York restaurant, you may want to take a look at my most recent entry over there:

Link: Working as a host in a New York restaurant.

I'd like to interrupt my usual flow of posts about mostly edible food, to bring you a small culinary disaster.

continue reading...