Whoever said that a government job always need be boring?

Justin Timineri, Florida's state chef, the only state chef in the entire United States is proof otherwise. As Chef Timineri himself said, “I have

the best job in all of state government.”

I agree.

His job as state chef after all does not entail cooking in a grimy hot kitchen in preparation for the massive influx of hungry employees during lunch hour, but instead is tasked to travel around Florida showing locals how to incorporate fresh produce and seafood into their regular meals. More importantly, he does with a realistic budget in mind. In

fact, he specifically creates healthy menus with people who are on food stamps in mind; and if that doesn't mean affordable meals, I don't what is.

Aside from getting the locals to eat a bit more healthily, his other important role as state chef is

to promote Florida's produce and seafood, not just to locals, but all over the world. In fact, he's going to Brussels, Belgium in April to attend the European Seafood Expo to try to get more attention focused on the Florida grouper. And with Florida's second biggest industry being Agriculture, we can be pretty sure he'll be promoting more vegetables and fruits outside Florida soon.

And if you're wondering how much a state chef makes? Chef Timineri is paid $43,000 for doing what he does. Of course, he also probably saves on food, nibbling on his creations. While the pay is not at all that glamorous, you can bet his job is rewarding.

Photo via Babble

I like shopping for groceries on my own because

doing so with my husband and kids invariably means a lot of items that are not on the grocery list. Nevertheless, the grocery trips end up being fun (albeit tiring) and a good way to introduce the kids to new food.

One of the things my hubby got during out last trip was two packs of Nori – one plain and one wasabi flavored. If you don't know what nori is, it's the rather fishy-smelling papery ingredient they use as sushi wrap. Nori, which by the way is dried edible seaweed, is actually used in Japanese cuisine not just as sushi wrap, but topping and condiment for noodles and various dishes.

Feeling rather adventurous with the kid's palate, who by the way are still toddlers, my husband gave each a strip of nori (not the wasabi flavored of co

urse!). We were expecting to see scrunched up faces and little tongues sticking out as they spit out the nori in disgust. Surprise! Both kids finished of their little strips in minutes and promptly held out their hands for more.

So what's my point? The point is simply that it's never too early to start training your kid's palate so that they will be able to appreciate all kinds of food better

as they grow. Not only will you be helping them in case they do end up as aspiring chefs when they grow up, but you'll also have an easier time feeding them as they grow up because chances are they won't be such picky eaters.

Oh, and here are links to some recipes that use nori as ingredient from celebrity chefs Dale Talde (Nori Seared Tuna Steak) and Janella Prucell (Brown Rice Tempeh Nori Rolls).

Image via RemixYourHealth

Last night saw me craving for some Thai food, which meant that the whole family ended

up in the local Thai restaurant. Of course, when it comes to Thai food, the best kind you'll get will still be straight from the experts – the street vendors. Unfortunately, that would mean having to fly over to Thailand just to get my favorite Thai dish – the Pad Thai.

If you're craving for Pad Thai though, you don't even have to go to fly to Thailand for an authentic tasting dish. I've found one of the best Pad Thai recipes that you can try at home. If you do it right, you'll end up with a dish that tastes just like the best that Thai chefs make. Just make sure you always prepare the sauce first, because that's how any self-respecting Thai chef does it!

Ingredients for Pad Thai Sauce (makes four large servings)

• 1/4 cup palm sugar
• 1/4 cup fish sauce
• 1 tablespoon tamarind concentrate
• 1/4 cup Sriracha sauce

Directions for Pad Thai Sauce

• Put tamarind concentrate into a measuring cup, and add enough water to make
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  tamarind juice.

• In a small sauce pan, put palm sugar, fish sauce, tamarind juice, and sriracha sauce. Cook on low heat until the palm sugar dissolves, then increase heat. Let it start to boil, then quickly remove from heat, and set aside. You can make this Pad Thai sauce ahead and put in a jar in the fridge up to a week.

Ingredients for Pad Thai (makes 2 servings)

• 1 egg lightly beaten
• 3/4 cup (or more) fresh shrimp, uncooked
• 1 tablespoon sliced shallot
• 1 tablespoon chopped salted radish
• 1/4 cup diced firm tofu
• 1 handful rice stick noodle
• 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons water
• 1 cup fresh bean sprouts
• 1/4 cup fresh chives, cut into one inch long pieces
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 2 tablespoons chopped roasted peanut
• vegetable oil for frying

Directions

• Rinse the radish several times under cold water, gently squeezing off the water. Chop it and add a little bit of sugar to sweeten, mix well.
• Soak the rice stick noodle in warm water for about 15 minutes, leave in water until you are ready to use.
• Heat 1 tablespoon of oil in a wok at medium-high heat. Add egg and cook it quickly, scrambling into small pieces (see video below). Remove, set aside.
• Add 2 tablespoons of oil in the same wok. Add shrimps and cook until done. Transfer to a bowl, set aside.
• Add 1 tablespoon of oil to the wok. Add shallot, radish and tofu fry until aromatic. Increase the heat of your wok. Add a handful of soaked noodles followed with water. Stir-fry this mixture for about 5-6 minutes. The noodles will start to get soft. Add 1/4 cup of Pad Thai Sauce and mix well. Add sugar, cooked egg, bean sprout, chive and cooked shrimps. Stir well for another 1-2 minutes until everything blends together. Turn off heat, transfer to serving plate with sliced fresh lime, roasted peanuts, and more bean sprout on the side.

Christmas Day may have come and gone, but the parties are far from over. With New Year's Eve approaching, you can bet that the drinks will be flowing again in abundance (if it has stopped for you) in a few days time.

If you're looking for some posh, but simple cocktails to serve during your party, why not give these three cocktails that chefs' themselves swear by:

The Red Hook (Blake Royer)

Ingredients:

Key ingredient of the first two cocktails

• 2 ounces rye whiskey
• 1/2 ounce Punt e Mes or other sweet vermouth combined with
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• 1/2 ounce maraschino liqueur

Directions:

Pour ingredients into a shaker with a generous handful of ice. Stir

briskly until well chilled. Strain into a cocktail glass and serve.

The Aviation (Blake Royer)

Ingredients:

• 2 ounces gin
• 1/2 ounce maraschino liqueur
• 1/2 ounce lemon juice

Directions:

Pour ingredients into a shaker with a generous handful of ice. Shake well until your fingertips ache. Strain into a martini glass and serve.

Grand Champagne Cocktail

Grand Champagne Cocktail (Chef Bobby Flay)

Ingredients:

• 4 shots orange-flavored liqueur (recommended: Grand Marnier)
• 4 teaspoons honey
• 4 fresh strawberries, tops trimmed
• 1 bottle Champagne, well chilled
• Special equipment: 4 chilled Champagne flutes

Directions:

Add the orange-flavored liqueur, honey and strawberries to a food processor and process until smooth. Fill the chilled glasses halfway with the strawberry mixture and then fill the rest of the glass with Champagne.

Each of the cocktails above offer a very different taste so you can choose whichever will suit your palate best. The Red Hook is “dark, seductive, brown, and just a little bitter”, while the Aviation is “bright, gin-y, and tart with lemon juice.” The Grand Champagne Cocktail, on the other hand, is pretty sweet and probably has a more universal appeal.

Recipes and images via ThePauperedChef and FoodNetwork

Still haven’t perfected the art of boiling eggs? You’re not alone.

Boiling eggs are really tricky, especially if you’re cooking for a group of people who like their eggs in varying stages of “hardness”. Add to the fact that the rate at which eggs cook depend not just on the amount of time it takes to cook them, but also the temperature at which they were stored, and also the size of the eggs. With so many factors to consider, it is no wonder that sleepy cooks end up with “wrongly” cooked eggs.

The good news is that you don’t have to be a chef to be consistent in turning out perfectly boiled eggs that will suit everyone’s tastes. All you need is to get yourself a BeepEgg, and you

can relax, maybe even sing with it as you make breakfast.

The BeepEgg is an egg timer that you put in the pan with your eggs as you boil them and will tell you whether the eggs are already cooked. Fish out the eggs for the people who like their soft boiled when you hear the egg sing “Killing Me Soft

ly” and leave the rest until you hear it start to sing “I Wish I

Was a Hen”, at which point you can fish out the eggs for those who like it medium. You’ll know that the remaining eggs are already hard boiled when you the classical tune from Carmina Burana coming out of the plastic egg.

How to use the BeepEgg

While it all sounds really silly, the BeepEgg works perfectly so that you don’t even have to worry about getting your eggs to room temperature before your boil them. Just make sure that you also store the BeepEgg along with the real eggs because it works by calculating the inner temperature of the eggs based on the temperature it was stored and the boiling water.

Oh, and if you’re getting irritated with all that singing, just dunk the Beep Egg in cold water.

Image via Firebox

With just a few hours away before Thanksgiving dinner, I’m sure the turkey experts at home already busy doing preparations and cooking away. If you’ve waited till the last minute to figure out what to serve for Thanksgiving dinner though, and happen upon this post looking for last-minute turkey ideas, then I’m sorry to say that the perfect roast turkey is just not an option anymore. However, you can still serve turkey for Thanksgiving dinner.

Noemi, of Recipe Finder, compiled some of the best and simple turkey dishes on her post “7 Ways to Prepare Turkey”. None of the preparation ideas she gives will mean a traditional Thanksgiving turkey, but at least they are much faster and easier to prepare than a whole turkey roast. So if you don’t mind having turkey

burgers, fajitas, or casserole on Thanksgiving, then head on to the Recipe Finder blog for some great turkey ideas.

However, if you already have a whole th

awed turkey right before you that you don’t want to go to waste, then you can try Chef Gordon Ramsay’s Roast Turkey and Stuffing in a Pan. The recipe is good for 10-12 persons which means you’ll have plenty

of leftovers if you won’t being having guests over for dinner. Prep time is also just 2 hours, with cooking time about the same. And while 4 hours seems like a lot of time, anyone who’s had any experience roasting turkey will tell you that this is one of the fastest recipes you’ll ever find. So if you want to get your roast turkey in time for dinner, better get started or you’ll end up with one undercooked bird on your dinner table!

Image credits:
Turkey burger courtesy of Recipe Finder
Gordon Ramsay with turkey courtesy of The Independent

Any foodie knows that it takes more than just fine ingredients to make one good tasting dish. The same is true with blogs.

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 buy cialis online 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.

Anthony Bourdain, the infamous traveling chef now on almost every lifestyle channel in existence- had quite a story to tell in one of his first bestselling books: “Kitchen Confidential“. Finally, after many trial and tribulations, he had found his sous-chef extraordinaire, Steven Tempel, for the Supper Club in New York, where Bourdain had just been made head chef. To say that Steven was eccentric was, according to Bourdain, putting it mildly…

Nevertheless, Bourdain reveals in the very frank and no nonsense book (as in how it really goes down in the restaurant business), Steven was somewhat of a genius. It turns out that Bourdain had recruited Steven from Casa Nostra Restaurant, in Northern California, where he had been working in the kitchen with “idiot savant” and “baking genius” Adam Real-Last-Name-Unknown!!

Kitchen Confidential is an excellent read and here at Celebrity Chefs we highly recommend it. As it turns out, the owner of Casa Nostra Restaurant (which was known for serving the best italian cuisine in town)- Joey Velardi, has recently opened up a branch in Manila, Philippines- where it is receiving rave reviews from the locals and in fact Bourdain recently visited for his show “No Reservations“.

Let’s hope Bourdain doesn’t steal the chef again

Halloween is just around the corner, and if you’re one of the countless people spending the weekend doing some last minute preparations, then here are some ideas from you straight for our favourite celebrity chefs.

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</

a> 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

A finalist from last fall’s Top Chef “Just Desserts” television series has been indicted on child pornography charges in Texas.

Morgan Wilson, 38, of Plano, is facing three second degree felony charges of possession with intent to promote child pornography. He was arrested Dec. 7, 2010 in the wake of an investigation that alleges Wilson transmitted files, to an undercover officer, that contained sexually explicit images and video of children as young as toddlers, the Plano Courier Star reported this week.

Wilson was a controversial figure on the Top Chef series who was frequently hot tempered and “prone to angry outbursts,” People.com reported. Continue reading »