I wanted to take a minute to write about our pet project. The Kitchen Garden Company is extremely proud to sponsor The Gastrocast Podcast and the Cookbook of recipes from the first 26 or so episodes.
First, a bit about what a podcast is. A podcast is a, generally, free downloadable audio or video show which is very much like radio. The difference is that, while many radio shows are podcasting, anybody can produce a podcast for very little cost. Furthermore podcasts reach an global audience instead of a geographically limited one, like radio. There are podcasts available for just about anything you might be interested in.
There are two ways of listening to a podcast. You can click on a link to the sound file on the show’s website. Or, you can subscribe to the show and have it delivered automatically to your computer at anytime of the day or night. This subscription takes place via an RSS feed which you subscribe to through an podcatching client such as iTunes, or Juice. Once the file is on your computer you can listen to it there, or load it onto your mp3 player and take it anywhere.
Some of our current favorite podcasts are The Wiggily Wigglers–a gardening podcast, Librivox Audio Books, and Eat Feed among many others.
The Gastrocast is a show “about food, cooking and the politics of what we eat.” Each week the show tackles a broad range of subjects and cooking techniques. Generally the first half of the show is news, life and culinary information. There are two recurring segments: the cheese board, which introduces cheeses and cheese care, and the ingredient of the week discussing unusual or seasonal food items, or ingredients being used in the shows cooking segment. Following this there is a cooking segment dedicated to bringing some new or interesting dishes into your kitchen. Everything in the cooking program is explained and fully photographed.
One of the best parts of the whole experience, we feel, is that you can contact Chef Neal Foley, aka The Podchef, via email or through the show notes’ comments on the blog. A great many questions, comments and suggestions have been left and this feedback has helped to improve the show and create a mini “community”, albeit an international one, around the Gastrocast.
Because of the number of requests for the recipes on the show to be written down we decided to produce a cookbook. Each recipe from among the first 26 episodes of the show is presented with full color photographs, tips, hints and clear, easy to follow text. The resulting 208 page book, which was written and photographed by Chef Neal and produced by The Kitchen Garden Company is hopefully the first of many such projects.
The cookbook is available as a free PDF download from the podcast blog-site, but for those wanting a hardcopy we’ve produced a full-color, paperback cookbook. I encourage those who are interested to check either of these options out.
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