Fictitious dishes from classic novels

How would you imagine Oliver Twist’s breakfast of gruel and water or Alice in Wonderland’s afternoon tea served? Dinah Fried in her photographic series entitled Fictitious Dishes decided to capture the meals of five fictional characters – Oliver Twist, The Catcher in the Rye, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo and Moby Dick.

Moby Dick

By changing the table dressings, condiments, crockery and cutlery, the culinary snapshots are turned into fascinating literary set pieces.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

See more literary meals after the jump

Eat these pantone dessert tarts!

Each tart and a Pantone color. French food designer Emilie De Griottes creates these amazing dessert tarts, using fruits such as cherries, berries, bananas etc and candies of different colors to create tarts that resemble Pantone color swatches.

We haven’t tasted them, but sure they all look pretty damn delicious.

See more after the jump

What goes with what?

What goes with what? Do oysters go with asparagus, bacon and mozzarella? Taste Buds: Complementary flavours, an extremely interesting and accurate infographic created by David McCandless and Willow Tyrer, recommends different herbs, spices and ingredients, for different types of food in order to create a good-tasting meal.

via Information is Beautiful

See also:

• This is not a food blog but…
• A Ming cupcake
• Don’t stuff yourself on this one

Follow @itsasmallweb

Read it elsewhere

Check them out:

• A dramatic reading of Gwyneth Paltrow’s cookbook, complete with a beret and (e)spanish accent (video) – kottke
• Is the cupcake dead? – Johnson Banks
• John Lennon’s bitter letter to Linda McCartney – flavorwire]
• Do you know how much power your appliances use? (interactive infograph) – GE visualization
• The evolution of web design – mashable
• He’s an actor, he’s a writer, he’s a musician: download Hugh Laurie’s new blues track for free – pop culture brain
• What if Barbie was real-size – msnbc
• The latest tumblr to take the world by storm – hipster animals
• If logos were honest – buzzfeed

Read it elsewhere

Slim pickings:

• It’s true what they say, there is a tumblr for everything – fugly android interfaces
• What kind of twitter user are you? (infograph) – daily infographic
• I assure you that a post with the title “Unspeakable Bodily Fluids and Genitalia: A Short, Revolting Intro to the Finest Metaphors in British Food Criticism” is a good read – GOOD.is
• Bringing the bling to Anakin: Darth Vader’s helmet gets the artist treatment – total film
• These post stamps for the 50 years of the Royal Shakespeare Company are amazing – creative review

Broken promises: bergamot cupcakes

A while ago I promised never to blog again about food I made. It’s now time to break that promise. And on good grounds too. You see, this is an original recipe by yours truly. TA DA.

I have a bergamot tree in my garden. Its smell simply makes me happy. But there is not much you can do with bergamot fruits – despite their godly fragrance they are actually very bitter, their juice included. Yesterday we cut all the fruit from the tree because it was ripe and perfect. So there were 4 bags of bergamot oranges in my kitchen. I couldn’t just let them rot. Then the idea hit me: when in doubt, make cupcakes.

So, I used The Hummingbird Bakery‘s recipe for lemon cupcakes as a reference and with a couple of changes and adaptations here and there I created my first recipe. Check it out after the jump.

A Ming cupcake

I love contrasts. Of color, of texture, of style. And a contrast of style is what first caught my eye in Ming Makes Cupcakes. That and my weak spot for cupcakes, that is. But back to the point: I just love the contrast between the luscious maximalism of the cupcakes and the severe minimalism of the layout. Oh the conflict, the tension!

But I want to give (more) credit where credit is due. The recipes themselves are great, with some twists and surprises (flourless chocolate cupcakes anyone? Sour cream fig cupcakes? Port wine and cherry chocolate? Beet chocolate?). I plan to start trying them ASAP.

Oh, and a last note on usability: although every recipe (image & text) is an image, the blog has a text only version where you can read and copy/paste text from. Nothing to complain about.

Vegetable dysmorphology

Mutatos: vegetables that deviate, photographed by Uli Westphal.

Mutations, strange appendices, siamese fruits, organized by color:

See also:

• Line mutations
• The neatness effect
• Beneath the (plastic) surface
• The ephemeral beauty of bento

Read it elsewhere

This is an unnecessary introduction to a bunch of (interesting) links:

• A working place that inspires innovation and creativity: Pixar Studios (video) – devour
• Perhaps we should reconsider our food blog promise because foodies are the new hipsters – lost at E minor
• When we saw the Pixies live two years ago, we could feel the tension of them not getting along in the air; but could they be working on a new album after all? – New York Magazine
• Did you understand the end of Lost? Can you tie the loose ends? This guy will buy you breakfast if you do – Craigslist via movieline
• Buy Lars Von Trier’s camper on e-bay (he’s selling  it because he can’t stand the smell of diesel anymore) – ebay via vulture
• Stream PJ Harvey’s concert in Paris online (70 min video) – 24bit
• Eszter Burghardt’s edible landscapes – Eszter Burghardt via shortlist

Don’t stuff yourself on this one

The web might be small but it’s a wondrous place. Filled with exciting things. We blog about them daily. But once in a while you find something that, for some strange reason, completely fascinates you to such degree that you keep thinking “why haven’t I discovered this earlier?”

That’s the case for me with they draw and cook, a little gem of a food blog. The idea is simple: each post is a recipe, but the recipe is illustrated by an artist or designer. Some minimal, some whimsical, some literal, some abstract, every single recipe is a delight. So much so, that I had great difficulty choosing a single one. So here come a lot of recipes:

This is not a food blog but…

I made oreo cupcakes today and I need to share it.

Food blogs have taken the world by storm and, as with craft blogs, everybody and their mother has one. So we are not eager to join the trend. We do enjoy reading them, though, and when I found this recipe at annie’s eats, I couldn’t help myself.

And then I got this urge to blog about it. I finally get why people do it. They fight the ephemeral. Cooking, sewing, crafting are all about making something that will be used and then, sooner or later, consumed. It is not art. It is still somebody’s creation though, and that somebody will fight will all their force to immortalise it. That’s why people blog.

As for me, it’s an one-off thing, I promise. Unless I get addicted to food porn blogging, that is.

See more pictures after the jump.

Deconstructing the perfect drink

What goes in a perfect Mojito? Fabio Rex created a series of beautifully illustrated infographs, explaining the ingredients of our favorite cocktails.

Find more cocktails on o drink perfeito

Nutella

Today, February the 5th, is Nutella day.

Indulge.

Read it elsewhere

Mainly about Internet, but some other stuff too:

• Time to panic, the web is running out of addresses – The Wall Street Journal
• Everybody googles their exes – New York Post
• Don’t drink and go online – Thought Catalog
• The blog is dead, long live the blog – The Observer
• Ringo the brand. Ringo Starr trademarks his name – New York Mag
• Mobile device rehab – 99%
• How does Beethoven vibrate through milk? – Lost at E Minor
• Mondrian and other, Art-inspired cakes – Atypical Type A

The ephemeral beauty of bento

The bento is no ordinary lunch box. It is a culinary universe, contained in a lunch box. I admit to having a soft spot for Japanese food and Japanese aesthetics, so it’s no wonder bentos fascinate me. Not just because they are beautiful. Because there is a whole different approach to food behind them.

• Bentos elevate the idea of a lunch box. Not the rushed junk lunch one usually has at work, but the kind you take time to prepare for yourself or loved ones.
• Bentos celebrate the ephemeral beauty of things. The beauty you glance at for a few seconds after opening the bento box and before devouring your lunch. So zen.
• Bentos are all for portion control (bento boxes are notoriously small) and healthy food choices (traditionally rice, fish, vegetables and fruits are the prefered bento choices)

Bentos range from minimal to elegant…

…and from kawai (cute) to completely outrageous (and some times kitch)

See a gallery of the best bento boxes we found on Flickr after the jump

Read it elsewhere

Link time:

• the 5 types of profile pictures that are trying too hard – the thought catalog
• how to validate your credit card number in your mind – digital inspiration
• food porn – the storque
• the values of PacMan – joystickdivision
• WeSC’s interactive display window – design*sponge
• Vladimir Nabokov’s secret life as an amateur entomologist (and his vindication) – The N.Y. Times
• why can’t we walk straight? – npr
• the medium is the message – Marshall McLuhan Speaks Centennial (via boing boing)
• the iRing and 9 more imaginary apple products – mashable

My Bloody Valentine

British avant-garde patissier Lilly Vanilli prepares these almost-beating, bloody-heart cakes. Originally featured on Ash’s music video for Carnal Love, they are now available for order in time for Valentine’s day (for the lucky ones who live in the UK).

Pantone cookies

There seem to be Pantone merchandise everywhere nowadays (this, for example), but handmade Pantone cookies? Brilliant!

Graphic designer Kim Neill made these from scratch as a corporate gift to her clients – in a variety of colors and in impressive quantities. On top of that, she calls the process easy.  I am truly impressed.