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Briefs: Web series

The Food Network's Dave Lieberman will host a new 13-part series on food trends, gadgets and crazes. But you won't find it on your TV.

Eat This with Dave Lieberman is the cable channel's first Web-exclusive series. It launches Nov. 21 at www.foodnetwork.com/eatthis Three episodes, about three to five minutes long, will be posted each week.

Now you can watch Food Network at work.

Mount Zion United Methodist Church in Clearwater has put together a collection of nearly 300 favorite recipes in Pleasures from the Good Earth. Recipes include Clam Corn Chowder Bowl, Pear Honey and Old English Rum Pudding.

The book is $15, plus $3 for shipping and handling. Proceeds benefit church ministries and its annual Christmas dinner for the homeless.

To place an order, call 727 447-0064 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesday through Friday or visit www.cookbooks4sale.com Click on community cookbooks.

The metal dragonfly has moved around the corner along with the rest of the welded whimsy and the Green Springs gang. Safety Harbor's art cafe has grown into an art bistro, with more dinner hours (Tuesday through Saturday) plus a bar and lounge. Menu is still an only-in-Pinellas combo of Cajun, comfort and Greek with Paul Kapsalis and Kris Kubik in charge at GS Bistro (156 Fourth Ave. N, Safety Harbor, (727) 669-6762).

Restaurants try to replicate home cooking, so why shouldn't we steal from them? Especially these flavored pie crusts from Chef Pierre, a Sara Lee company that sells pies to restaurants.

According to an ad in Nation's Restaurant News, Pierre now offers five pies with one flavor in the crust and another in the filling. It's the kind of overload we find in flavored pizza crusts or peanut butter chocolate cake.

You could do the same at home, mixing a bit of spice into a dough or brushing a topping on refrigerator crust.

Our favorites from Pierre were lemon crust for berry pie and maple for apple pie.

That's just a start. How about orange zest or bourbon on a mincemeat pie crust, a touch of cinnamon in the cherry pie crust and rum butter on pumpkin? We'll have seconds.

Foodies know Sarasota for glitter and gourmet food, but if you know where to look, all the world's a sandwich. Consider these rare, yet humble, fast foods found during recent foraging south of the Skyway Bridge:

- La Tigella. This ancient Italian sandwich, thin slices of salami, souse, speck or prosciutto and a sprinkle of Parmesan in rustic rounds baked between two hot stones. You can find it in mountain towns between Bologna and Modena - and on the Tamiami Trail. Bologna Cafe (5770 S Tamiami Trail, Sarasota; (941) 927-9262) makes the old home treat for $2.50, sells fine Italian meats and cheese and the superb espresso of Cafe Maxxim.

- Cornish pasties, pork pie and bangers. True Brit street food and pub grub, beloved from London to Jamaica and the U.P. of Michigan, gets its biggest showcase at 4&20 Pasty Company (5638 Swift Road, Sarasota; (941) 927-1421). The English version of an empanada can be had filled with steak and kidney, shepherd's pie, rutabagas or chicken tikka, every flavor except blackbird. There are fruit pies, sausage rolls (try lamb curry) and back bacon. Pasties and rolls from $2.95 to $5.95.

- South American fiambres. The sandwich of preference along the Rio Plata is hot and filled with cold cuts, steak, ham or cheese. It comes on Argentine bread, of course, at Argentina Bakery (3078 17th St., Sarasota; (941) 955-8604).

Chef Karim and Catherine Chiadmi, who added hints of Morocco to O'Bistro and the Thunderbird Motel, go more Continental with The Pearl restaurant and tapas bar. It's Mediterranean with a small-plate menu of ceviche, olives and other Spanish tapas plus grander classic entrees. The Pearl (163 107th Ave., Treasure Island; (727) 360-9151) is starting with dinner only but will add lunch and a Sunday brunch this winter. Tapas run between $2.75 and $7, dinner entrees $14.95 to $28.95 for the likes of chateaubriand and rack of lamb.

- Compiled by JANET K. KEELER and CHRIS SHERMAN from staff reports. Keeler can be reached at 727 893-8586 or krieta@sptimes.com Sherman can be reached at (727) 893-8585 or sherman@sptimes.com

[Last modified November 8, 2005, 11:17:04]