Have a love affair...with fritters. Learn how to make this delicious treat for yourself! 

Banana and Rum Fritters (Makes 20-30 fritters)

4  ripe bananas ¼ cup (2 oz/60 g) raw sugar 2  eggs 1  cup (4 oz/125 g) all-purpose flour 1  tsp baking powder 1  vanilla pod, cut in half lengthwise grated  zest of 1 lime 1  pinch grated cinnamon 1  pinch grated nutmeg 1  tbsp white rum 1  quart (32 fl oz/1 liter) sunflower oil 1  tbsp confectioners’ sugar

1. Peel the bananas, put them in a bowl, and mash with a fork. Whisk in the sugar and eggs, then the flour and baking powder. Using a small knife, scrape the seeds from the vanilla pod and add to the mixture, then stir in the lime zest, cinnamon, nutmeg, and rum.

2. In a deep pan, heat the oil over medium heat until it reaches 350°F (180°C), or until a cube of bread browns in 30–40 seconds. Make sure the oil doesn’t get too hot and start to smoke. Gently drop tablespoonfuls of the batter into the oil and cook for about 2 minutes on each side, turning occasionally, until dark golden all over.

3. Scoop the fritters out of the oil and drain on paper towels. Sprinkle with confectioners’ sugar and serve hot.

For this recipe and more, check out The Creole Kitchen: Sunshine Flavors from the Caribbean by Vanessa Bolosier.

Canadian Living: Chocolate Mousse Easter Eggs

With Easter just around the corner, we wanted to share this adorable family-friendly recipe! Whether you’re baking a treat for yourself or in need of a gift for a hostess, these Easter eggs are the perfect thing.

Directions:

To remove the top of the eggshell, use a paring knife to gently tap the narrow part of the egg until the egg begins to crack. Tap around the egg and crack to release the top. Remove any small eggshell shards so that you have a clean surface, and wash the inside of the eggshell, removing the membrane.

To colour the eggshells, add a few drops of food colouring and a few drops of white vinegar to a big bowl of water. Add your eggshells to the bowl. The longer they stay in the water, the darker they will get. Remove the eggshells from the water and let them dry on a cooling rack.

While the eggshells are drying, make your mousse. Here are some of our favourite Tested-Till-Perfect recipes to choose from.

Chocolate Mousse Mocha Mousse Chocolate Mint Mousse Hazelnut Chocolate Mousse

Fill the eggshells with the mousse using a piping bag or a plastic bag with one corner snipped off. Garnish the mousse with edible sprinkles.

For more chocolate recipes from Canadian Living, check out Make it Chocolate!

You know what pairs well with books? Chocolate.

Try this recipe for Triple Chocolate Cupcakes from Canadian Living.http://ow.ly/Yb8Dm

For more gooey, creamy, crunchy, chewy, melty, crumbly, chilly or cakey chocolate recipes, check out Canadian Living's Make it Chocolate, available March 2016. http://ow.ly/Yb8dE

Book Spine Poetry

Learn how to make the beautiful dishes of Eastern Europe with Olia Hercules’ Mamushka, a vibrant collection of over 100 recipes.

Olia’s recipe for birthday ice cream and strawberry cake: (x)

The food of Ukraine in particular (and Eastern Europe in general) is given beautiful treatment in Mamushka, a comprehensive volume, chock full of the flavors of the region, with just enough of a seasonal twist to keep very old recipes feeling surprisingly fresh.  

Find out more about Mamushka, one of Eater’s Best Cookbooks of Fall 2015, available October 6, 2015.

The ingredients that make up Cool Ranch Doritos: Corn, Corn oil, Canola oil and/or Sunflower Oil, Maltodetrin (made from corn), Salt, Tomato powder, Cornstarch, Lactose, Whey, Skim milk, Corn syrup solids, Onion powder, Sugar, Garlic powder, Monosodium glutamate, Milk, Cheese cultures, Salt, Enzymes, Detrose, Malic acid, Buttermilk, Natural flavor, Artificial flavor, Sodium acetate, Red No. 40, Blue No.1, Yellow No.5, Sodium caseinate, Spices, Citric acid, Disodium inosinate, Disodium guanylate. Photographs by Dwight Eschliman. See more awesome photos of food additives in Ingredients.

FOOD ADDITIVES HAVE been getting a lot of attention lately. In a quest to appeal to consumers who want more “natural” foods— whatever that really means—companies have been pulling artificial colors, preservatives, and other ingredients out of their formulations…I mean, recipes. General Mills is taking artificial ingredients out of all of its cereals. So is Subway, after an earlier (forced) decision to remove the leavener azodicarbonamide from its breads. The list goes on and on.

With multi-syllabic, difficult-to-pronounce names and manufacturing processes that sound more like the instructions for a nuclear reactor than a food processing plant, some of these ingredients make people wary of putting them in their bodies. But whether a food ingredient comes from natural sources—like the shellac, harvested from the resin of an insect, that coats some of your candy—or from a multi-step chemical process, the ways in which they make our food brighter, more appetizing, smoother, and safer are pretty impressive. And in almost all cases, perfectly safe. 

In his upcoming book Ingredients: A Visual Exploration of 75 Additives & 25 Food Products (out September 29, available for preorder), photographer Dwight Eschliman captured some of the most common ingredients included in supermarkets’ many, many processed foods. From far away, the ingredients listed on nutritional labels look like a pretty homogenous set of mildly-colored powders and liquids, but these up-close photos emphasize their variety, revealing the small tweaks in viscosity and texture that make the difference between a great emulsifier and a shiny coating. In the book, science writer Steve Ettlinger dissects those details, exploring each ingredient’s journey from raw material to highly refined ingredient to your plate.  Check them out in the gallery here: (x)

8 Facts about Food and Flavour by Mark Schatzker

Mark Schatzker is the author of, The Dorito Effect: The Surprising New Truth About Food and Flavor.

Okay, everyone. Let’s talk food.

We are in the grip of a food crisis. Obesity has become a leading cause of preventable death, after only smoking. How exactly did this occur?

Ever since the 1940s, with the rise of industrialized food production, we have been gradually leeching the taste out of what we grow.Simultaneously, we have taken great leaps forward in flavor technology, creating a flavor industry, worth billions annually; in an attempt to put back the tastes we’ve engineered out of our food.

The result? A national cuisine that increasingly resembles the paragon of flavor manipulation: Doritos. As food—all food—becomes increasingly bland, we dress it up with calories and flavor chemicals to make it delicious again. In doing so we have not only incentivized the wrong food, but interfered with the ancient chemical language—flavor—that once guided us to a healthy, balanced diet, so that now it leads us astray.

The Dorito Effect by acclaimed journalist Mark Schatzker is a fantastic resource to learn more about the flavor problem. Check it out here.

If you’re interested in learning more about the politics of food, here are 9 books that might change the way you think about food.

Food Matters

Tasty

Tomatoland

The Big Fat Surprise

The Gluten Lie

In Defense of Food

Salt Sugar Fat

The Meat Racket

Pandora’s Lunchbox

Cholesterol might not be so bad for us after all

It’s the jolting headline that will make your taste buds jump for joy. Foods high in cholesterol may not be bad for your heart after all. After years of warning consumers to cut down on cholesterol, found in eggs, shellfish, butter and beef, the nutrition community has come full circle.

A new draft of a report from the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee contains a monumental shift in warnings first issued nearly four decades ago, suggesting that cholesterol no longer needs to be viewed as a “nutrient of concern.”

The announcement is viewed as vindication for Nina Teicholz, author of the 2014 best-selling book The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat, and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet. Teicholz broke with conventional wisdom and angered many in the medical community by writing that through years of research, she concluded that not only was cholesterol wrongly linked to heart disease, but foods high in saturated fats, such as butter, eggs and beef, were also falsely labeled as heart unhealthy. The former vegetarian now practices what she preaches and has changed the way she and her family eat. Breakfast consists of eggs and bacon; cheese is a staple, as is lard. Gone are foods high in carbs and sugar. Teicholz invited Yahoo News into her kitchen just days before the stunning announcement from the nutrition advisory panel and predicted that more findings like these would be coming soon. Watch the video: (x)

Learn more.

Lamb shanks braised in Coffee and Ancho chile 

serves 4

Lamb shank is one of my favorite cuts of lamb, but transforming the tough connective tissue–filled meat to melt-in-your-mouth tenderness requires a little bit of patience and cooking time. A classic way to cook lamb shanks is to braise them in a flavorful liquid like broth or tomato sauce. This recipe uses smoky coffee and slightly sweet and peppery ancho chiles instead. The flavor profile is somewhat atypical, but I think that might change in a hurry; I can’t think of a better way to prepare lamb shanks than with a slow braise in this powerfully flavored liquid.

2 teaspoons coriander seeds

½ teaspoon fennel seeds

4 lamb shanks (about 1 pound each)

3½ tablespoons ghee or avocado oil, divided salt and pepper to taste

1 large yellow onion, chopped 5 cloves garlic, minced

1   jalapeño, seeded and cut into ¼-inch slices 1¼ tablespoons ancho chile powder

¾ cup crushed tomatoes (you can use canned; just watch out for BPA linings) 1 cup strong brewed coffee

2   cups beef Mother Stock (page 144) 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F.

2. In a small skillet over medium heat, toast the coriander seeds for 2–3 minutes or until fragrant, shaking the pan often to prevent burning. Place the toasted coriander seeds and the fennel seeds in a mortar and pestle or spice grinder and grind until you have a fine powder.

3. Wash and pat dry the lamb shanks. They may have a thin white membrane known as silver skin around them; remove that by carefully inserting the tip of a sharp knife under it, carefully cutting an opening in it, and peeling it off. You may need to cut around it, as some are tougher than others; just be careful not to pierce the meat underneath.

4. Heat 21/2 tablespoons of the ghee or avocado oil in a large oven-safe pot or Dutch oven over medium-high heat. When it’s hot, season the lamb shanks with salt and pepper and brown them in batches, 2–3 minutes per side. Place the browned shanks on a platter tented with foil. Once all the shanks are browned, pour out any remaining cooking fat, and pat the bottom of the pot with a paper towel.

5. Place the pot back on the burner and heat the remaining 1 tablespoon ghee or avocado oil over medium heat. Stir in the onion, garlic, and jalapen˜o and cook until softened, about 2–3 minutes. Add the ground coriander and fennel seeds and ancho chile powder and cook, stirring often to prevent burning, for about 30 seconds or until very fragrant. Pour in the crushed tomatoes, coffee, and beef stock, scraping the bottom of the pot with a wooden spoon, then add the red wine vinegar, season with salt and pepper, and stir.

6. Bring the braising liquid to a simmer and place the browned lamb shanks in the liquid, arranging them so that each shank is submerged. Pour any accumulated juices from the platter over the shanks. Cover and place in the preheated oven for 2 1/2–3 hours or until the meat pulls easily from the bone. After about 20 minutes of braising, check the shanks. If they are simmering too hard, reduce the oven temperature by 20–30°F for the remainder of the braising time.

7. Defat the braising liquid slightly. Serve with the braising liquid and vegetables spooned over the lamb shanks. Note: Depending on how deep your pot or Dutch oven is, you may want to place parchment paper between the lid and the pot to create a tighter seal. This is necessary only if the pot is filled less than halfway. For more healthy (yet still indulgent) paleo recipes, pick up a copy of The Slim Palate Paleo Cookbook.

Duck Breasts with Apples & Caraway

Serves 4

In this recipe, we treat the apples like pan-roasted potatoes. If you buy duck breasts on their own, they’ll probably be larger than those you’d get from a whole duck that you cut up yourself. Keep that in mind as you cook them; they may need a little more time in the pan.

2 boneless duck breasts, trimmed

Salt and pepper

1 tablespoon duck, goose fat, or olive oil

½ teaspoon caraway seeds, lightly crushed

2 apples, such as honeycrisp, peeled, cored, and cut into thick wedges

1 teaspoon sugar

2 sprigs fresh rosemary, for garnish

Prick the skin of the duck breasts all over, then season with salt and pepper. Heat the duck fat in a heavy large skillet over medium heat. Sprinkle the caraway seeds over the bottom of the skillet. Place the duck breasts skin side down in the middle of the skillet. Arrange the apples in a single layer around the duck. Sprinkle the apples with the sugar. Cook the breasts without moving them until the skin is deep golden brown and crisp, 18–20 minutes. Use a fork to turn the apples as they cook so they brown on all sides. Turn the breasts over and cook for about 5 minutes.

Transfer the duck breasts to a plate and let them rest for 5–10 minutes. While the duck breasts rest, continue to gently cook the apples until they are tender and golden brown all over. To serve, slice the duck breasts and arrange on a platter with the apples. Garnish with rosemary.

For more delectable recipes from award-winning authors Christopher Hirsheimer and Melissa Hamilton, pick up a copy of Canal House Cooks Every Day.

Garlic & Rosemary Prime Rib Serves 10 to 12 Few dishes scream special occasion like a prime rib roast: a cut if meat that's meant to serve a large group. In this recipe, a garlic and rosemary paste is inserted into little slits in the beef; when the meat is roasted the flavor melts into it, filling it with herbaceous flavor. One 4-bone prime rib roast (about 9 pounds), from the loin end if possible, fat trimmed 5 cloves of garlic Kosher salt 3 tablespoons finely chopped fresh rosemary 6 anchovies packed in oil, finely chopped (optional) Olive oil 1 tablespoon very coarsely ground black pepper 1/4 shallot, minced 1. Remove the roast from any wrapping or butcher paper and season lightly with salt. Let rest at room temperature for 2 hours before cooking. 2. Position the rack in the centre of the oven and preheat to 425 degrees F. On a cutting board, mince the garlic and sprinkle with a pinch of salt. Using the edge of a sharp chef's knife, smash the garlic into a paste. Add the chopped rosemary and anchovies, if using, and a drizzle of olive oil. 3. Transfer the roast to a roasting pan with the fatty side up and the bones facing down. Season generously with salt. Make a few 1-inch slits in the roast using a sharp knife and stuff them with some of the garlic mixture; a good trick is to set the blade of the knife in the slit and slide the filling in, pressing it in with a finger. Rub the mixture, and a little more olive oil, all over the beef. Rub the pepper all over the beef. 4. Cook, rotating the pan once, until the roast is browned on top, about 25 minutes. Lower the heat to 350 degrees F and continue to cook, rotating the pan every half hour or so, until a thermometer inserted into the thickest part reads 130 degrees F, 1 hour to 90 minutes. Remove and transfer the meat to a cutting board, tent loosely with foil, and let rest 15 to 20 minutes. 5. Meanwhile, add a tablespoon of oil to a small saucepan, heat it over medium-high heat, add the shallot, and cook, stirring, for 1 minute. Pour the juices from the roasting pan into a fat separator or glass measuring cup; wait for the fat to rise to the top, about 1 minute. Discard the fat and pour the juices into the saucepan. Add more beef broth if you need more sauce. 6. Carefully cut the roast off the bones, then very thinly slice from the short end. Serve with the sauce. For more delicious recipes for large gatherings, pick up a copy of FAMILY CELEBRATIONS WITH THE CAKE BOSS.

15 Great Books for Foodies