The Feed - January 9, 2013

The Feed is my weekly round up of interesting food-related stories from newspapers, magazines, blogs and websites.

Bon Appétit: “Bibimbap Till You Drop,” by Kay Chun. Learning from Bon Appétit that the popular Korean dish bibimbap is not really one recipe but a complex dish assembled from nine recipes sort of makes me want to make it all the more. This guide helpfully breaks down the steps for making each component, although I would have liked having a single ingredients list to make shopping easier.

Smitten Kitchen: “Carrot soup with tahini and crisped chickpeas,” by Deb Perelman. January is National Soup Month, and the most intriguing soup recipe I’ve seen so far this year is this concoction by Smitten Kitchen, a beautifully orange carrot puree topped with a dollop of tahini and a handful of oven-crisped chickpeas. I may have to make this Sunday.

Washington Post: “Knife injuries and other kitchen mishaps afflict both top chefs and everyday cooks,” by Joe Yonan. I cringed more than once reading this piece on kitchen mishaps, which appeared in the Post’s Health & Science section Tuesday. It’s a good reminder about the important of safety in the kitchen. It also reminded me of my own recent kitchen injury: I cut my big toe when I dropped a santoku knife on it.

Art of the Menu: “Best of 2012.” Art of the Menu is a website, part of the design-oriented UnderConsideration collection, that showcases good examples of restaurant menu design. This post was their favorites from last year, an impressive collection that will make you hungry. A quibble: I’d have liked it more if the site had been designed so I could click on the menu photos and see them enlarged.

New York Times: “Creating a Dish, Not Just Reheating One,” by Sophie Brickman. Why is it that people despise microwaves so much, even though pretty much everyone has one? Too many people either thumb their nose at it—even though it’s a powerful and versatile kitchen tool—or they act like they’re afraid of it, even though it emits less radiation than a cell phone. Time to get over it! Brickman’s article does a decent job explaining how varying a microwave’s power setting increases its usefulness for various tasks, including frying herbs and steaming fish.

R.I.P: Washington Post All We Can Eat. Sadly, I have to report the loss of one of my favorite food sites, as the Washington Post’s food blog, All We Can Eat, ceased publication today. Let’s hope some of its great content gets repurposed into the Food section proper or related webpages.