If you have a food blog, it definitely takes more than just pictures of your last gastronomy high for people to enjoy your blog. You have to provide descriptions of the pictures, mix your usual food photos with other food-related content like chef biographies, recipes, and restaurant features. In short, you can’t keep on serving just one dish, no matter how good that dish may be.

You also need to think about your food blog’s design. After all, no matter how delicious something is, if it looks like something straight from the sewers, then almost no one would want to touch it. The same is true with a cluttered and tacky looking blog. If you want people to take a second glance at your food blog, then you’d better spend some time on your “plating”.

Before the food gets served though, you need people to serve it too. Sure, tasting your own creations can be fun, but not having other people to share it too and ooh and ahh over the great tasting feasts is doing yourself a disservice. Again, the same is true with your blog. You need to have guests come over to enjoy your content, and hopefully rave over your content, maybe even spread the news by word of mouth. However, to get the first guests to come, you of course need to promote your blog.

You can do this by pestering your family and friends to keep on visiting your food blog, or do it the more professional way and pay for services of portals like Blog Search Engine. Blog Search Engine will review your food blog for you, link back to your blog, and make it searchable to their users, all for $14.99. You can also promote your blog even more aggressively with their upgraded packages and so increase your food blog’s visibility, thanks to their blog network.

In the end, if you treat your food blog like you would your food, you can guarantee that you’ll have people coming back for more.

Planning and organization. Ask any celebrity chef what the single most important holiday cooking tip is and you will no doubt hear something related to preparation. At the recent LA Food and Wine Festival, a number of celebrity chefs turned out to offer some sage advice when it comes to cooking for such a big occasion as the holidays, and most of that advice had to do with planning to cook, rather than cooking itself. Chef Giada advised people to “plan in advance,” Wolfgang Puck echoed that sentiment, saying, “you have to plan ahead . . . . have everything ready so when you’re ready to cook, you know it’s there,” and Chef Daniel Boulud further reinforced the need for proper preparation, saying, “my top cooking tip is, first, be organized.”

Brining. Celebrity chef Don Bowie stresses the importance of brining fowl for an entire 24 hours before cooking it. Fowl is a popular holiday offering (Thanksgiving turkey and Christmas Cornish hens, anyone?), and the process of brining it (soaking it in a salt water mixture) overnight makes for a tender and succulent bird. You can find a variety of brine recipes to suit a variety of tastes and fowl recipes online.

Avoiding the double-dip. One of the most enjoyable parts of the holiday season (besides the food) is the parties. Chef Claire Robinson warns of the need to protect holiday party guests’ health (the holiday season is also flu season, remember?) by serving finger foods and hors d’oeuvres in bite-sized pieces to prevent the germ-sharing practice of double-dipping. It’s also helpful to use toothpicks.

Pumpkin pie alternatives. If you don’t want to make a sweet desert like pie, but would still like to include the traditional pumpkin in your holiday feast, celebrity chef Ming Tsai has a suggestion: scrape the seeds out of small sugar pumpkins, then cook the pumpkin meat inside of the pumpkins – adding butter and either salt or brown sugar – to create either a sweet or a savory pumpkin side dish.

Cooking for the holidays doesn’t have to be a scary prospect if you do your research and plan, plan, plan. Take these holiday cooking tips and run with them . . . to the nearest grocery store.

Pumpkin in Up

When it comes to decorations, who else do we look to but the diva of homemaking – Martha Stewart. Check out her pumpkin head ideas, from fanged pumpkins to absolutely cute zombie pumpkins. No matter what kind of monster you fancy, Martha Stewart has a tip on how to carve those pumpkin heads for you. If you can get your hands on her book, Martha Stewart’s Handmade Holiday Crafts, then you’ll even have Halloween décor ideas, including vampire bat piñatas and simple bat silhouettes for your windows.

Trick Up the Treats

Instead of running out to buy tons of chocolate and candy bars, why not bake some special Halloween cookies? You don’t need to be a chef to turn out a batch of good sugar cookies. And with some decorating tips, you can even probably send kids away amused with Halloween Spook Cookies and grossed out by these Severed Finger Halloween Cookies (recipe made by Martha Stewart).

Halloween Dinner

Take Rachael Ray’s cue and turn a simple tomato soup in a spooked up version with cheese pumpkin or ghost on top. You will also find countless recipes in the internet to make your food as ghoulish and gross as possible for your Halloween dinner, but you can just go all out and opt for bizarre foods for the Halloween; if you can stomach it that is. Just watch an old episode of Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern and you’ll see that you don’t even need Halloween as an excuse to have something gooey and eeky on your plate. The good thing with eating bizarre foods for Halloween is that you don’t have to spend hours just trying to get your spaghetti to look like brains since the brains on the table will be the real thing!

Image Credit: MarthaStewart.com and TV.com

Anyway, here are 5 of the best tips that I have followed – and trust me, they work like magic!

Tip #1: Plan your meal ahead of time.
This is from chef Aaron Sanchez of the Food Network. Not only is he a hunk – he also knows what he’s about! He says that people who cook at home a lot should buy food on a weekly basis and do prep work as early as possible. For example, he says to peel potatoes the day before and keep them in the fridge (in water, of course). The next day, no need to go through the hassle of peeling taties!

Tip#2: Add pepper at the end.
I always did the opposite. According to David Kinch, this adds an acrid taste to the dish. I tried it and the difference was remarkable!

Tip#3: Make it simple when entertaining.
I hardly entertain, but when I do, I follow the Barefoot Contessa’s lead: keep it simple. Not only do you lessen the stress, you also get to focus on the flavors more!

Tip#4: Extra-virgin doesn’t mean extra good.
At least when it comes to olive oil – that’s what Tom Colicchio has to tell us. Yes, chef!

Tip#5: Buy whole spices.
Iron Chef Michael Symon knows all about spices and he’s right about buying whole instead of ground. The flavors are much fuller when you grind the spices yourself.

A lot of cooks would agree that the use of wine in some meals have added a certain spice in making them sought after. Such can be attributed towards the contributions of Chef John Ash, an internationally recognized chef, educator and author. His continued work and application of wine towards cuisine and his evident mastery for winery has been his obvious trademark that has brought him towards world wide prominence.

John is known to hold various classes and teaches culinary schools and institutions with regards to the tricks of the proper use of wine for culinary meals. Majority of his known reliability has been attributed towards the wine industry and such has been something that has continued to push him up towards fame and fortune.

He has published two books, namely American Game Cooking in 1991 and From the Earth to the Table: John Ash’s Wine Country Cuisine in 1996. The latter book was awarded the Julia Child Award for Best Cookbook in 1996 by the International Association of Culinary Professionals.

Ina Garten

Ina is just so cuddly and earthy, yet at the same time with a nose for timeless style, that I thought it would be a good idea to post some of her favourite things, as inspiration.

Favorite cookbooks?

“Some of the other books I use most are Nantucket Open House Cookbook by Sarah Leah Chase, The Loaves and Fishes Cookbook by Anna Pump, Bistro Cooking by Patricia Wells, and Cucina Simpatica by George Germon and Johanne Killeen.”

Favorite glassware?

“Barney’s in New York City carried my stemware for years, but unfortunately, they’ve now discontinued it. But, thanks to one of our readers, we’ve found another source. The name of the glassware is Cristallerie La Rochere, the Amite pattern and the website to order it from is lafermedelamer.com. My glasses are the white and the red wine stemware. They also carry the large water glass and champagne glasses to match.”

Favorite pots and pans?

“I love All Clad pots. I would recommend you start with small and medium saucepans and 8-inch and 12-inch saut� pans. I don’t even bother with non-stick because if you soak the pans after you use them, they will clean beautifully. I know they’re expensive pots, but you can collect them one at a time. They’ll last a lifetime and you’ll enjoy using them. For Dutch ovens, I prefer Le Creuset. These are all available at Williams-Sonoma, Sur La Table, and Crate & Barrel stores nationally. “

Favorite ice cream maker?

“I use a Krups ice cream maker which I bought at Williams-Sonoma many years ago.”

Favorite places to stay in East Hampton?

“My favorite places are the Baker House 631-324-4081 and the Pink House 631-324-3400 in East Hampton, which are both lovely bed and breakfast inns, and the Bridgehampton Inn 631-537-3660 in Bridgehampton. There are no big hotels but these are lovely places to stay.”

Favorite restaurants in East Hampton?
“Three of the restaurants I like most in East Hampton are Nick & Toni’s, The pub at 1770 house, and the Palm Restaurant.”

Technorati Tags: Ina Garten, Barefoot Contessa, Food, Specialty Food, Recipes, Favorite

Don’t be blinded by the glamor of being a celebrity chef — as this article points out, it’s a highly overrated career.

Cooking in the eyes of Chef Jody would simply be like following instincts rather than the usual traditional cooking practices that people see on television or from reading the available cookbooks in stores today. It all boils down to following a cooking style which would carve out your name in the genre of food that a person would want to cook up.

This is the secret that Jody Adams shares as her ultimate success in cooking. With a wide array of recipes that includes starter meals, seasonal prepared meals and Italian tradition meals such as pasta until deserts, Chef Jody has a long list of recipes all based on her instincts and what she can do around the kitchen. People can do this as well if they know how to go around the kitchen of their homes as well.

Technorati Tags: chefs, jody adams, italian, deserts, seasonal

Nigella’s cooking advice has always been very practical for home cooks. Here are her secrets to handling meat, from her website

A 1 and three quarter kg chicken will take an hour and 15 minutes to roast in a 200°C oven.

Lamb needs 20 minutes per 500g at 200°C to make it pink but not rare. If you want your lamb better cooked, add another 20 minutes onto the overall cooking time.

Rare beef needs 15 minutes per 500g at 220°C. Add 5 minutes per 500g for medium, 10 minutes per 500g for well-done.

Pork needs 30 minutes per 500g at 200°C.

When boiling ham I reckon on 25 minutes per 500g plus 25 minutes for the pot.

Always let meat rest for at least 15 minutes when it comes out of the oven as the meat will be juicier and easier to carve.

The above timings are based on meat being at room temperature before it goes into the oven.

Chef coats, also known as chef jackets, are usually made of a thick material that provides good insulation (most commonly cotton) and are traditionally dyed white, which not only serves a practical purpose (makes stains easier to spot), but also maintains a clean, hygienic look if your chef jacket is always maintained in good condition. They’re usually double-breasted as well, and can be turned inside out to conceal a stain temporarily if the chef needs to make a presentation.

Chefs also need good chef aprons to perform their jobs well – like coats, chef aprons provide a combination of good looks and utility, though with the apron the accent is more on the utility part – a good chef apron would be easy to take off, and would usually feature pockets for holding utensils.

If you’re a woman, you should know that women’s chef jackets are slightly different than their male counterparts – a woman’s chef jacket is usually shaped slightly differently to accommodate for the different physique, and tend to come in slightly different color schemes as well.