Photo by Bryan Ochalla/Wikimedia Commons

​If one of your wild food fantasies includes running up and down the aisles of Whole Foods like a crazy person, filling your shopping cart with any and everything your heart -- and stomach -- desire, and doing it without spending your whole paycheck, read on.

The people over at MadeJustRight.com have teamed up with Whole Foods Market for a vegan holiday bake-off contest that offers weekly plus grand prizes worth $1,400 of spending money at Whole Foods.

But you better hurry if you want to enter, because this is the last week of the contest.

The holiday bake-off is a four-week contest that kicked off November 28, with weeks one-three calling for pie, cake and cupcake entries.
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​This Hatuey Beer-glazed ham can be gracing your holiday table in just 18 days -- or a lot less time than that if you decide to bake one for dinner tonight. Yesterday we talked with Anler Morejon, project manager for Bacardi U.S.A. Inc. and brand manager of Hatuey (ah-TWAY), the iconic Cuban beer that has returned to South Florida as a premium craft pale ale (microbrewed 800 cases at a time by the Thomas Creek Brewery in South Carolina).

Morejon, who lives in Miami and holds a bachelor's degree in business administration from Florida International University, likes his Hatuey paired alongside "roasted pork with moros." The following recipe for Hatuey beer glaze would be delectable brushed on roast pork, but it really shines on a succulent, clove-studded baked ham.

For fans of beer recipes -- specifically the flavor of Hatuey, red snapper, mango, and/or ceviche -- we're also including a recipe for red snapper and mango ceviche with Hatuey beer. Why? Because it's the season for giving.
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You're welcome.

Ready for a cranberry sauce that will punch your mouth in the face and call your momma a dirty hooker? I thought so. Even better, a diabetic can enjoy this tasty relish all the same.

Before you ask, no, a fancy chef did not pass this down; it wasn't picked out of a magazine either. A wise sage once taught this Short Order insider how to make ordinary homemade cranberry sauce, and over the years I've added and taken away countless ingredients. Once tried grapefruit juice instead of orange. It didn't come out like expected, but maybe you can give it a whirl and tell us how it worked out.

Here's the recipe (a kitchen dummy proof recipe, at that):
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Photo by Sandra A. Gutierrez

​We recently spoke with Sandra Gutierrez about her concept of Latin American meets Southern down home fare, which she translates into 150 recipes (at just short of 300 pages, it's almost a novel) in her new cookbook,The New Southern-Latino Table (University of North Carolina Press, $30). Appearing at the Miami Book Fair this weekend, you can catch her today at a cooking demonstration at the Miami Culinary Institute at 2 p.m., and at a culinary panel discussion at the Fair at 4:30 p.m. on Sunday.

After perusing the many combinations that Gutierrez has cooked up, we decided these recipes best represent the perfect mesh of two worlds. Collard green-stuffed tamales are served with a spicy pimiento sauce, and cheesy biscuits, a Southern staple, are jacked up with queso seco and and poblano chiles. Smear a bit of avocado butter on top of those biscuits, and be happy that the world keeps getting smaller and smaller. When cultures blend, tasty happens.

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by Manataka American Indian Council

​Today is National Chocolate Covered Insect day. You've probably consumed your fair share of bugs during your lifetime -- either as a kid stuffing dirt in your mouth or last week when you yawned while riding around on your bike.No need to panic -- most insects are edible and in fact quite nutritious. They give you an extra protein boost.

So embrace today's weirdness and try one. Halloween is only a few weeks away, so there is no better way to surprise your loved one than with a box of creepy crawly chocolates.

For a few tasty bug options, check out Sciencebostore, Groovycandies or Fluke farms.  You can get yourself an "I ate bug club" button while you're at it.
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Ritz Carlton

​Executive chef Bernd Schmitt recently joined SoBe's Ritz-Carlton as the voice behind the hotel's entire culinary enterprise -- from in-room dining to the banquet program, to Bistro One LR, DiLido Beach Club, and the Lapidus Lounge.

We sat down with Chef Schmitt to find out what his plans are for future direction at the Ritz, and he says that his philosophy of "clean cuisine" will continue to evolve. He's in favor of focusing on quality ingredients without a lot of sauce and extraneous plate frou frou to muck it up, and he cites his own last meal as a "simple dish of pasta or fish." Straightforward delicious always works.

He's been cooking since he was six years old, at his family's chateau hotel property in Germany, and his past experience includes stints at the Four Seasons and Canyon Ranch. He even took on the role of corporate executive chef of LSG Sky Chefs where he spent time developing meals for British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, and Lufthansa. Obviously airlines are not exactly known for cuisine, and he does admit that there are "many, many challenges" to designing meals for flight consumption.

He's also served as a judge on Iron Chef and says that "it isn't too difficult to judge other chef's cuisine," but that it is hard to tell someone that their food is not quite living up to what it should be.
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Lesley Elliott

Cast Iron "Grilled" Lamb with Red Lentil Hummus, Cucumber-Garlic Whipped Cream and Mint Gremolata.

​Last month I chronicled the winding road that was Whole Foods' "Fill The Grill" competition, where we watched chef Timon Balloo (from Midtown's perpetually crowded Sugarcane), go up against chef Michael Jacobs, (who cooks up our Miami Heat player's creative fare) for the championship title. As one of the judges, I got a really good seat, and I can tell you that the challenge was not easy for any of the participants. So, naturally I was a bit intimidated when informed that the same deal was being offered to local bloggers. We were given $20 and the run of the store, thankfully, they put no time stipulation...that 20 minutes the kitchen pro's had to prepare their recipes, would never have worked out. I do not move that fast around knives.

The issue is that I live in a very tall building, with a very dedicated management team determined to enforce a "no-grill" policy on the balcony. I do have a grill, but since it's contraband, I have hidden it away. However, I did want to create a recipe that was grill-like in nature to keep within the theme of the challenge. To me, that means meat seared at a high temperature in a cast iron skillet. It gets a high-octane sear, much like an actual flame would impart, and the air fills with the scent of smoky meat burning (in a good way). For apartment dwellers, this is as close as we can get to the real grilling experience.
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Start the diet tomorrow.

​Fattening? Yes. Decadent? Yes. Worth every chew and calorie? Hells yeah! We couldn't wait to sink our forks into Chef Sergio Sigala ricotta cavatelli and share the recipe with you. (If you have no idea who we're talking about, check out the first and second parts of his interview.) Before you get to cooking, however, you should know Chef Sigala doesn't cut corners and won't allow you to, either: store-bought pasta isn't an option.
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Lesley Elliott

This year, trade up your bird for the holidays.

​Sephardic cuisine has Middle Eastern roots, so there's lots of spice and flavor in these holiday foods (often influenced by Jewish roots everywhere from Turkey to Spain and, naturally, Israel). A Sephardic spread actually tastes amazing, but if you are a Euro-jew, it's a completely different story. That usually means brisket (dry pot roast, always very exciting), bland roasted chicken (brine it, rub garlic on it, anything!) and maybe some sort of glazed carrot and roasted potato combo. Not exactly the stuff holiday food dreams are made out of.

So this year, why not serve Thomas Keller's infamous roast chicken? We bet that Wolfgang Puck's matzoh ball soup won't have giant chunks of barely cooked carrot floating around. Rosh Hashanah begins tonight at sundown, and we've secretly replaced Bubbi's recipes with those of celebrity chefs. Let's see what happens.
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Haven Gastro-Lounge

​In our two-part interview with Haven's Executive Chef, Todd Erickson, we got the lowdown on his short stint at Zuma and found out how it felt to be in charge of the kitchen at the unseasonably young age of 24. Turns out he got his start on the catering side of the food and beverage industry, before moving here to our fair city, a place he never planned to be.

Lucky for us, since we benefit from his creative food flair at Haven. From that steamy cloud of liquid nitrogen that rises up from Erickson's version of ice cream, to what must be the only seaweed salad with kiwi ever seen on a restaurant menu, he pushes new ideas forward.

And here's his usual mix of the unusual, a recipe for something that sounds rather basic, a chicken skewer, but becomes something a little more spicy. He adds an interesting combo of pineapple and cucumber, with scotch bonnet pepper honey (that's a Caribbean pepper, one of the hottest in all the land, so don't touch your face while working with it, and wash your hands repeatedly, seriously).
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