Dude, Soy Tacos

Niche food trend alert: Vegan stoner cuisine.

Recipe: Pollo al Ajillo

From the Guardian, Pollo al Ajillo, Spanish slow-cooked chicken braised with a whopping three heads of garlic.

Gwyneth: The Magazine

Gwyneth Paltrow is said to be developing her own food magazine.

Mission Street Food: A Cookbook from McSweeney's

Mission Street Food: Recipes and Ideas from an Improbable Restaurant, by Anthony Myint and Karen Leibowitz, will be the first book published in a series of cookbooks and other food books expected under a new food imprint from McSweeney's.

According to McSweeney's:

Mission Street Food is a restaurant. But it’s also a charitable organization, a taco truck, a burger stand, and a clubhouse for inventive cooks tucked inside an unassuming Chinese take-out place. In all its various incarnations, it upends traditional restaurant conventions, in search of moral and culinary satisfaction.

Like Mission Street Food itself, this book is more than one thing: it’s a cookbook featuring step-by-step photography and sly commentary, but it’s also the memoir of a madcap project that redefined the authors’ marriage and a city’s food scene. Along with stories and recipes, you’ll find an idealistic business plan, a cheeky manifesto, and thoughtful essays on issues ranging from food pantries to fried chicken. Plus, a comic.

Mission Street Food is now available for preorder (shipping in late July) for $30 at McSweeney's.

Ruth Reichl to Run Gilt Food Site

According to the New York Observer, former Gourmet editor-in-chief Ruth Reichl has been tapped to run a new food spinoff of the Gilt Groupe, Gilt Taste.

Tasting the Mighty Dekopon

Last weekend, while on a ramen run at Mitsuwa, I got my hands on a pair of Dekopon oranges, the jumbo-sized Mandarin oranges being marketed here as "Sumo Citrus."

When the intrepid "fruit detective" David Karp declared that Dekopons were the best oranges he'd ever tasted, you know they must be good: "I've tasted more than 1,000 varieties of citrus, and to me the Dekopon is the most delicious," Karp wrote in a recent Los Angeles Times article on the oranges and their secret migration from Japan to California groves.

So, how were they? At $3.99 for a pair, they better be pretty fantastic. And they were: big (for a Mandarin), super-sweet, seedless, and juicy, and a rind that practically peels itself. If you see them, try them. They're worth the splurge.

Next: Sneak Peeks

First looks at some "annotated dishes" from chef Grant Achatz's upcoming Next restaurant.

Long Reads: New York Magazine on Sandra Lee

New York magazine has published a huge profile of TV food personality and New York first lady Sandra Lee.

Daniel Boulud on Pork Belly

"If there's one piece of meat in the world that became overused and overrated and still delicious and captured by every sort of chef, it's the pork belly."

Subway Goes Indian

At Subway's 200 outlets in India, you can choose from specialized sandwiches like the "Paneer Tikka sub," which contains slightly crispy cottage cheese slices marinated with seasonings and cooked in a traditional Indian clay oven.