The greatest snack in the sky: Delta’s cookies
There's not often much to be said for airplane food, but these treats inspire rapture in award-winning chefs
Topics: Food, Sacrificial Lam
I am a terrible frequent flier. I have eight mileage accounts, which is really confusing because I just realized there are only like three airlines left anyway. But, lately, I find my online-shopping trigger finger itching to buy tickets on Delta, because someone there finally found the key to my brand loyalty: serve a good snack. Nay, serve the best snack in the skies.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: the Biscoff cookie. It’s a speculoos, which, despite sounding like either a cartoon or a terrifying medieval medical device, is actually a traditional cookie in Belgium “used to celebrate weddings and births, to teach history, and to chronicle war in Europe.” (Congratulations on reaching the end of the single most confusing sentence ever written about cookies.)
Continue Reading CloseFrancis Lam is Features Editor at Gilt Taste, provides color commentary for the Cooking Channel show Food(ography), and tweets at @francis_lam. More Francis Lam.
Spam four-way: Broiled, sauteed, poached and braised
Is the world's most loved/mocked luncheon meat as tasty as I remember? I run it through the gantlet to find out
Topics: Food, Sacrificial Lam
Is there a food more widely mocked than Spam? Its name was long rumored to stand for Stuff Posing as Meat. It’s synonymous with Internet junk. (No, kids, they didn’t name the canned pig after banking offers from dispossessed Nigerian millionaires. It was the other way around.) And well before there were ironic visits to the Spam Museum, comedy crossed into Spamland with Monty Python’s famous Viking Spam sketch:
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Francis Lam is Features Editor at Gilt Taste, provides color commentary for the Cooking Channel show Food(ography), and tweets at @francis_lam. More Francis Lam.
Durian: The King of Fruits is an angry king
Beloved in Southeast Asia, famously stinky, I've avoided the "King of Fruit" for decades ... until now
Topics: Food, Sacrificial Lam
Durian. Oh, durian. You can’t read anything about the heavy, spiky tropical fruit without finding out that “many people in Southeast Asia call it the King of Fruits,” but who are these people? And, more important, why do we assume that the Fruit King is a kind and benevolent ruler, and not, say, a violent, power-mad, empire-obsessed tyrant? Because it is.
It’s a fruit whose aroma is so strong, so lingering, so reportedly similar to a gym-full of old socks (if you’re lucky) or an unearthed cadaver (if you’re not), it pushes all else aside when it enters the room. You will know if there is a durian present, and sooner or later, no matter where you go in the house, it will have taken over.
Continue Reading CloseFrancis Lam is Features Editor at Gilt Taste, provides color commentary for the Cooking Channel show Food(ography), and tweets at @francis_lam. More Francis Lam.
Taco Bell’s shrimp burritos: Fishily delicious!
The ads have a class-war message, the food is suspiciously tasty, and the staff is judgmental. What a border run!
Topics: Food, Sacrificial Lam
This is a phrase you don’t ever hear, but: I just read the most amazing press release. It’s from Taco Bell, it’s touting its new Pacific Shrimp Burritos, and it starts like this:
CRASHING HIGH END PARTIES JUST FOR THE SHRIMP?
TACO BELL TELLS SHRIMP CRASHERS TO DROP THE TUX AND TRY ITS SEASONAL PACIFIC SHRIMP TACOS AND BURRITOS
That’s right, people! Ditch the tails and top hat you throw on every time you have a desire for … the most commonly eaten seafood in America. (Er, it turns out Americans have eaten more shrimp than canned tuna since 2001. But that’s because WE ARE ALL MILLIONAIRES ALL THE TIME YEAH!) Maybe I’m taking this sales pitch too literally! Let’s keep reading:
Continue Reading CloseFrancis Lam is Features Editor at Gilt Taste, provides color commentary for the Cooking Channel show Food(ography), and tweets at @francis_lam. More Francis Lam.
Energy drink taste test: Buzz buzz!
With $9B in sales projected for 2011, will we all be jittery forever? Maybe not, if they all taste like this
Topics: Food, Sacrificial Lam
Roughly 10 years ago, in armchair zoologist mode, I spied a new nocturnal species walking the streets of New York: the Red Bull drinker (Taurusruber doucheus). The males of the species were strongly built, with bulging chests and stiff hair. The females were apparently impervious to cold, and required little covering even in February. They roamed in packs, making screeching noises to frighten away predators and attract mates, and seemed to need only cans of Red Bull for sustenance.
I actually remember being handed a Red Bull at a party around then, taking a sip, and giving it back, thinking that I wanted to go out to have a good time, not to be punished. But apparently I wasn’t on to something, because sales of energy drinks busted wide open, exploding 900 percent since then, to over $9 billion projected for 2011, even as doctors fret about what the hell is actually in this stuff.
Continue Reading CloseFrancis Lam is Features Editor at Gilt Taste, provides color commentary for the Cooking Channel show Food(ography), and tweets at @francis_lam. More Francis Lam.
Europe’s version of peanut butter: Biscoff cookie spread
Europeans may scoff at peanut butter, but they're hawking creamed Biscoff cookies as an alternative. Will we bite?
Topics: Food, Sacrificial Lam
It is the greatest scandal to rock Belgium since Jean-Claude Van Damme was revealed to be a giant Smurf posing as a martial arts master: Lotus and Willems, master biscoff cookie makers, battling it out for the right to sell speculoos spread, a creamy paste made from the beloved, traditional cinnamon ginger cookie of Flanders. In the U.S., this might just have been a snoozerific story of copyright infringement; but in Europe, a land of deep cultural connection to its foods and seriously wonky laws, it’s turned into an epic battle that has pit baker against baker, brother against brother. It involves reality television.
Continue Reading CloseFrancis Lam is Features Editor at Gilt Taste, provides color commentary for the Cooking Channel show Food(ography), and tweets at @francis_lam. More Francis Lam.
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