Sunday, January 8, 2012

Top Chef Texas, Episode 9: Modernist Malfunction

I only just got round to spending some quality time with Che, my DVR, and Bravo's crazy cheftestants, but I've got to say - this episode was worth its weight in GE Monogram appliances!

Not because of the elimination challenge, I hasten to add, a barbecue blowout that demonstrated only the degree to which a wife-beater is inevitably a poor fashion choice, no matter how good-looking the wearer might believe himself to be. I'm afraid my knowledge of and enthusiasm for smoky, saucy, slow-cooked goodness (I mean barbecue, of course, not Chris C. and his questionable undergarment) are limited by a variety of geographical disadvantages, not least of which is the fact that my formative culinary years were spent in a culture where barbecue means any al fresco cooking of chicken or sausages over an open fire - what we Yanks, in fact, call grilling. What The Others call grilling we call broiling. And don't even get me started on the confectionary confusion wrought by Mars Bars, Milky Ways, and Marathons.

But I digress.

No, my interest was piqued in the show's first five minutes, while our contenders were sitting around in the Top Chef House, smoking (!) and complaining, well, about pretty much everything as far as I could tell. A sinister knock at the door was followed by a flunkie rolling into the kitchen - be still my beating heart! - a trolley laden with all five volumes of Modernist Cuisine, nestled resplendently in their Plexiglas sarcophagus. What thrills! What excitement!

At my house, anyway. It may have been my imagination, but a number of the gladiators adopted the sort of blank stare that often appears on the faces of people who are aware they're expected to know what they're looking at, but emphatically do not. A kinder correspondent than yours truly would probably characterize the response as tepid rather than pathetically ignorant, as I am tempted to do.

It was the job of Edward to TH that Modernist Cuisine is 'like, a game changer about how to approach all of cuisine with a modernist mindset.' Not perhaps the most profound insight into the contribution of Myhrvold et al, but at least he tried. The best Chris ('I wear top knot') J. could come up with was that 'it is the most elite cookbook in all of America' - a pitiful description of a treatise that considers foams (a subject about which I have lately been reading a good deal) in terms of the Kelvin Problem, Weaire-Phelan structures, and the Beijing National Aquatics Center.

Chris ('I wear a wife-beater') C. dismissed the work as containing 'way too many graphs' while the rest of the chefs paged frantically through the volumes - looking, one supposed, for easy recipes to pull out during the next day's Quickfire.

Che and I sat back in our favorite toile-upholstered armchair, confidently predicting disaster.

Sure enough, our stunned wannabes dribbled onto set the following morning, to be greeted by Pads and my newest hero, Nathan Myhrvold. Given forty-five minutes to create a dish 'that best illustrates modernist cuisine' they all hurriedly got to work with their thickeners, starches, and gels, eager to demonstrate the one molecularly gastronomical trick they'd memorized over breakfast and would no doubt forget before lunch.

All except The Top Knot, that is. Chris J., it transpired, was already a bona fide expert - to such a degree that he seemed surprised Myhrvold et al had not thought to consult him during their painstaking research. 'A lot of the techniques in this book I've maybe done first,' he modestly TH'd - an assertion that, even without his ridiculous hairstyle, I might have had trouble taking seriously. He decided to introduce the judges to his secret weapon - a miracle berry tablet - a super-protein that 'blocks the tastebuds so that sour tastes sweet', allowing an unsuspecting victim to suck on a lemon without his face puckering into one of those wizened heads carved from dried apples.

Chuckling delightedly at his own cleverness, The Top Knot got down to creating a plate of deconstructed cheesecake and diet soda made from grapefruit, witch hazel, and battery acid. Meanwhile, The Wife Beater whittered on about how his own production of execrable 'modernist' paintings (thank you, Bravo, for sharing video of his primitive nudes - I almost went off my breakfast!) put him in good stead to walk away with the Quickfire prize. Ty-Lor prepared watermelon the way they do, presumably, on the planet Xarxax, with olive oil powder fabricated with tapioca maltodextrin. 'When it hits your tongue, it turns back into olive oil!' he gushed. Che and I were somewhat dismayed by this intelligence: I mean, when one is happily scarfing watermelon at a picnic, is a sudden mouthful of olive oil anything other than an unwelcome surprise?

The rest of the chefs thankfully limited their efforts to spherification and the output of cream whippers.

When time was called and the modernist mercenaries lined up for judgement, poor Beverly was first to present. She gave her siphon a few good shakes and prepared to squirt curry cream all over her dish. 'Foam away!' ordered out host, and with a hiss, a gurgle, and an appalling blast Pads received a healthy dose of goo all over her rather tacky skirt. Horrified by this turn of events, Beverly waved her cream whipper around in dismay, only to knock all her pots and pans off the prep table with a resounding crash. While the unlucky molecularist scrabbled around on the floor picking up the largest, most dangerous items, The Glamorous One demurely attempted to hose herself down. Nathan, in a heartwarming display of support, joked that it was truly modernist to serve food on the guests, and gave Bev a few hints on how to use her device. She had failed to hold it vertically, for one thing, and left on the N2O charger - two rookie mistakes that I, as an espumier of an entire week's standing, would not have countenanced. Muttering something about never being allowed to attend sleepovers as a child (huh?) Beverly slunk back to ignominy while the judges moved on to more successful plates.

Sarah's breakfast raviolo was a big hit ('Pasta is a high technique food!' enthused Nathan) as was The Alien's watermelon creation. The Top Knot's dish was welcomed more cautiously. Pads thought the miracle berry was beyond fabulous and swigged rapaciously from the proffered lemon, but Nathan was somewhat reserved in his praise, I thought. He informed the increasingly-deflated chef that he already knew all about miracle berries - indeed, he grew them in his own basement - and upon being told that he was about to taste 'the world's first soda made without artificial sweeteners,' he quipped, 'You just have to suck on the right pill first.' The Top Knot giggled nervously, lost the quickfire, and that was that.

While the barbecue brouhaha unfolded, I did some quick research on miracle berries, of which I had not previously heard. It's possible they're discussed in Modernist Cuisine, although that reference's lack of an index (that I've been able to locate, anyway), makes such an inquiry difficult to organize. Google directed me not, astonishingly enough, to Wikipedia, but the good people at Think Geek, providers of holiday stocking stuffers to the stars. 'Truly, words can't describe the life-altering sensations caused by these little tablets,' rhapsodized the modernist marketers. 'Join the new craze for hosting flavor tripping parties!' Quite apart from the chagrin caused by the realization that I have missed out on yet another culinary trend, I was still in the dark about the mechanism behind the phenomenon. The geeks told me miracle berries (Synsepelum dulficum from West Africa, to be exact) were 'first documented by a French dude in 1725' and that the active ingredient was a protein called miraculin, which somehow binds to taste buds in ways unknown to science.

Further reportage on this intriguing discovery will be forthcoming. I am reliably informed that in addition to being modernist, hip, and mind-bendingly awesome, miracle berry tablets are also - wait for it - gluten-free.

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