What’s worth watching on food-TV this week? Martha Stewart’s all about Thanksgiving this week; she even has a hotline up T-Day emergencies (email thanksgivinghotline@marthastewart.com). Her mashed potatoes tip? Use buttermilk instead of heavy cream or cream cheese—“Delicious,” she says. On Monday, she’s making sides and teaching people about heritage birds and how to find the perfect turkey. On Wednesday, she’ll be answering people’s last minute holiday questions—sent in via the hotline--throughout the show (Monday-Wednesday, Friday,......

What’s worth watching on food-related TV this week? This Wednesday on Kitchen Nightmares (9pm on Fox), Ramsay does his thing on Finn McCool’s in West Hampton. Are we the only ones who wonder if his advice actually does any good? Most places that he revisits after his makeover revert—at least in part—to their prior ways. But if you own a restaurant you want Ramsified, now’s your chance. Download an application to be featured on the......

The folks over at the all delicious, all the time site Serious Eats rounded up and presented a bumper crop of recipes from the newly released Mark Bittman cookbook last week, the 996-page How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Simple Meatless Recipes for Great Food. The latest in Bittman’s “How to Cook Everything” series, this giant book is exactly what those omnibus, fried-shallot-and-butternut-squash glossy vegetarian porn books strategically posed on chain bookstore discount tables purport to......

What’s worth watching on food-related TV this week? Next Sunday is the finale of The Next Iron Chef (9pm on the Food Network). Michael Ruhlman has a comment from Chef Chris Cosentino on his blog about the airplane episode—he was clearly getting crowded by cameras, but for him the crowding was to the degree that he couldn’t work, and he wanted to clarify that fact “now that 1/2 the country thinks i am an asshole.”......

What’s worth watching on food-related TV this week? We’re in the thick of it now on The Next Iron Chef (Sundays at 9pm on the Food Network). The Amateur Gourmet says “Finally, it gets juicy!” and puts his money on Symon or Besh. He also points out that these chefs—with national reputations—have much more to lose than your average reality food show competitor. “It’s not really a laughing matter when your business hinges on your......

A confession. In general, we’re not big Food Network Fans. We do make an exception for Iron Chef (it always sucks us in), and we love it’s latest incarnation. Last week on the premiere of The Next Iron Chef (9pm on the Food Network, Chef Traci Des Jardins got the ax, brought down by her salmon roe dessert (ick). Read the Amateur Gourmet's unique and often hilarious take on things on his blog on the......

What’s worth watching on food-relatedTV this week? Tonight on No Reservations--in another repeat--(10pm on the Travel Channel), Bourdain goes to Brazil. ">Martha Stewart has Chef Tom Colicchio on Tuesday making Cornish game hens. The show airs Tuesday through Friday this week at 1pm (NBC). Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares is on Wednesday at 9pm (Fox). This week, Ramsay makes over Seascape in Islip, NY. The LA Times calls the show “noisy and dissident.” All the TV......

Beard on Food: The Best Recipes and Kitchen Wisdom from the Dean of American Cooking was first published in 1974. This collection of Beard's favorite newspaper columns has been reissued to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the James Beard Foundation, the culinary haven and educational institution created in his honor. The short columns are a pleasure to read, combining culinary education and history with easygoing recipes, travel stories and are brimming with his love......

What’s worth watching on food-TV this week? Tonight on No Reservations (10pm on the Travel Channel), Bourdain goes to South Carolina. He’s also got an upcoming holiday special that features Queens of the Stone Age (wearing Christmas sweaters from QVC, no less). We can’t wait for that one. Read about it in ">Rolling Stone. On Top Chef, Episode 12 airs Wednesday at 10pm (Bravo). The guest judges are Sirio Maccioni and Andre Soltner. Grub Street......

This week on food-TV, we've got: Tonight on No Reservations (10pm on the Travel Channel), Bourdain goes to Buenos Aires and Patagonia, Argentina. On Top Chef, Episode 11 airs Wednesday at 10pm (Bravo). Chef Jimmy Canora is the guest judge. Frank Bruni blogs about the show in the Times, calls Howie “the season’s best villain, the toque you’d love to choke.” And Bourdain is guest judging again this week as well; says that this episode......

What’s worth watching, food-wise, on TV this week? Tonight on No Reservations (10pm on the Travel Channel), Bourdain goes to Hong Kong. His show is followed by Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern, who goes to Alaska to eat jellied moose nose and reindeer pizza, among other things. On Top Chef, Episode 10 airs Wednesday at 10pm (Bravo). There are seven remaining contestants, and this week Michael Schwartz is the guest judge. And PBS continues their......

What’s worth watching, food-wise, on TV this week? Be warned: it’s the dog days of summer, so there’s not much new on the air… Tonight on No Reservations (10pm on the Travel Channel), Bourdain goes to Cleveland, Ohio, where Michael Ruhlman shows him around town. Serious Eats recaps last week’s ep (visit to French Polynesia), shares the recipe for poisson cru. Top Chef is a repeat this week. It’s the “All-Star” episode where top competitors......

Octopus Garden is a specialty seafood market located along the far reaches of Avenue U in Bensonhurst. Operated by Vincent and Pina Cutrone, the unassuming corner storefront long been known to chefs like Eric Ripert of Le Bernadin as the go-to place for fresh octopus and sepia. The nine year-old Brooklyn fish market specializes in, but is not limited to, all things cephalopod, a class that includes squid, octopus, and cuttlefish. The octopuses Cutrone......

- This week in Momofuku hype, a short love note as expressed via a T-shirt and a litany of chefs cite the joint as their go-to spots. - With the ongoing hubbub of how unacceptable the wait is at DiFara’s in Midwood, it’s good to have a fallback, or at least a stopback, for our hunger out in the same neighborhood. All relevant details in this preview article from the next edition of the excellent......

-Bruni's back with his take on Harry's Steak and Cafe, giving it one star. He seems to be happy with the steakhouse portion of the restaurant, but is much less impressed by Harry's Cafe, where, although it shares the same kitchen with Harry's Steak, "the menu metastasizes in ways that often turn out to be ill-advised." The Eater boys were on the mark this week. - A good friend of ours told us he didn't......

Bruni one-stars Trestle on Tenth, says the Swiss restaurant is where "homey joins hearty." He loves the wine list but finds the cuisine uneven, says its heaviness "challenges vain, health-conscious New Yorkers to wade into the starchy and dive headlong into the flabby." And Eater called it right this week, gave Trestle on Tenth even odds for one star. They predicted the special attention Bruni paid to the wine list, and point out that Adam......

How To Cook Everything: Bittman Takes On America's Chefs by Mark Bittman (Wiley, 2005) Last week, we began our first ever two-part "Gothamist Cooks" column so that we could do justice to Mark Bittman's new book in which he, Minimalist-style, challenges various chefs. Gothamist wanted to test his claim that his homecooking style could go the distance versus full-on chef cuisine (with its major time investment of chopping and prepping inherent). To be fair to......

How To Cook Everything: Bittman Takes On America's Chefs by Mark Bittman (Wiley, 2005) Gothamist's been a fan of Mark Bittman--a.k.a. New York Times' "The Minimalist"--for years now, and with good reason. His minimalist approach to cooking is geared towards home cooks who don't want to spend all day cooking but still expect gourmet results for their efforts. With no formal training of his own, Bittman has no trouble thinking like a home cook, because......

Today's New York Times Minimalist column focuses on frozen veggies, one of our favorite time-savers (and money-savers) in the kitchen. Like Mark Bittman, we were somewhat skeptical at first about using frozen vegetables in lieu of fresh, but now we love to throw frozen peas in our pasta, fried rice, soup, or almost any dish that needs a little color on short notice. We also generally keep a bag of frozen edamame in the freezer......

Gothamist absolutely loved Mark Bittman's visit with Brooklyn Brewery brewmaster Garrett Oliver in the NY Times Dining section today. Oliver teaches Bittman how to pair beers with food, and Oliver says things like "Beer is an affordable luxury; many of the best beers in the world cost less than a latte at Starbucks" that make Gothamist want Oliver to be our friend. Especially when he's making fettuccini with lobster, chorizo and peas (it's like fettucini......