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The text on the Tastebook site calls its own product “stunning and unique.” For once, I’ll have to agree with the PR flunkies. With just a little effort, you can create a recipe book of your own family favorites that’s miles ahead of the old-fashioned box of handwritten note cards.

The process is simple: just upload you recipes (with a picture if you have one), tag them into sections, title your masterpiece and pay the $19.95 (plus shipping). The resulting cookbook has the classic Betty Crocker look, with a hard cover, labeled tabs delineating sections and full-color, ringbound pages.

You can also share recipes with the Tastebook community, pull recipes from its database for your cookbook, or order Tastebooks created by other people — some of them recognized chefs like the editors of Epicurious, Cooking Light or Food & Wine.

In these days of throw-away, consumable crap, a personalized cookbook like this is the kind of thing that people will hold onto for generations. If your recipes are any good, that is.

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Galileo Ristorante

3.5 stars

443 Burns Court, Sarasota, 927-9600 or eataliana.com.

Galileo has been part of the Sarasota dining scene for seven years, but you might not know it. Sure, this fine-dining Italian spot has a cadre of committed regulars, but the restaurant’s former location kept it largely out of public view. Boatyard Plaza — just east of the south bridge to Siesta Key, home to Coasters and little else — is a dead zone for many locals. “It was great for the first two to three years,” explains head server Alex Earl, “a bustling little area. Then, one by one, the shops began moving out.”

To be successful, Galileo had to follow suit.

A few months ago, when Uva Rara closed and its primo downtown spot in Burns Court went on the market, Galileo’s chef/owner Tom Harvey saw his opportunity. Central location. Historic building. Large outdoor patio. It didn’t take much thought before he signed the lease and called in the moving trucks.

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Grant Achatz — the award-winning wunderkind chef behind Chicago’s Alinea – doesn’t just talk the talk of innovative cooking techniques, he walks the walk. In this series of videos, Achatz shows you how he’s planning to roll this Thanksgiving, with just about the entire meal — turkey and all — cooked sous vide. All you need are some pots and some ziploc bags and you can have your very own boil-in-the-bag feast.

Check it out:

Part 2 after the break: (more…)

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The Associated Press asked a bunch of chefs what they would cook at Obama’s inaugural dinner. Some of the respondents are likely already on the Obamas’ short list — like Mexican-food guru Rick Bayless from Chicago’s Tobolobampo, one of the family-elect’s favorite eateries. Bayless has already cleared his schedule for that week, just in case, and has planned tortilla soup, Kona kampachi, ribeye and tamales, and apple pie with goat-milk caramel. Nice.

Most of the chefs were just tossing out ideas, but a few options are worthy of mention:

Rachael Ray — Sliders, mini-Chicago dogs and devilled eggs
Eric Ripert — Peanut butter souffle
Charlie Trotter — “Food that’s good eatin’.”
Andrew Zimmern — Goat, in taco-form

Never woulda thunk it, but I’m siding with miss 30-Minute Meals on this one.

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To give a cookbook as a gift is an act of nourishment. You hope that your offering will inspire and ultimately feed the recipient. You hope he/she will think of you while standing in the kitchen, excited and covered in flour.

Perhaps the year’s best cookbook, or at least the most lavish, isn’t nourishing to anything but your brain and fantasy life. A Day at elBulli: An Insight into the Ideas, Methods and Creativity of Ferran Adria (Phaidon Press Inc., $49.95) is less a cookbook than an act of highbrow food porn – and I mean that in a more literal sense than the term “food porn” usually conjures. The meticulous chronicling of “the best restaurant in the world” walks us through every aspect of the cutting-edge eatery in northern Spain, but it quickly becomes apparent that the true experience of elBulli is unattainable. We can look, but we can’t touch, and we certainly can’t taste. (more…)

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Three days left and it’s time to settle on a menu. Sure, you could break out the recipe for grandma’s cornbread stuffing that you’ve been shoving down your gob since you could handle solid food, but before you do, take a step back: just because it’s traditional doesn’t mean it’s good.

If you want to amp your Thanksgiving side dishes — and maybe establish some new traditions of your own — after the break are a selection of alternative stuffing recipes that are bound to be better (or at least more interesting) than the soggy stuffing of your forebears. And for God’s sake, don’t actually stuff your turkey with it until you read this. (more…)

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Originally from Scotland, Mary and Mark Devlin spent 18 years in Japan, operating Japan’s largest English-language newspaper, among other businesses. Last year, they decided to get out of publishing and move back to the West, and settled on Sarasota. To get a visa, though, they need a business, so Kroaky’s Karaoke was born. This Japanese-style karaoke palace consists of several private rooms where folks can get their groove on with only friends to point and mock, along with beer, wine and food to make everything more convivial. We spoke with Mary just hours before Kroaky’s grand opening last Friday.

On opening a business:

“The thing we really, really missed was karaoke rooms. Somewhere like Tokyo, the typical karaoke place would be about 10 floors high, five rooms on each floor, and there might be four competing places on the same street corner.”

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Old Heidelberg Cafe and Pastry Shop

3.5 stars
1533 State St., Sarasota, 822-0641 or oldheidelberg.net

The signs were up on the State Street spot for months, teasing me every weekend as I walked to the farmer’s market. A new bakery in a town that’s basically been struggling along with just a few places to get fantastic pastry and bread! Even better, it’s just a block away from C’Est La Vie. I couldn’t wait.

Turns out, Old Heidelberg is worth the wait. The bakery has been in existence for over 30 years, most of that in Colorado Springs under German-transplant Karl Schoenberger. After a stint in Europe to get some classical training under his belt, Schoenberger Jr. took over the family business in 1988. After so long in the mountains, why Sarasota?

“The last couple of winters out there just got to me,” explained Schoenberg Jr. “And my wife’s family is all up and down Florida. We kind of picked a spot in the middle.” The couple flew to Florida earlier this year to scout locations, and immediately felt a connection with Sarasota. (more…)

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This week is all about Thanksgiving, but that doesn’t mean you can’t find interesting things to cook in the lead up to turkey day. Here are some of the best sales on raw ingredients, with a few suggestions for what you can do with them:

Whole Foods - Local navel oranges are a mere $.69/pound (regularly $1.49). You could easily take these juicy, super sweet oranges and make ambrosia, but navels are best when just peeled and consumed. (full ad)

Publix - Start with some down and dirty Culinary Sherpa Carnitas de Puerco with the $1.59/pound Boston butt, then stay classy by poaching some $.99/pound Bartlett pears with this recipe from Savant Fine Dining’s David Miller. (full ad)

Sweetbay - You can turn the London Broil at $2.29/pound into incredibly hearty, warming Vietnamese pho thanks to this recipe from Jaden Hair, or grab a few pints of $1.99 grape tomatoes for this vegetable lasagne from the incomparable Jose Martinez. (full ad)

Fresh Market - French green beans are rare in local supermarkets, so it’s worth taking advantage of Fresh Market’s $2.98/pound sale, even if they are from Guatamala. Just simply saute them and finish with salt, butter and roasted garlic. (full ad)

Wal-Mart Supercenter - Not much going on, besides the usual Wal-Mart cost-cutting, but sweet potatoes are dirt cheap at $.25/pound. (full ad)

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Chipotle Mexican Grille

3.5 stars
1707 S. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota, 957-6406 or chipotle.com

The Subway model of dining has its appeal. It gives you the freedom to choose whatever bizarre combination of ingredients and toppings your hunger fever dictates. And those ingredients are usually, if not quite fresh, then fresh-esque. Plus, you get to watch some poor schmoe assemble your meal as if it was actual cooking. As fast food goes, it’s a fine choice.

And it works even better when that template is tacked onto the simplicity of Tex-Mex food. That pseudo-ethnic cuisine has already been distilled by big chains into a dozen or so ingredients stuffed in different combinations into fried, grilled, or soft flour or corn tortillas. That simplicity allows the Subway model to do Tex-Mex better than it does the deli sandwich.

Tex-Mex fast food built on the simple combine-it-yourself premise has been around for decades out West, but didn’t make it to Sarasota until Moe’s moved in last year. Then came Chipotle, one of the darlings of the chain-dining industry. And when it opened last month across from the Sarasota Memorial on Tamiami Trail, the crowds came too.

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