TV Takes: Food Network Star

It's been a while since I wrote much about food TV (other than oblique references, that is) — which is odd, since it was binge-watching Top Chef that put me on the road to emerging foodiehood in the first place — but earlier this week, a friend at work point this Andy Greenwald piece criticizing Food Network Star, and I just have to respond. (Truth to tell, I think my friend was more interested in the picture of Giada De Laurentiis than the article, but just the same....)

Greenwald makes a few indisputably good points… but it seems to me the going-in baseline for his remorselessly sneering piece is a basic dislike of Food Network in particular and, really, TV in general. Of course it’s artificial: It’s entertainment, and all entertainment is artifice. And of course they craft a POV: Neither Greenwald nor anyone else would actually watch a TV show that was just generically “about food,” without any concept or focus, and it's hardly "Orwellian" to coach would-be TV performers to be, you know, watchable. Even Julia Child had a “culinary POV,” fer criminy’s sake! Food Network Star is, basically, a look into the sausage factory of food TV (aka "a show devoted to celebrating the artifice of television"... artifice; you say that like it's a bad thing...), and some of us actually do want to see how the sausage is made, notwithstanding the old line; Greenwald seems like someone who not only doesn’t want to see the process, but doesn’t much actually like sausage to begin with.

With the notable exception of American Idol, none of the “launch a new star” reality shows has a high success rate: AFAIK, no winners of The Apprentice (the original, noncelebrity version) has gone on to a big career in business; a few America’s Next Top Model winners have gotten some visible work, but not one of them has become a supermodel; only one (that I know of) America’s Got Talent winner has gone on to a big Vegas showroom career; So You Think You Can Dance winners probably get work in movies or on Broadway, and a couple have gone on to careers working with the show itself as choreographers or rehearsal leaders, but none of them has become a star in the more general sense; and to date no Project Runway winner has become the must-have designer for that class of celebrities whose designer’s names people know. And let’s not even mention the similar “next star” competitions on other niche networks like HGTV.

Compared to these shows, FNS actually doesn’t do too badly. Guy Fieri (much as I, personally, can’t stand watching him) is a bona fide star whose fame actually extends beyond the world of food TV; Jeff “The Sandwich King” Mauro’s (Season 7 winner) show just finished its 4th season (on Food Network, not Cooking Channel), and he had a second show as a spinoff last year (no word as of yet whether it’ll be renewed); Aarti Sequeira’s (Season 6 winner) show ran for 3 seasons (also on the mothership); Melissa D’Arabian (Season 5) has been working steadily on Food Network/Cooking Channel and related websites since her win, and published a cookbook last year; and all of these winners (none of whom Greenwald even mentions) make frequent guest appearances on other Food Network shows (e.g., on anthology shows like The Best Thing I Ever Ate/Made, or as judges or celebrity/”all-star” contestants on other competition shows like Iron Chef America or Chopped). In addition, besides Kelsey Nixon (who actually is “young and blonde and chipper,” but who is by no stretch of the imagination so irresistibly adorable that she “would have a show on the Model Train Network if she owned a pair of overalls and such a thing existed”), numerous other nonwinners have had some degree of success within the Food Network family of outlets (e.g., Adam Gertler,  Jeffrey Saad, Tom Pizzica) or parlayed their “culinary POV” into non-FN success (e.g., Debbie Lee, who turned her Korean soul food concept into a successful LA food truck). So while FNS may not have created many real stars, it has given no small number of people at least a shot at making a living in their chosen field… which is as much as most of its peer shows can claim.

BTW, the suggestion, in re Kelsey Nixon, that Food Network wants bland, pretty, generic TV star types is belied by the fact that Nixon only finished fourth in her season, which was won by a black man from New Jersey, who was in turn succeeded by a short, round, dark (albeit also “chipper”) Mumbai-born/Dubai-raised woman (Aarti Sequeira) as the next winner. Last season’s winner, Justin Warner, was a skinny, geeky-looking kid who more resembles Bill Nye the Science Guy than he does Mr. TV Star™ from Central Casting. Even normal-white-guy winners like Jeff Mauro (and Guy Fieri himself) often aren’t typical “pretty” TV types, and one of FN’s biggest stars – Alton Brown – is a balding, middle-aged food geek in a bowtie. And don’t even get me started about Anne Burrell, who looks like a female defensive tackle and has hair that suggests she walks around with a Tesla coil in her pocket. Beautiful people like Giada and (so I’m told by my female friends) Bobby Flay notwithstanding, FN really can’t fairly be accused of being overly looks conscious.

All that said, I actually have been disappointed with the current season: I liked the changes they made to the show’s format for last season, but they’ve fiddled with the format again for this season, mostly to the show’s detriment (fewer contestants, no mentors' teams, not enough Bob and Susie, etc.). And the cast of competitors has (so far) been disappointing: The (apparent) best cooks (e.g., Viet Pham) have either boring concepts or no screen presence, while the ones with the most interesting personalities and concepts (e.g., Rodney "Pie Man" Henry) consistently fail to impress the judges with their food. And many of them are recycled from previous appearances on FN (and/or other reality TV), as pointed out in Maggie Furlong’s HuffPo piece, which I think is actually a more thoughtful critique than Greenwald’s. Still, I’m hoping that this is just a down season (or half-season: Often in the past, things have looked bleak, and then a few competitors have hit their stride in the later episodes), rather than a sign that the concept is played out… because overall I’ve really enjoyed the show up to this point in its history.

(Note that the second half of Greenwald's column, about Paula Deen, is essentially a separate piece, and one I'm not inclined to comment about, having never been a Deen fan even before the current controversy.)

The Lazy Blogging Timewarp: Happy Foodie Father's Day

Now that I've thrown another log on the Emerging Foodie fire, I'll be reaching into the (more or less recent) past to post about things I didn't get around to posting about when they actually happened.

First up: A quick post of belated praise and gratitude to my family for some delicious Father's Day presents. My daughter got me Bacon Nation: 125 Irresistible Recipes, by Peter Kaminsky and Marie Rama. This is not just a bunch of bizarre, bacon-obsessed stunts: It appears to be a serious, thoughtful cookbook whose recipes use bacon in well considered, balanced ways. I can't wait to try some out! (Actually, it was this book that inspired me to think about bacon chipotle sweet potato salad, even though I didn't use a recipe from the book.)

In addition, my wonderful wife got me tickets to see Alton Brown's live Edible Inevitable Tour when it comes to the Bushnell in Hartford (sadly, not 'til next February... hmm, Valentine's Day, actually...). Even with the videos on his site, I'm having trouble imagining what a live Alton Brown show will be like... but I'm having no trouble imagining that it'll be great: I can't wait!

More timewarping to come! I'll get my promised post about our post-Tanglewood dinner at Chez Nous up in the next day or two, then I'll reach back to May for several posts about a trip I took to the Northern VA/DC area and to Alton's hometown of Atlanta!

TV Takes: The Great Food Truck Race (Spoiler)

Recently I mentioned that I was enjoying Season 3 of the retooled Great Food Truck Race, which pits teams of aspiring food truck entrepreneurs — rather than established trucks, as in the first two seasons — against each other, with the truck itself and startup funding as the prize. The new format retains the best elements of the existing show and adds the element of starting a new career/business that's common in other occupational reality competition shows, including such non-food shows as America's Next Top Model and Project Runway, as well as NBC's one-season America's Next Great Restaurant.

Unlike the latter, Food Truck doesn't attempt to mentor or develop the trucks' concepts: While the precise menu varies from city to city and challenge to challenge, each team came into the competition with its branding, concept, and truck in place... but, of course, they only got to keep the truck as long as they avoided elimination.

Tonight I watched the last episode before the finale, and I'm pleased with the way the competition has progressed. Of the three trucks that made it to this penultimate challenge, two of them — Pop-A-Waffle and Seoul Sausage — have seemed like the most distinctive and sharply defined concepts from Day One, and, along with the early-eliminated Under the Crust, the ones whose food I was most intrigued to try.

Seoul Sausage, in particular, is a favorite of mine for a variety of reasons: First, I just love Korean food, and while their menu doesn't include any strictly traditional Korean dishes, the flavors and techniques are all there. I would travel nontrivial distances to try their deep fried kimchi rice balls, to name just one example. Second, the Seoul Sausage crew strike me as the having the best combination of passion and focus of all the teams. And finally, their success is compensating for the disappointment of last season's Korean team, the similarly impressive Korilla BBQ truck, being disqualified under allegations of stuffing their till.

Pop-A-Waffle is slightly less appealing to me: Despite being a child of the South, I've never quite "gotten" the chicken-and-waffles thing (which was, interestingly, the original concept of what eventually became Soul Daddy, the winning [albeit ultimately unsuccessful] Next Great Restaurant concept). Even so, though, the idea of building a truck around waffles, both savory and sweet, seems appealing.

As it turned out, Pop-A-Waffle was eliminated tonight in third place, with Nonna's Kitchenette advancing to the finale instead. Nonna's has not been one of my favorites, but I confess that's probably just a result of my own personal prejudices: The homestyle Italian comfort food that forms the heart of their menu and concept isn't especially enticing to me, and neither are the team members' self-described Jersey girl (not to say Jersey Shore) personas.

All that said, it looks like they'll be tough competition for the Seoul Sausage guys, and I can't wait to see how the finale comes out. You can count on me commenting here.

TV Quick Takes: Top Chef Masters (Spoilers)

Tonight I watched what the cable guide blurb hypereloquently called the penultimate episode of Top Chef Masters Season 4, featuring an elimination challenge in which the final 3 chefs mentored teams of high school culinary students through the preparation of dishes they themselves couldn't even touch. I've been enjoying this season of Masters, which has finally come into its own and no longer strikes me as a knockoff placeholder for the Top Chef mothership, but since I haven't been blogging here much until recently, I haven't had a chance to express myself about it. Just a few quick observations, as we await the finale:

• I've liked Chris Cosentino since I first saw him on the first season of The Next Iron Chef, but I have loved him on this show. Tonight's Critics' Table was edited to lead us to believe he was going home, so I was intensely relieved to see him advance to the final. Not only has he consistently put out food I wanted to eat all season, but it was clear he was by far the best, most committed, most caring teacher of the three... which observation matches the judgment of the viewing audience, according to the viewers' poll.
• The fact that Cosentino obviously liked her was the only reason I was sorry to see Patricia Yeo go last week. Early on, I liked her feistiness and thought her food looked interesting, but in the later episodes, her behavior toward fellow competitor Lorena Garcia increasingly turned me off. I hate the sexist term catty, but it's hard to avoid the word when Yeo actually made aggressive meowing noises at Garcia more than once. These are all high-level professional chefs, and one of the nice things about Masters is that they usually treat each other with respect. Yeo, not so much.
• Speaking of Garcia... Taco Bell? Seriously?

Well, I'll be looking forward to next week's finale... and to the upcoming new seasons of Top Chef and Next Iron Chef... and to Life After Top Chef... and to  Chef Race: UK vs U.S. ... and to... argh! So much food TV; so little time!

TV Quick Takes

I haven't been blogging about foodie TV shows much recently... because I haven't been blogging much at all recently... but if I'm going to change the latter — and I am — then I should change the former as well. Foodie TV — specifically, watching a Top Chef (Season 2) marathon while I was laid up with whooping cough — is a big reason I started this blog in the first place.

So I'll start commenting periodically on my favorite food-related TV again. For now, just a few quick takes:

• I enjoyed the just-completed Season 3 of MasterChef, and I'm more than happy with the selection of Christine Ha as the winner. Not only was she the most likeable contestant and (as far as we could tell without actually tasting her food) the best cook, but her's is the cookbook I most want to read. I had been rooting for single mom Monti Carlo (seriously, did your mom give you that name?) for much of the season, but I think the final two, and the winner, were correct. I almost wish Christine had been on Food Network Star instead of MasterChef, though: It's hard to imagine a blind cook being safe working the line in a busy restaurant, but Christine would be great on TV. And speaking of Food Network Star...
• I'm happy to see Jeff Mauro's Sandwich King is back for a third season (I'm watching Episode 1 as I type this). Mauro's onscreen persona is a bit goofball-ish for my tastes, but I love the sandwich-focused concept, and his recipes are always both creative and accessible. And with a new show, $24 in 24, set to debut this fall, Mauro might be set to become the first FNS winner since Guy Fieri to become a true star on the network.
• I'm also enjoying the third season of The Great Food Truck Race. Between this show's switch from having established trucks compete to having novice teams compete to win their truck and FNS's switch to the team/mentor approach, I generally think Food Network has done a good job retooling its competition shows. In both cases, the format changes enhance the entertainment value of the shows and, I think, lead to winners better positioned for future success.

 Did I say quick takes? Oh, well....

Food TV: Top Chef: Texas "Restaurant Wars"

OK, to begin with, why, oh why, in the suffering world did the geniuses at Top Chef decide to make this season's Restaurant Wars a "battle of the sexes" (or "boys versus girls," if you prefer the cheftestants' own cutesieness to the producers' war metaphor)? And why did the "boys" (Chris, actually) have to make it worse by immediately calling the "girls" catty (not that the women didn't seem to be doing their best to embody that invidious stereotype)?

To the show's (very minimal) credit, they didn't go on to pound on any masculine versus feminine tropes in discussing the decor, service, or food... but that's small comfort. The most charitable interpretation is that they ended up at RW time with an even split between the sexes, and just thought it would be "fun" to pick the teams that way... but even that points out that sex-based segregation remains a (sadly) socially acceptable trope well after separating people in other ways has become taboo: Would Top Chef have considered, even for a second, putting Ed, Paul, and Bev on one team and calling it Asians vs. Whites? Of course they wouldn't... but somehow they can still pull the trigger on a Battle of the Sexes. Grrrrr.....

Beyond that disappointment, I found the episode a bit perplexing: Both restaurants were appealingly decorated (I liked Canteen a bit better, though I think the open kitchen was a bad idea for a one-night popup restaurant), and their menus seemed like I would enjoy them, as well. Even though both had problems with service, what we saw of the judges' and guests' dining experience seemed mostly positive, with Canteen having an edge on the overall dining experience, Half Bushel having an edge on food, and Padma declaring that the judges had a tough choice.

So I was surprised to find that, at Judges' Table, the competition didn't seem to be close, and the critical comments were so much harsher than they seemed in the event. Did the diners' survey data come out different than they expected? Did the judges' positions harden with time (and I must say that the consecutive-nights format seems to give whoever goes second an advantage, especially since they got to dine in their opponents' restaurant)? Or did the producers simply edit the in situ comments to make the contest look closer than it ever really was, for the sake of preserving the suspense?

In any case, I was happy that Beverly won, and less happy that her team did, and for the same reason: I thought her teammates abused Bev, basically treating her like a sous chef or less instead of a colleague and teammate. I had thought the bullying would stop once Heather (who seemed to have a particularly personal beef with Bev) was eliminated, but apparently not. Bev doesn't appear to be the best cook in the group, and who knows, maybe there really is something lacking in her work ethic... but I find myself rooting for her, both because I fell in love with Korean food years ago when I lived in Seoul (so how could I not love a contestant whose cast bio says if she were a food, she "would be kimchi since it is funky, spicy and addictive which matches [her] eccentric, yet soulful personality."), but also because I think she's been treated awfully, which gives her story the underdog appeal. Amazingly, after celebrating their victory with approximately 12.72 seconds of hugging, the Half Bushel team went right back to glares and recriminations. Lindsay (did she really mention having been prom queen as an example of how driven she is?!?) seemed visibly pissed that Bev had won; she scares me just a little.

I've been rooting for Ed, too (though his attitude has tested my patience at times), so I was glad he (seemingly) "won" among the chefs on the losing team. He did, however, fall into what I'm beginning to see as a universal cooking show trap: Giving your dish a name it doesn't live up to. Based on the comments, his dessert may have been the single best dish at either restaurant, but because he called it Almond Joy, he got more rips for not enough coconut than compliments for how good everything else was about it. IIRC, one of the judges (Emeril?) even said that the name was the only thing wrong with that dish.

The other dessert (along with an apparently passive effort) seemed like it would send Chris "Let Me Mention Moto One More Time" Jones home, but Tom Colicchio was obviously in his corner, resulting in the departure of Ty-Lor Boring (can that possibly be the name his momma gave him?)... or at least his short trip to Last Chance Kitchen (which I haven't watched yet... shhh; no spoilers!)

[Edited to correct a misattribution.]

TV Quick Take: Food Network Star

It's late, and I only have time for a few quick reactions to tonight's (well, Sunday's... technically it's Monday as I write this) supersized, double-jeopardy episode of Food Network Star:

• First, am I the only one who thinks Mary Beth looks like Nora Dunn? Would that make her prospective show seem like an SNL skit?


• I guess getting actual food on the plate is a step forward for Vic, but how many more bullets can he dodge? His name's not Neo, after all!


• How can so many people go so completely blank just because they're on camera? Surely they knew what show they were going on, and at least tried to practice?


• Calamari steak? Who knew such a beast existed? Who knows where I can get some?


• You don't need to taste Pernod to know it's nothing like dry vermouth; just opening the bottle will tell you it's an anise-flavored liqueur, unless your nose was shot off in the war!


• Anybody know why Alicia wore a prom dress to eliminations?


• Pee Wee Herman meets Elvis Costello meets Alton Brown? Now that's a show I'd watch in a heartbeat!


• I'm a little nervous to see so many of my early faves — Justin B. and Jeff in particular — struggle so badly so soon. Of course, Orchid's struggles were not entirely of her own making.

And on that last point... I'm the first one to say that (for example) Survivor is a game, and any sort of scheming and manipulation is all fair, so I surprised myself by thinking Penny's transparent attempt to kneecap her strongest competition was out of bounds. I think I've figured out the difference: Unlike Survivor, Amazing Race, etc., Food Network Star is both a game and a serious audition: I'm part of the audience not only for the current show, but potentially for the show it will produce, so the knock-out-the-best-player tactics that work on other reality competition shows actually work against my interests as a viewer in this case.

And I hope Jeff gets his act together, because I really do want to see his show about sandwiches.

TV Quick Take: MasterChef (Take 2)

MasterChef wrapped up its two-part season premiere last night, although the audition phase continues into the next episode. Interesting stories from the second hour:

• Dustin, the cheesily winking pool boy who impressed Ramsay with his poshed-up sausage roll. He joins bubbly Scot (aren't they supposed to be dour?) Pauline from the first hour in sucking up to Ramsay with comfort food from the auld sod.


• Christine, the stressed-looking "recent" single mother who takes culinary advice from her varmint-cooking dad. She got her apron on a split decision, on the strength of her soft-shelled crab and slaw (and apparently in spite of her polenta); expect her to vie with Albert (gator three ways) for redneck fan favorite.


• Esther, the former attorney who argued her way onto the show despite the judges' lukewarm response to her Korean spicy braised cod with daikon (which looked and sounded damn tasty to me). What is it with young Asian female lawyers quitting their careers to go on cooking shows, anyway? That was also Stephenie's story on America's Next Great Restaurant, and I seem to recall a similar case from last season of MasterChef.


• Not only is Alvin from my childhood home towngreater metropolitan area of Houston, he also busted out a homemade immersion circulator, which made me squeal with geeky joy. I wonder if he used the plans from Cooking for Geeks that first enthralled me? His Hawaiian beef braised short rib with sticky rice and sous vide egg looked really yummy, too. I know I'll be rooting for this potential geek fan favorite... but will the challenges allow hit to show all his geeky chops?


• And joining Christian (Shipwreck Stew) from the first hour as early favorites to actually win the whole shebang are Derrick, the stay-at-home dad from Gloucester, MA, who wowed all three judges with his sopa with homemade chorizo and fire-roasted salsa, and unemployed architect Alejandra (another former professional woman!) who bravely stood behind the spice level of her shrimp and saffron rice dish.

Of course, it's impossible to know the stories they've glossed over in apron-giving montages, nor who awaits us in the final auditions episode, but it's already shaping up as quite an interesting season!

TV Quick Take: MasterChef

I'm not a Gordon Ramsay fan. Some folks have tried to tell me he's not quite the nonstop screaming hell the promos for his various shows make him seem, but those promos so put me off that I've never been motivated to find out.

That said, somehow I ended up watching the inaugural season of the U.S. version of MasterChef, and found it unexpectedly compelling. Ramsay was, for the most part, on his best behavior (perhaps moderated by his cohosts Joe Bastianich and Graham Elliot), I like the concept of taking accomplished home cooks (i.e., as opposed to The Worst Cooks in America) and teaching them to be restaurant-quality chefs, and MasterChef is the only cooking competition show I can think of that offers the audition/casting phase common to other reality talent competitions such as So You Think You Can Dance, America's Got Talent, and American Idol. I don't much enjoy seeing the occasional humiliation of self-deluded aspirants, but I do like seeing all the weird, wacky, and often wonderful things people do to try to get cast.

So it was with pleasure that I watched tonight's premiere (actually, I guess it was just the first half of the premiere) of MasterChef Season 2. Just a few quick thoughts:

• Calling cooking shows "food porn" is a commonplace, but... [NSFW] body sushi? SRSLY?


• Nobody loves a toothless, gator-cookin', self-described redneck more than me, but I wonder how he'll do with a souffle challenge... or, really, with any dish whose main ingredient doesn't come from a swamp. It'll likely be fun to find out, though.


• I want me a bowl of "Shipwreck Stew"! Jus' sayin'!


• I almost want me some of that salmon and haggis, and that's saying something.


• Am I the only one who was seriously disturbed by the sight of a middle-aged black woman on her literal knees begging Ramsay to "give it to me right now!"? Yu-u-u-u-uck!


• It took me a while, but I finally realized who Ramsay reminds me of, with his overdramatic, pregnant-pause-punctuated, gesticulational speech patterns: He's the Scottish James Effin' Tiberius Kirk, in a kitchen instead of a starship!

That is all....

TV Reaction: Food Network Star (Spoilers)

I know I've been silent here for almost a month, but I have a backlog of things to post about that'll go up in the next couple days. In the meantime, I've just finished watching the Season 7 premiere of Food Network Star (apparently they've dropped the Next). This has always been a few rungs down on my ladder of favorite cooking competition shows, but it's been growing on me over the last couple seasons, and tonight's 2-hour opener was satisfying.

For one thing, it appears that most of the finalists can actually cook: The judges were at least reasonably pleased with almost all of the dishes in both challenges, and actively liked an unusually high percentage of them. Even Vic's two unplated dishes looked like they would've been good if he'd gotten them to the judges.

For another thing, it looks like there are really some stars there, unlike some previous seasons when it seemed the FN team had to work hard to fluff someone up enough to be a plausible winner:

• Orchid is obviously off to a hot start, though I wonder if she'll suffer for being too similar to Season 6 winner Aarti Sequeria. None of it should matter, of course, and I'm sure their culinary POVs are entirely distinct, but TV is a visual medium, and I wonder if FN wants to take on the challenge of promoting a second consecutive short, plump, cheery Asian woman cooking Americanized ethnic food? Then again, perhaps my instant sense of deja vu will dissipate as the season goes on and I get to know Orchid better.


• With her friendly face and luminous smile, Whitney could be the next Rachael Ray... and she has a culinary resume Ray doesn't pretend to have.


• Even though she seemed like a bit of a hot mess in the opener, Alicia turned out great food (Penny's snark notwithstanding). Given that she's a former model and an instructor, it's hard to imagine her initial fragility will prevail: Both professions should've prepared her to deal with rejection, criticism, and media exposure.


• Among the guys, I like Jeff, probably just because a show devoted to sandwiches — "... make any meal a sandwich, and make any sandwich into a meal...." — sounds like one I'd watch. He's not off to a stellar start, but I'm rooting for him to step it up in the coming weeks.


• Finally, I agree with the judges that Justin B. has great potential: An intriguing look, a thoughtful approach, and clearly strong culinary chops.

The last thing that pleased me about the premiere is that they got the elimination right, when there was dire risk that they would not: Vic's failure to plate a complete dish in either challenge (or anything at all in the elimination challenge) put an obvious target on him, and Jyll's (why am I thinking that's not the name — or at least not the spelling — her mother gave her?) explanation of why her individual dish didn't get plated sounded like a weak excuse. But weak or not, Jyll was right: Howie's constant need for assistance (caused, IMHO, by his lack of basic kitchen competencies) really did screw up Jyll's game, and that, in turn, caused the collision that put Vic's calamari on the floor. Howie's failure to step up and admit what really happened was bad enough; his attempt to (falsely) discredit Jyll and minimize her credit for the group dish was disingenuous and despicable. I always wonder on these shows whether the judges get to see any of the kitchen footage before making their decisions. Normally I assume they do not, and in this case I was afraid their lack of awareness would lead them to the wrong decision.

Thankfully, it did not. Now if the truly frightening cougar-in-leopard-print Penny goes home next week (and really, I think the judges are ready to pull the ripcord on her if she says "sexy" even one more time), I'll be a happy viewer indeed. But enough about me; what do y'all think?

My Trip to the Market

I haven't been writing, but that doesn't mean I haven't been cooking! Over the last week I've made two meals (using new-to-me recipes) and spent one evening making homemade ice cream (and baked chocolate meringues to accompany it). I'll post about all of the above in the coming days, plus the more detailed description of our second visit to Goong I promised some time back, and a cocktail-related post I've had on deck.


But today I want to talk about finally making it to the Coventry Regional Farmers' Market. I've been hearing about the market from my friends, and I've in fact been following them on Facebook, but I haven't made it out until now. This was, of course, their Winter Market; I have to wait 'til June to see the market in its full glory. But even so, there was plenty to see. Produce was limited to hot-house and winter items, along with dried items like rice, beans, herbs, and hot peppers... but there was also a great variety of locally sourced, locally made prepared and artisanal foods, and locally grown meats from several farms.

I bought myself some Dragon's Blood Elixir hot sauce, along with a curry sauce from the Dragon's Blood folk's selection of small-batch sauces. They also had a wasabi sauce that tasted great, and a nice smokey chipotle sauce, both of which I may well pick up on a future visit. I got my Lovely Bride® some locally roasted Costa Rican coffee from Quiet Corner Coffee Roasters, and myself some Pleasant Cow cheese from Beaver Brook Farm. Lack of planning on my part — I didn't have a cooler or insulated bag with me; I had not planned to go straight home after the market; and I hadn't talked with the LB© about our dinner plans — restrained me from partaking of any of the frozen meat on offer, or of the lovely salmon The Fish Market (Willimantic) had, or of the prepared gourmet entrees-for-two from Zest Restaurant in nearby Tolland. Some forethought before my next visit — and there will be a next visit — is a necessity!

The cheese I bought is part of an ongoing project that I suspect will become a recurring topic here: My quest for the ultimate grilled cheese sandwich! Years ago, while on a business trip to Atlanta, I had a meal at the Buckhead Diner that proved to me a grilled cheese sandwich — one of my childhood favorites — could in fact be Serious Food™. Now that I'm trying to be all serious about food, I want to find and/or create seriously good grilled cheese sandwiches. To that end, I'll be sampling locally made artisanal cheeses, making or finding great sandwich breads, etc. I know of a regionally famous grilled cheese sandwich food truck, operated around Yale by the folks at Caseus Fromagerie and Bistro, and a similar gourmet grilled cheese food truck in California was recently featured on the "Hand-Held Eats" episode of Cooking Channel's Unique Eats. One of the "secrets" revealed on that episode involved coating the bread with, instead of just butter, a mixture of butter and mayonnaise. The idea of putting mayo-slathered bread into a hot pan goes against my every instinct, but I'm nothing if not experimental, so... watch this space for developments!

Appreciation of Craft

I planned to post about cocktails tonight, and I'll certainly get to that later, but I'm in the middle of watching Top Chef: All Stars and I just had to stop and write about tonight's episode... and more specifically, about the Quickfire Challenge, which took place in the kitchen of Le Bernardin, Eric Ripert's great (or so I've read, and really, who the hell am I to question it?) seafood restaurant.

The guest/guest judge was ace fish prep chef Justo Thomas, the star of my favorite chapter of Anthony Bourdain's Medium Raw... and perhaps the favorite thing I've ever read about food or cooking. I alluded to this chapter in my very first post here. It occurs to me that the reason I so love cooking "reality" shows is not just that I love food, but that I love craft, and I'm in awe of great craftspersons.

Bourdain clearly does, too: Beneath his crusty, punky cynicism is this: His most loving prose was left for this man, far from the glamour of the great restaurant, who is simply the best there is, in every way he can think of to be, at the humble but essential task of reducing up to 1,000 lb of fish per day into the perfect portions... the perfectly formed materials with which his fellow chefs will make their art.

The All Stars acquitted themselves well, both those who managed to cut their fish acceptably and those who humbly admitted they couldn't (you should pardon the expression) hack it. And the four finalists made dishes I wish I could've tasted... ironically, from the heads, bones, and other "waste" parts of the fish they'd just butchered. First craft, then art. What's not to love?

Are Pastry Chefs Getting Their Just Desserts?

I have a meeting this evening, so I'll probably have to watch tonight's Top Chef: Just Desserts Season 1 finale via the magic of DVR. Before it even starts, though, allow me one small rant?

If I were a pastry chef, I think I'd be more than a little bit ticked off at the way the profession has been represented during the Just Desserts inaugural season: Surely dessert chefs can't really be as petulant, flakey (no pun intended), mentally unstable, and emotionally fragile as this crowd has consistently been, starting with the multi-episode emotional implosion that ended with Seth Caro leaving the show in an ambulance and continuing through various chefs' teary moments, the agonies of the Heathers, and finalist Morgan's spot-on impression of a middle-school bully, which reached its apex last week at Judges' Table when he responded to Zac's admittedly unprovoked attack with borderline homophobic (to this viewer's ears, anyway) comments about Zac "jumping around like a little girl." By contrast, Danielle's face-pulling weirdness and Yigit's buttoned-down snark seem positively refreshing.

I suppose the producers think drama is what the viewers care about, but I don't think so: What I care about is the food, and the craft that goes into making it. There's drama enough anyway; I would've like to see from these dessert chefs the same sort of tough-minded, serious approach to the food that we typically get from their counterparts on the Top Chef mothership.

All that said, though, I will be watching.

Unreality TV, Take 2

I've commented here before about cooking competition shows that "test" skills chefs don't actually use in their own professional kitchens, but I was reminded of the point again just recently. After having let my volunteer work on the just-completed elections completely swamp pretty much all of the rest of my life for several weeks, I've been burning my DVR at both ends over the last couple days, trying to get caught up on my food TV favorites. I still have a backlog of Iron Chef America and Good Eats, but I've watched the latest two episodes each of Top Chef: Just Desserts and The Next Iron Chef, and I'm reminded all over how artificial these shows are.

This time, the bur under my saddle is the fact that the chefs on these shows have to fight for limited resources, including not only the main ingredients for their challenges, but also staple pantry items such as butter, eggs, herbs, and citrus, not to mention basic equipment like mixers, blenders, and vacuum sealers/immersion circulators (OK, maybe the sous vide gear isn't "basic" for you and me, but it is for these professional chefs). They also compete for space in cramped kitchens. This business of dealing with tight spaces, at least, is something professional chefs have to deal with in Real Life™, but in that case, they're sharing tight space with colleagues, not fighting for it with competitors. In this week's episode of Just Desserts, for instance, Morgan Wilson hit Yigit Pura's pulled-sugar vase with his elbow, setting the stage for Morgan to win the edible-bouquet Quickfire Challenge when Yigit was unable to present his planned display. In his own kitchen, working with his own colleagues, Morgan's elbow could be presumed to be accidental; in the heat of competition, though, who know?

And in last night's episode of Next Iron Chef, Ming Tsai bogarted the limes, and took his sweet time with the vacuum sealer (apparently the only one in the kitchen) before leaving it "destroyed" (really just messy) for Marco Canora, who was sweating bullets waiting for it.

On Next Iron Chef and Top Chef Masters, whose contestants are established, relatively high-profile professional chefs with reputations to protect, the players who've cornered the supply of something will usually (eventually) share... but not always even there, and on the shows whose cheftestants are hungry up-and-comers (e.g., Chopped, Top Chef, and Next Food Network Star), it can get pretty brutal in the trenches.

The thing is, throwing elbows and hoarding butter really have nothing to do with the chefs' ability to cook interesting food... which is what I'm watching for. In the case of Next Iron Chef, this sort of fighting for scarce resources is not only unrelated to working in a restaurant kitchen, it's also unrelated to the fake TV kitchen contestants are trying to get hired for: In Iron Chef America's Kitchen Stadium, both the Iron Chef and the challenger are provided with separate fully equipped workstations, access to fully stocked pantries, and two sous chefs... and with one or two notable exceptions, there's always been plenty of the secret ingredient (in all its provided varieties) for both teams. When they scramble to scoop up all the eggs or clams, the Next Iron Chef competitors are not only doing something they don't do in their "day jobs," they're also doing something they're not going to do in the job they're fighting to get.

Puzzling, no? And yet, I watch!

Unreality TV

Last night I watched the reunion show for the recently completed 7th season of Top Chef, and a point was brought up that has occurred to me often while watching the various cooking competition shows: After a montage of his numerous failed dishes, cheftestant Stephen Hopcraft said (with what I considered startling clarity) that he didn’t disagree with any of the criticisms. He pointed out that his method of working, when he develops new dishes for his restaurant, involves a lot of trial and error, and that didn’t fit well with the format of the competition. Chief Judge Tom Colicchio quickly agreed that there are chefs whose creative process just doesn’t work for Top Chef’s particular type of competition.

Why Stephen didn’t realize this before he signed up to appear on the show — which has broadcast 6 previous seasons, after all — is a separate question, but the exchange brings up a point I’ve long thought bore mentioning: What the chefs do on shows like Top Chef, Iron Chef America, and Chopped isn’t really much like what professional chefs do in their actual working life.

If I might digress... I have a Master's degree in English/Creative Writing. Happily, I was able to do a collection of short stories as my thesis project, to complete the degree, but my fellow MA candidates who were studying literature had to do something called a set text examination, in which they were given a short list of literary texts, expected to study the texts and critical work about them on their own for several months, and then take a (IIRC) 4 hour closed-book essay exam on the works, citing specific sources for critical commentary. It occurred to me, as I watched them prepare, that they were being tested on something nobody actually does in the academic world: Students would have the benefit of a whole semester of class discussion and lecture before taking such an exam; working scholars would never be expected to write from memory, nor in such a constrained time period.

In the same way, timed cooking competitions, often with arbitrary constraints on ingredients, "test" skills no chef would actually use in a professional kitchen: In conceptualizing a new dish, no chef would serve the very first attempt, without any tweaking or development of the recipe and procedures. And no chef in a working restaurant would serve a dish that failed in execution simply because an arbitrary time limit ran out. And yet, in all these cooking shows, chefs are required to make up dishes on the fly, within an arbitrarily short period of time, and to serve their first attempt, whether it's been successfully executed or not.

Given that on many of these shows, the contestants are high-profile chefs, with real reputations (and restaurants) to protect, I always wondered how it affected them when their work was harshly criticized in front of the TV foodie audience. As the exchange between Colicchio and Hopcraft reminds us, though, what we see them do in TV competition is not what they do in their own restaurants.

Better Than Sex? My Ingredient Virginities

Well, I've just watched last week's episode of Iron Chef America, "Battle Truffle," and at one point Alton Brown declared to sideline reporter Kevin Brauch that, "white truffles are better than 97 percent of the sex you'll have in your life."

Wow.

As I think about that, it dawns on me that I've never tasted truffles in my life. That is, it's barely possible that I've had something that had truffles in it... but more likely not, and in any case, I've never tasted them in a situation where I knew what I was tasting. Aside from knowing that they're somehow related, taxonomically, to mushrooms, I have not the first clue what truffles might taste like.

The same is true, it's slowly dawning on me, about more than a few of the ingredients that crop up on the food TV shows I watch: High end ingredients like sea urchin roe (uni), foie gras, and wagyu beef are mysteries to me, but so are more pedestrian things that turn up in the Chopped baskets, like celeriac (celery root), parsnips, and tomatillos.

When I first started watching Chopped, I used to pause the DVR just as each basket was revealed, and try to imagine what I would make with those ingredients... but I had to stop doing that, because far too often there would be at least one ingredient in the basket whose taste I had no clue about.

I'm'a hafta' fix that. For the stuff I can just pick up at the megamart, it should be easy to break my ingredient cherry, but it's going to take a bit of figuring to get my truffle on without breaking the bank. I'll let y'all know how it goes....

An Epiphany

Welcome. I've been thinking about starting this blog for a while now, but have been dithering because I didn't really know where to start until recently, because I couldn't quite figure out what my food-blogger identity should be.

I had always been interested in food (well, who isn't, right... but I mean beyond the everybody-has-to-eat level), had been a casual fan of Iron Chef, and had puttered about the kitchen at various times in my life, but I wouldn't have described myself as a foodie of any stripe. Then a few years ago I was bedridden for about a week with whooping cough (ask your doctor about updating your vaccination, by the way; you do not want this), and at some point during that week I stumbled onto a season-so-far marathon of Top Chef Season 2 episodes on Bravo.

I was hooked. Before long, I was watching every cooking competition show I could find — Iron Chef America, Next Food Network Star, Next Iron Chef, Top Chef Masters, Chopped, even Worst Cooks in America — along with noncompetition shows like Alton Brown's Good Eats and Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations. I started putting cookbooks and kitchen gear on my lists for every gift-giving occasion. I bought an ice-cream maker.

For years I'd been growing hot peppers in a tiny garden patch in my yard, and occasionally pickling the meager yield or making jelly; now I added tomatoes and cucumbers, and containers of herbs on my deck. From listening to Rachel Maddow on her old Air America radio show, I'd become fascinated with cocktails, and had acquired bar tools and stocked the liquor cabinet. I'd dabbled in homebrewing decades ago in college, and now I purchased gear to try it again.

But I still wasn't cooking. In theory, I'm an amateur cook and mixologist and brewer and... but it's all just theory; in fact, what I really am, so far at least, is a food voyeur. Not only do I not cook, I don't even really eat: Though my wife and I eat out a lot, we don't manage to go to real fine-dining restaurants very often.

All this crystallized for me a few days ago. I'd been out running errands and listening to the audiobook of Bourdain's Medium Raw, and when I got home, I sat down to prep some of my jalapenos for canning. By chance, I'd just heard Bourdain's paean to the artistry of the fish prep chef at Le Bernardin, and here I was hacking through my peppers with all the subtlety of a weedwhacker. I mean, the closest thing I have to a "knife skill" is the ability to (usually) avoid cutting any part of myself off. I felt silly even trying.

But then it dawned on me: Of course I'm a hacker; what else would I expect to be. The fellow Bourdain so praised was a trained professional, and had been honing his art at one of the best restaurants in the country for a couple decades. It was stupid in the extreme of me to make that comparison at any level, even in a fleeting passing thought.

And it further dawned on me that I haven't been cooking much because, subconsciously, I know I can't cook like the people I watch on TV. And I don't go to fine restaurants because I know I don't have the palate of Bourdain or his friend Eric Ripert or the hosts and judges on the shows I watch.

Well so what? Of course I can't, and don't. It's been silly of me to let that hang me up. So now I'm going to just frickin' cook... or at least I'm going to try to. And I'm going to write about it here, along with anything else that pops into my head that has to do with food and drink. Maybe a few folks will come along for the ride.