MY NEW OBSESSION: food52

Food. I love it. I love everything about it. I love how perfect it looks on the plate, photographed for books, advertisements and web. I love how it tastes when I take my first bite at my favourite restaurant. I love choosing an item on a menu, checking out the ingredients and heading home and attempt to replicate what I just ate. I love sitting and thinking about how a certain dish will taste when I finally get to dig in. I love opening my fridge and seeing it full of fresh veggies, yogurts, and cheeses and all the potential they all hold. I love being in the kitchen chopping, boiling, sauteing and cooking a delicious meal with Jack.

This past weekend, Jack and I discovered food52; this past weekend, ours lives changed. I don't know about you guys but, and it should be obvious now, I am all about recipe sites, food sites and food blogs. I keep a number of go-to sites in my bookmark bar, and food52 is now top of my list - my first stop when I need to figure out how to whip up something great.

food52 is a website that allows home cooks to show off their handy work. Each week a challenge is posted by the folks over at food52; it could be anything from "Your best recipe with Fresh Ricotta" to "Your Best Dumplings". Once the submission deadline closes, the food52 team chooses their top favourites and the Recipe Testers get to work making them. The Taste Testers then try each recipe and choose one winner. The site also offers a series of videos to aid you in some of the more frustrating tasks, or recipes, out there.

Before and After

We discovered the site Friday night through the Huffington Post Food and by Saturday night we had dove right in by beginning with the roast chicken with butter. My favourite thing about this recipe was how simple it was and how few ingredients were needed; we were able to create the whole meal without a trip to the grocery store. While I'll let you follow the link to the recipe in its entirety, the ingredients were: chicken, butter, shallot, salt, pepper, parsley and chives. We paired ours with rice and asparagus. I have no plated pictures because I forgot about taking photos the minute it was in front of my face.

Stages of the world's most amazing pancakes

Sunday morning I stumbled across a pancake recipe through a great feature of the site - a sidebar displaying recipes currently being viewed. The picture for David Eyre's Pancakes was so intriguing I couldn't not click on it, and then plan my life around it accordingly. Once again, we chose a simple recipe done to perfection. The batter was made the same way as most any pancake batter would be, but then, it was baked in its entirety for 15 - 20 minutes. The recipe suggests dressing it with lemon and icing sugar - I LOVE lemon, so this was right up my alley. Jack chose to add some maple syrup to his, which mixed well with the other flavours while I added some raspberries. The only suggestion I offer is to cut the amount of butter in half - there will still be a lot of delicious, delicious butter.

So there you have it; my new obsession.