Contrary to its name, the Boston Butt comes from the front of the pig. A fatty cut ideal for slow-cooked pulled pork, Boston Butt is a favorite of barbecues. Send us your best Boston Butt recipes for Root Source Challenge #15.

Our favorite recipe featuring Boston Butt will be featured in the Root Source and published on Cookthink.com. The author will receive a copy of BBQ Bash: The Be-All, End-All Party Guide, from Barefoot to Black Tie, by Karen Adler.

Submissions are due by 12pm EST Tuesday, May 27. Send us an email to rootsourcechallenge [AT] cookthink [DOT] com with your name, email address, blog URL and a permalink to the recipe. Please put “Root Source Challenge #15: Boston Butt” in the subject line of your email. Click here for the complete rules and to see past winners. Good luck!

(Thanks to The Lisa Ekus Group for providing us with books for the Root Source Challenge.)

With May comes the first of the summer fruits. The early cherries are low risk/high reward fruits, particularly the Bing. So sweet, plump and juicy on their own.

As for cooking with the Bing, how about Cherry Clafoutis? Or a scoop of Cook & Eat’s gorgeous Fennel And Cherry Salad? A slice of her Rustic Cherry Pie? Honey And Fruit Focaccia? You’ll have to check out this week’s Root Source for more suggestions to sate your cherry cravings.

Coming up Tuesday: the deadline for sardine recipes for this week’s Root Source Challenge.

(Image courtesy of Cook & Eat.)

Well, I’m back.

After eight glorious days in Florence, I’ve returned to my home and my desk. And while the weather here is beautiful enough to cushion the blow, I’m still feeling a vague longing for a view of the Duomo out my window.

And of course, the food.

I don’t think you can go to Italy without raving about the food. Even a simple panini from a back-street cafe tastes better than anything here. On our walks, we enjoyed all the hits: fresh melon with prosciutto, oil-packed tuna with arugula, countless cups of espresso with a thick crema on top, and of course, a near-daily dose of gelato. (My favorite? Blood orange and pistachio.)

I could recount every detail of each day, taking us through the city from east to west, into churches and atop mountains, to walled cities, goat farms, to wine and olive oil vineyards. But I’ll save that for the friends and family who’ll have to suffer through my 600-picture sideshow. Instead, I’ll start here with my three favorite restaurants from the trip.

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Sardines are an acquired taste. When I was growing up, my dad put them on crackers with mayonnaise and shoved the whole thing in his mouth. I had trouble being in the same room.

Fishy or otherwise, there aren’t many things I won’t eat these days. Yesterday I picked up a bunch of sardines to test recipes for next week’s root source on sardines. I got several different kinds, including some flown in that morning from Greece to canned from Portugal and elsewhere in the Mediterranean (like Sardinia).

My first sardine test was lunch. I opened a can of the Portuguese variety packed in olive oil, and toasted two slices of whole grain bread. Meanwhile I mixed together a couple of teaspoons each of sour cream and mayonnaise, squeezed in a little lemon juice, and stirred in a bunch of freshly ground black pepper and a handful of finely chopped dill. I layered the toast with sardines and dressing, and had the sandwich with a glass of rosé from Bandol.

If I had a son, he’d probably be running.

I want to learn more about the food and cooking of Germany.

Here’s what I imagine the principle tastes and flavors of traditional German food to be: rich sausages and game; bright, acidic and complex mustards; pungent onions; cabbage; bitter crunchy salad greens; pickles of all kinds; hearty breads and unusual whole grains like spelt; and warming soups and stews. I love how those ingredients can play off of and contrast one another to create complex, complete and satisfying meals.

Yesterday evening, I was ravenous after a really long bike ride. I had a half head of green cabbage, a couple of bratwursts and some leftover fingerling potato salad (which I’d made in the wake of last week’s salmon and Yukon Gold salad), and I didn’t feel like spending a long time in the kitchen (mostly because I was having trouble standing up). Read the rest of this entry »

Just saw, via The Fruit Blog, that Frieda’s will ship “9-13″ fresh mangosteens anywhere in the U.S. This is helpful for those of us who live in places where there is not enough demand for stores to stock them. The fruit itself costs only $39.99 (which, at $3.00-$4.00 per fruit, is cheaper than you’ll find it at the store), but the shipping might cost more than that. (For western Mass, it’s $40—ouch.)

Mangosteens from Thailand have been legally available for the past year. Before that—even though there were mangosteen plantings in Hawaii, the Caribbean and South America—you had to find them on the black market. (Just yesterday, Hawaiian growers were cleared to ship mangosteens to the mainland.)

Last month, the NYT Business section ran a video report on mangosteens that’s worth watching if only to see ethnobotanist Nat Bletter charmingly giz out over the fruit. (A year and a half ago, the premiere fruit geek, David Karp, wrote about his quest for mangosteens.)

Update: I see Nat has his own blog chronicling his efforts to find the perfect version of the Thai dish khao soi.

Taylor Clark’s “Meatless Like Me” at Slate reminded me of Laura Fraser’s old essay in Salon, “Why I Stopped Being a Vegetarian.” Maybe it’s because I live in western Massachusetts and work on a food blog, but is opt-out vegetarianism still so foreign that there are widespread myths about it that must be debunked?

(Now the vegans, on the other hand… Them people is crazy!)

You could make pimento cheese every day for the rest of your life and never follow the same recipe. Once you’ve figured in the three basics—cheddar cheese, jarred pimientos and mayonnaise—pimento cheese is whatever you want it to be.

Add black pepper, cayenne pepper or white pepper. Hot sauce, Worcestershire or beer. Onion, garlic or jalapeño. Oregano, nutmeg or cumin. Sugar, parmesan or cream cheese.

Even the three staples allow for variation. You can use cheddars of varying sharpness, which you can grate, shred or blend. Some people insist on Duke’s, while others prefer Hellman’s or their own homemade mayo. Do you leave the pimientos in strips or do you chop them? If you chop them, how finely? Do you use the back of a fork to work the cheese and seasonings together and then add the mayonnaise for consistency? Or do you use a food processor to blend the core ingredients and then stir in the seasonings? Speaking of consistency, should it be more like a paste, a spread or a dip?

Many people get around this analysis paralysis by using a recipe that was handed down. Having always taken a more itinerant approach, I’ve been searching for years for the best pimento cheese recipe (even as I refuse to believe that there is such a thing), trying a little of this and a little of that.

Several years ago, for an assignment about the Southern Foodways Alliance’s Pimento Cheese Invitational, I spent some time deconstructing pimento cheese.

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Yesterday I walked over to Whole Foods to look for bing cherries. As usual, I got distracted.

I had planned on having chicken for dinner, but as I was walking by the seafood counter I saw a beautiful whole red snapper. It looked really fresh: clean, slime-free skin, perfectly clear eyes, and a mild oceany (but not fishy) smell. The monger said it had come in that morning, so I asked her to filet it for me. I grabbed a big bag of baby spinach to cook along with it and got out of there. (No cherries to be had.)

When I got home, here’s what I did:

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Can anyone think of a recipe/dish type that has ice cream as an ingredient but couldn’t be labeled “ice cream?” For example, an ice cream cake is “cake” but it’s also “ice cream.” What has ice cream in it but is not “ice cream?”