Idea Lab: What To Do With An Unwanted Bottle of Vodka?

Other uses for the unloved spirit.

I have this large bottle of vodka and I don't know what to do with it. It was lugged over by a friend (Blake) during a party as some kind of gift for the festivities, but I could see through his evil plan. He was trying to pawn this half finished bottle off on me because he didn't want to drink it. Sure enough, while the whiskey and gin were manhandled during the party, stirred and shaken into...

Wednesday Links: How Not to Die from Liquid Nitrogen, and The Future of Food Media

[Photographs: chispita_666/Flickr CC and Cooking Issues blog]

Wednesday Links is our weekly collection of the four most interesting food reads we've discovered in the past week. Enjoy!

• Artisanal vs. Industry Pasta
• Why pay more for "fancy pasta?" Here's why. We've been preaching the pricey pasta gospel around here for awhile.
• • A Liquid Nitrogen Primer
• Working with a dangerou...

Homemade Italian Beef

How to make this Chicago classic.

The other issue I had to face was how to cut the meat.  As I remembered from my visit to Al's #1, the beef should be shaved as thinly as possible.  Al's used an huge deli slicer, which I obviously didn't have.  Saveur recommended just tossing the meat in the freezer for 2 hours before serving and then slicing it as thinly as possible with a chef's knife.  Some recipes recommended taking th...