image: Amazon

ABC’s Dancing with the Stars has become a big hit. Families enjoy watching itand itappears that celebrities are lining up to become a part of it.

Now our first celebrity chef has put on his dancing shoes and is taking a whack at it. Rocco De Spirito is paired up with dance champion Karina Smirnoff.

Some stars do the show for fun, some to revive careers, some to make their careersbigger and many because they are in the midst of promoting their brand.

Rocco De Spirito is the latter. This month his new show, Rocco Gets Real, premiers on A&E along with his companion cookbook.

His cookbook, Rocco Get Real: Cook at Home Every Day will be released on October 21 and is available at Amazon.

In all honesty, I have watchedDancing with the Starsin the past but my interest has waned. I had heard that Rocco was one of the competitors but thought that he wouldn’t last. Well, 5 weeks have passed and he is still cookin’.

I watched it this week to peak in and give my critique. Rocco isn’t bad, but he ain’t good. If you have a wedding to go to and want a great dance partner then Rocco is your man. This week all the stars got a reprieve and no one was eliminated. Volleyball and Olympic star Misty May-Treanor has injured her achilles tendon during a dance practice. Everyone kept talking on the show about how sad it was thatshe won’t be there. I just kept thinking about her real career and volleyball partner. This can be a serious injury and put her out of commission for awhile.

So, I think that De Spirito will survive another week or two. A lot of people know who he is and with that face he can’t go wrong. But Bruno is right. The man can make his foodjump, jive and wailbut his feet are another story.

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image: Amazon

Art Smith is famous for one time being Oprah’s personal chef. He now owns his own restaurant and began a non-profit for kids, Common Threads. It’s purpose is to share the love of food with children to open their hearts to what makes us all connected.

Below is a great Fall recipe, Pistachio Crusted Chicken.Thisis one of the most requested menu items from his Chicago restaurant. Art’s cookbook, Back to the Family: Food Tastes Better Shared withtheOnes You Loveis available at Amazon.

Pistachio-crusted chicken with coconut-ginger-chili sauce

Art Smith

 

INGREDIENTS

Coconut-chili-ginger sauce

1 tablespoon unsalted butter

2 shallots, minced

2 blades lemongrass, chopped

3 (1/2-inch) pieces fresh ginger, thinly sliced

1 cup sweet white wine

2 cups chicken broth

2 tablespoons Thai red curry paste

2 tablespoons Chinese black bean chili sauce

1 (8-ounce) can coconut milk

1/2 cup (1stick) unsalted butter, softened and cut into pieces

Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Pistachio-crusted chicken

4 boneless chicken breasts

1 quart buttermilk

1 pound salted pistachios, shelled and toasted

1 cup grated Parmesan cheese

1/4 cup fresh thyme

1/3 cup chopped fresh rosemary

1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley

2 cups all-purpose flour

Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Grapeseed oil to taste

DIRECTIONS

For the sauce:
In a medium saucepan over medium-high heat, add the tablespoon of butter, the shallots, lemongrass, ginger slices and wine. Reduce to half. Add the broth, red curry paste and Chinese black bean chili sauce and reduce to half again. Add the coconut milk and reduce to half a third time. Remove from the heat and whisk the bits of butter into the sauce until all the butter has been incorporated. Season with salt and pepper. If you reheat, do not allow the sauce to boil or the butter will separate.

For the chicken:
Cut the chicken breasts in half. With a meat mallet, pound until 1/4-inch thick and place in a nonreactive bowl. Pour the buttermilk over the chicken, cover, and let sit for at least 1 hour in the refrigerator.

In a food processor, place half of the pistachios, half of the Parmesan cheese, and half of the herbs. Pulse 5 or 6 times until the mixture is finely chopped. Transfer to a bowl. Repeat this step with the rest of the pistachios and combine with the other pistachio mixture.

Preheat the oven to 250 degrees.

Place the flour in another bowl and season it with salt and pepper. Remove the chicken from the refrigerator and prepare it for assembly. Preheat a large nonstick saut pan over medium-low heat with a thin coating of grapeseed oil. Remove one breast, shake off any excess buttermilk and dust the breast with flour on each side. Dip only one side of the chicken back in the buttermilk and press pistachios onto that side. Repeat that step with all of the chicken. Place the chicken in the saut pan, pistachio side down, and cook for 2-3 minutes. Turn and cook the other side for 2 to 3 minutes. Place in the oven to finish cooking for 8 to 10 minutes. Remove, let rest for 5 minutes and then slice to serve with the coconut-chili-ginger sauce.

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Sony is preparing to launch a new line of products into the grocery stores this November. The products are a line of DVD’s with a variety of celebrity chefs from the Food Network demonstrating their recipes and the recipes can be downloaded from the DVD. Some of the participating FN Stars include Rachael Ray, Alton Brown and Giada De Laurentiis.

The trend is that most households have a laptop in or around their kitchen. From Sony:

Thirty-five percent of U.S. homes have a laptop near the vicinity of the kitchen, he said. So these [titles] are the best of both worlds, where you can watch them on a DVD player or through the laptop in the kitchen.

They are placing them in various key points around the store, such as thedeli, bakery and gadget aislebecause they want the customer to pick them up before they shop.

These will end up making great Christmas presents. They will retail at $7.99 each. There is no mention of how many recipes will be on each DVD.

The Meals on DVD: Shop, Watch and Cook! series will release on November 18. The titles being released at this time are: Perfect Thanksgiving Dinner, Mac and Cheese Feasts, Simple Side Dishes, Easy Chicken Dinners, Cozy Comfort Foods, Pastas From Giada and Soul Soothing Soups. There also are Quick Meatloaf Recipes, Holiday Dinner Party, Holiday Cookies, The Great Bakeoff: Great Dessert Recipes From Paula Deen and Slow Cookin: Great Slow Cooker Recipes From Paula Deen.

Read more at Video Business.

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Melamine tainted candy has been discovered in the United States. The White Rabbit Creamery candy had been recalled but as of just a few days ago the candy has been discovered on store shelves in several locations in Connecticut. If you see this brand or have it stored at home, do not take any risk and throw it away.

There is even more concern being raised in the United States in regards to popular brands of candy. News reports have surfaced that some US candy makers use powdered milk manufactured in China in their products. This has forced two of the biggest to send out press releases that their products are safe.

Hershey stated that they do not get any milk products including powdered milk from China. Mars on the other hand does use milk products from China. This from the Boston Herald:

Mars North America said in a statement that its operations in China do not get any ingredients from companies found to be selling melamine-contaminated dairy products. It says the Chinese food-safety agency tested samples of Mars Chinas milk powder suppliers and found them to be free of melamine.

I am not sure how safe I feel to hear that the CHINESE “food-safety agency” tested samples.Where is the FDA? Of course, their track record hasn’t been stellar recently. One of my questions is why would Mars Corp. purchase powder from China What reason would they have for not utilizing milk products from their own back yard? I know, I know… M-O-N-E-Y.

This have left me very concerned and questioning what to purchase from store shelves. Halloween is just around the corner and due to all the doubts, what ever candy I purchase will be from Hershey. I will have to get over the fact that some of their products are not“real chocolate” anymore.

According to the Boston Herald article, Cadbury has had to increase their candy recall from just about 3 products to 11.

This story is shocking and what is worse the coverage is pathetic. I have spoken to several people who have never heard one mention of this story.

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Participating blogs on the b5 Lifestyles channel have kicked-off the two week Blogtoberfest 2008. This year there are over $7,000 in give-aways and participation is easy. Just read around the channel, look for sponsored prize-winning posts with the Blogtoberfest logo as shown above and leave a comment. Here is the scoop:

Blogtoberfest officially kicks off Monday, October 6, 2008

There are lots of great prizes to be given away. Prizes are available to U.S. and Canada residents unless otherwise noted.

All you have to do is:

1. Browse the channel or visit your favorite blogs
2. Watch for sponsored prize winning posts wearing the official Blogtoberfest button shown above.
3. Leave a comment on that exact post. Your comment IS your entry.
4. Check back with that blog within a week and see what the prize is and if youre the lucky winner.

Consider subscribing to the various blog feeds to make sure you dont miss out on any exciting opportunities. Many blogs will be conducting between 2 and 7 giveaways and just win those will be appearing is a secret and half the fun!

Each prize winning post will share links to other prize winning blogs for that same day. This makes hunting easier and improves your chances of winning!

Thats it!

Participating blogs found at the bottom of our channel hub:

www.b5media.com/channels_lifestyles.html

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