Monday, October 13, 2008

Foodbuzz Publisher Community Launches!!!

Today is an important day for our foodblogging community, where we take a significant step forward!

The press release below gives all the information on this event. Enjoy!


LAUNCH OF GLOBAL FOODBUZZ BLOGGER COMMUNITY
LEVERAGES REAL-PEOPLE, REAL-TIME POWER OF FOOD PUBLISHING

San Francisco – October 13, 2008: Foodbuzz, Inc., officially inaugurates its food blogger community with more than 1,000 blog partners, a global food blogging event and an online platform that captures the real-people, real-time power of food publishing in every corner of the world. At launch, the Foodbuzz community ranks as one of the top-10 Internet destinations for food and dining (Quantcast), with bloggers based in 45 countries and 863 cities serving up daily food content.
“Food bloggers are at the forefront of reality publishing and the dramatic growth of new media has redefined how food enthusiasts access tasty content,” said Doug Collister, Executive Vice President of Foodbuzz, Inc. “Food bloggers are the new breed of local food experts and at any minute of the day, Foodbuzz is there to help capture the immediacy of their hands-on experiences, be it a memorable restaurant meal, a trip to the farmers market, or a special home-cooked meal.”
Foodbuzz is the only online community with content created exclusively by food bloggers and rated by foodies. The site offers more than 20,000 pieces of new food and dining content weekly, including recipes, photos, blog posts, videos and restaurant reviews. Members decide the “tastiness” of each piece of content by voting and “buzz” the most popular posts to the top of the daily menu of submissions. Foodbuzz currently logs over 13 million monthly page views and over three million monthly unique visitors.
“Our goal is to be the number-one online source of quality food and dining content by promoting the talent, enthusiasm and knowledge of food bloggers around the globe,” said Ben Dehan, founder and CEO of Foodbuzz, Inc.
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The Foodbuzz blogger community is growing at a rate of 40 percent per month driven by strong growth in existing partner blogs and the addition of over 100 new blogs per month. “The Foodbuzz.com Web site is like the stock of a great soup. The Web site provides the base or backbone for bloggers to interact as a community, contribute content, and have that content buzzed by their peers,” said Mr. Dehan.
Global Blogging Event
Demonstrating the talent and scope of the Foodbuzz community, 24 Meals, 24 Hours, 24 Blogs offered online food enthusiasts an international, virtual street festival of food and diversity. The new feature showcased blog posts from 24 Foodbuzz partner bloggers chronicling events occurring around the globe during a 24 hour period and included:
· Mid-Autumn Festival Banquest (New York, NY)
· The "Found on Foodbuzz" 24-Item Tasting Menu (San Francisco, CA)
· Aussie BBQ Bonanza – Celebrating Diversity (Sydney, Australia)
· The Four Corners of Carolina BBQ Road Trip (Charleston, SC)
· Criminal Tastes – An Illegal Supper (Crested Butte, CO)
· From Matambre to Empanadas: An Argentine Dinner (Buenos Aires, Argentina)
· A Sweet Trompe l’oeil (Seattle, WA)

“24 Meals, 24 Hours, 24 Blogs” captures the quality and unique local perspective of our food bloggers and shared it with the world,” said Ryan Stern, Director of the Foodbuzz Publisher Community. “It illustrates exactly what the future of food publishing is all about – real food, experienced by real people, shared real-time.”

Sunday, October 12, 2008

Salsa con pomodori freschi e bacon


Even though this is ideally a summer dish, when ripe tomatoes are available in abundance, the weather was so nice this weekend with blue skies and radiant sun shine, that I couldn't resist making myself a dish which was equally light and radiant. (Plus I had a whole bunch of (over-) ripe tomatoes to use... ). You'll notice that it closely mimics the quintessential Italian dish, pasta all'amatriciana. This is just my own take on that classic recipe, where I used whatever I had lying around the fridge.

It's easy, fast, and most importantly, tasty!

The only things you need are:

For two people:
8 medium-sized ripe tomatoes
Olive oil
4 strips of bacon
Fresh spring onions
Black pepper

Preparation:


1. Clean the tomatoes, and remove any brown spots around the area where the tomatoes was connected to the plant. Leave the tomato whole, do not cut it up in pieces

2. Boil a pot of water and put the tomatoes in the boiling water for about 2-3 minutes.

3. Take the tomatoes out of the water and leave them to cool down for a few minutes.

4. Remove the skin of the tomatoes, which should come right off now that the tomatoes have been lightly blanched. Cut the tomatoes in halves and remove the seeds and any hard parts.

5. While heating some olive oil over a low fire in a frying pan, dice the bacon in small pieces. When the oil is hot, add the bacon. Stir frequently as you don't want the bacon to go brown.

6. Dice the tomatoes, and add the pieces to the bacon. Add freshly ground black pepper and stir well. Let the whole cook slowly over a low fire for about 15 minutes. Stir occasionally, in order to mix the juices.

7. Boil water and prepare the pasta.

8. Chop up some fresh spring onions and add the majority to the tomato sauce, while saving a small portion of the spring onions. Stir them into the sauce and remove the frying pan from the fire. Let the sauce sit for another 2 minutes.

9. Pour the salsa over the pasta and sprinkle the remaining spring onions over the sauce.

Serve with some fresh ciabatta and a dry, light white wine!

Buon appetito!