A long time ago in a faraway land there lived seven dwarfs. Their names were Whiny, Cutie-Pie, Kentucky (Bluegrass), Freckles, Top Knot, The Unobjectionable One, and The Girl Who Never Went to Sleepovers.
The dwarfs complained a lot - especially Whiny - because they were being held captive in a GE Monogram kitchen by The Minions of Bravo. Sometimes there were four Minions but usually there were only three because The Unibrow was often so busy hunkering under bridges with trolls that he forgot to come to work. The Minions forced the dwarfs to cook delicious meals using strange ingredients from conveyor belts and barbecue huts, which made the dwarfs distracted and a little crazy - especially The Girl Who Never Went to Sleepovers.
Whenever The Minions were displeased by a dish, they fed its creator to wolves. Thus the prisoners lived in perpetual fear - except for The Top Knot, who thought he was better and smarter than all the other dwarfs.
One day it so happened that an Evil Queen (also known as Charlize the Movie Star) descended from her lair to visit the captives and demand a Gothic Feast full of creepies and crawlies and long-legged beasties. 'Frighten me with your wicked cuisine!' she ordered, 'Or I will condemn you all to a life slinging hash at franchise family eateries!'
The dwarfs, horrified by the prospect of the witch's curse, put their imaginations into overdrive and came up with a seven-course dinner to appease her dread appetites.
Kentucky (Bluegrass) decided to create a plate of tuna tartare with one white sauce (Asian pear vinaigrette) and one black sauce (made with black garlic and ponzu). 'It represents good and evil!' he helpfully explained, just in case the Queen was a little slow on the uptake. His addition of deep-fried fish skins with the scales still on was deemed both gross and exciting by the Minions, thus saving the hapless dwarf from a fate worse than death.
Whiny decided to satisfy the Malevolent One's taste for blood with red risotto cooked with Amarone and lambs' hearts. Although the dish was judged 'flavorful' by the Minions, they also declared it undercooked and too cheese-intense. It was a near-run thing for Whiny, who in her nervousness had forgotten the lessons from the dwarves' dark history, in which risotto cookery inevitably leads to ruin and despair.
Cutie-Pie doubled, doubled, toiled, and troubled over a witches' stew made from short ribs, scallops, and dragon beans. The Minions licked their plates clean and said the stew was 'damn good', leaving the wolves in the wings disappointed that, this week at least, there would be no Southern belles served up as a tasty hor d'oeuvre.
Freckles went outside her usual comfort zone and created a 'crime scene on a plate' consisting of black chicken, beets, foie gras, and a fried quail egg to 'represent the baby chicken that lost its life.' The Minions revelled in the dish's audacity and bloodthirstiness - and remarked how revolting it was to be served a black chicken foot with the nails still on it. Tragically, Freckles' greens were oversalted and only her wicked under-the-bus tossing of a fellow dwarf at judges' table saved her from the dining dungeons of suburban strip malls.
The Top Knot retrieved his magic bag of tricks from its hiding place and put together a poisoned apple with cherry pie. He billowed liquid nitrogen all over the place to make it like like cauldron smoke. For once, the Minions liked what he had done and rewarded him by not throwing him into a bottomless chasm full of quicksand and miracle berry tablets.
The Unobjectionable One made an enchanted forest with beets every way, cherries and lots of other stuff. The piece de resistance was a big bloody handprint - SPLAT! - in the middle of each plate. The Evil Queen thought it was 'beautiful and scary' - just like her - and her magic mirror sycophantically agreed. The Unobjectionable One was crowned the winner, and for his pains was subsequently turned into a toad.
The poor Girl Who Never Went to Sleepovers doomed herself to eternal torments with the conceit that 'Snow White is a halibut'. The Minions agreed that her dish was 'nice' but not 'wicked or dark' as per the challenge's brief. Even worse, her sauce suffered from a 'weird texture' caused by a surfeit of arrowroot and newts' eyes, causing the unlucky Dwarf to beg for her life at judges' table. Never one to be deterred by sentimentality, trails of breadcrumbs, or Princes Charming (yes, Eric - we're looking at you!), The Evil Queen banished the GWNWtS from the GE Monogram kitchen forever and for always, cackling horribly as she did so.
As the Minions rode away on their broomsticks, the remaining six Dwarves were left in the kitchen to ponder - of the two fates, which was worse?
Showing posts with label Top Chef: Texas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Top Chef: Texas. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
A Final Word on Foams
I confess to feeling a bit remorseful about my snarky attitude towards Beverly's foam failure, which provided me with no end of schadenfreude when I finally watched the latest episode of Top Chef on Sunday.
I had, after all, just one successful espuma to my name, and that only after several days' and N2O cartridges' worth of effort. In the interest of preserving my right to cast stones, therefore, I decided to put my fabulous new cream whipper to work on a spur-of-the-moment project, first-time success of which would forever allow me to criticize (constructively, of course) the bungled attempts of others.
I put all my hard-won experience and new-found knowledge to work and adapted a recipe that appeared in one of the many, many booklets provided by my siphon's manufacturer. I altered the ingredients somewhat and converted all the crazy metric measurements to good old-fashioned American ones, coming up with a fine recipe for a new dessert that I will employ to delight dinner guests in the months to come.
In addition to my confounding cream whipper, I utilized my microwave to melt the chocolate - mostly because a microwave is another device that appears to drive top cheftestants insane. I call my creation ...
White Chocolate and Amarula Mousse, Just to Show 'Em
Before you begin, make sure your very best cream whipper is good and cold from having been stored in the fridge for an hour or two. Don't forget, Myrhvold et al have demonstrated - exhaustively - that temperature is the keyest ingredient to foaming success!
Break up five ounces of good quality white chocolate in a bowl and zap it in the microwave until it's melted and creamy. I suppose you could melt the chocolate in a double boiler if you weren't feeling superior. Set aside to cool for a few minutes.
Meanwhile, whip together one whole egg; one additional egg yolk; and one ounce of Amarula. Any cream liqueur would do, probably: Bailey's, Heather Cream, Advocaat, whatever. Amarula is our favorite, though, and I've still got half a bottle to get through. What a hardship!
Temper the white chocolate with a little of the egg mixture, then beat it all up together. Finally, add about eight-and-one-half ounces of heavy whipping cream and whisk vigorously. Strain the concoction into your cream whipper. Straining is very important: even the tiniest little speck of scrambled egg will cause the mousse to spurt from your device in a prolonged series of gassily rude eruptions!
Screw on an N2O cartridge and release the gas into the vessel. Remove the cartridge for ease of squirting later on and give the apparatus a few vigorous shakes. We are not German, so we are not going to bother with specifying an exact number. Five seconds or so seems about right.
Return the siphon to the fridge where it should be stored on its side for at least a couple of hours and at most 3-4 days.
When you are ready to enjoy your mousse, screw on your favorite dispensing nozzle. I like the one shaped like a mumps-infected saw-toothed triffid.
Give your whipper a few final shakes for good measure, hold it vertically (upside-down, of course) and gently dispense the deliciousness contained within. I've discovered it's a good idea to do a trial run on a small plate in the kitchen, out of range of your guests' line of sight or the outfits of any TC judges that might be lurking about. You can always give the mixture a few more shakes if it seems too runny. When you are confident you are a good to go, you can foam away with a suitable public flourish.
The mousse would be awesome on fresh fruit, particularly strawberries - although it would also be a fine adornment to gluten-free vanilla cake.
Addendum: I am told by reliable sources that the garment onto which Bev's curry foam was spritzed was not, in fact, a 'rather tacky skirt' but a Missoni creation that probably cost, like, a gazillion dollars. I trust Pads has learned her lesson and will no longer sport designer duds in the vicinity of would-be molecular gastronomists.
I had, after all, just one successful espuma to my name, and that only after several days' and N2O cartridges' worth of effort. In the interest of preserving my right to cast stones, therefore, I decided to put my fabulous new cream whipper to work on a spur-of-the-moment project, first-time success of which would forever allow me to criticize (constructively, of course) the bungled attempts of others.
I put all my hard-won experience and new-found knowledge to work and adapted a recipe that appeared in one of the many, many booklets provided by my siphon's manufacturer. I altered the ingredients somewhat and converted all the crazy metric measurements to good old-fashioned American ones, coming up with a fine recipe for a new dessert that I will employ to delight dinner guests in the months to come.
In addition to my confounding cream whipper, I utilized my microwave to melt the chocolate - mostly because a microwave is another device that appears to drive top cheftestants insane. I call my creation ...
White Chocolate and Amarula Mousse, Just to Show 'Em
Before you begin, make sure your very best cream whipper is good and cold from having been stored in the fridge for an hour or two. Don't forget, Myrhvold et al have demonstrated - exhaustively - that temperature is the keyest ingredient to foaming success!
Break up five ounces of good quality white chocolate in a bowl and zap it in the microwave until it's melted and creamy. I suppose you could melt the chocolate in a double boiler if you weren't feeling superior. Set aside to cool for a few minutes.
Meanwhile, whip together one whole egg; one additional egg yolk; and one ounce of Amarula. Any cream liqueur would do, probably: Bailey's, Heather Cream, Advocaat, whatever. Amarula is our favorite, though, and I've still got half a bottle to get through. What a hardship!
Temper the white chocolate with a little of the egg mixture, then beat it all up together. Finally, add about eight-and-one-half ounces of heavy whipping cream and whisk vigorously. Strain the concoction into your cream whipper. Straining is very important: even the tiniest little speck of scrambled egg will cause the mousse to spurt from your device in a prolonged series of gassily rude eruptions!
Screw on an N2O cartridge and release the gas into the vessel. Remove the cartridge for ease of squirting later on and give the apparatus a few vigorous shakes. We are not German, so we are not going to bother with specifying an exact number. Five seconds or so seems about right.
Return the siphon to the fridge where it should be stored on its side for at least a couple of hours and at most 3-4 days.
When you are ready to enjoy your mousse, screw on your favorite dispensing nozzle. I like the one shaped like a mumps-infected saw-toothed triffid.
Give your whipper a few final shakes for good measure, hold it vertically (upside-down, of course) and gently dispense the deliciousness contained within. I've discovered it's a good idea to do a trial run on a small plate in the kitchen, out of range of your guests' line of sight or the outfits of any TC judges that might be lurking about. You can always give the mixture a few more shakes if it seems too runny. When you are confident you are a good to go, you can foam away with a suitable public flourish.
The mousse would be awesome on fresh fruit, particularly strawberries - although it would also be a fine adornment to gluten-free vanilla cake.
Addendum: I am told by reliable sources that the garment onto which Bev's curry foam was spritzed was not, in fact, a 'rather tacky skirt' but a Missoni creation that probably cost, like, a gazillion dollars. I trust Pads has learned her lesson and will no longer sport designer duds in the vicinity of would-be molecular gastronomists.
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.
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.
Friday, December 23, 2011
Ructions
Once again, I have missed the current installment of Pads and the Unibrow Do Texas. I'm not sure, but I think the episode involved Tweets (or possibly twits) and Heather getting sent home in a hail of gunfire.
Or so I gather.
The reason I missed my favorite show this week was that I was having a Top Chef experience all my own courtesy of Sir, the holiday season, and the good people at our local high-end pan-Asian-but-mostly-Japanese chow house, of which we have been loyal fans for years. The restaurant has proved to be one of those places where a wheat-free warrior can present herself for a post-movie meal and - with minimum fuss - be rewarded with gluten-free delights such as foie gras with roasted pineapple and eel salsa; sous vide salmon with pistachios and pine nuts; and tuna with tomato yuzu chutney. Wash it all down with a sake-and-cucumber on ice and one is able either to celebrate a new four-star-find or recover from a regrettable two-thumbs-down turkey. Either way it's difficult to lose.
Since none of the flicks we are desperate to see has as yet come to the Valley (although there are tantalizing rumours that Gary Oldman's new Tinker, Tailor etc. will be appearing only 40 miles away come mid-January), we showed up for dinner sans cinematic hors d'ouevre. The Kid Squid's absence and something akin to holiday giddiness led us absentmindedly to peruse the chef's tasting menu, something we rarely do for three reasons:
But how, on this occasion, could we resist oysters, quail eggs, diver scallops, and (be still my heart) wild boar? Not easily, that's for sure. Besides, the number of times I've seen wild boar on a menu hereabouts I could count on one hand and not even worry about carpal tunnel syndrome.
The bill of fare was admirably effuse in its descriptions and all the offerings looked pretty safe, gluten-wise. I double-checked with our server, who said she would, in turn, double-check with Chef and that was that. Sir and I sat back with our ridiculous cocktails and waited expectantly for the delights that would no doubt soon be coming our way.
Soon afterwards, the First Course arrived: a quicksmoked Kumamoto oyster with Reisling caviar, pickled cornichon, pearl onion and paddlefish roe. The dish was served in a large glass snifter with a lid on it, just like they have been doing at Alinea since time immemorial and everywhere else on the planet for the past three years or so. Still, it was the first time I'd experienced such sophistication in the Valley and it was pretty exciting, I must say. Chef had clearly been practicing with his spherification kit to produce the sparkly-sweet caviar and we contentedly slurped away, enjoying the play of sea and smoke. Sir thought the cornichon was briny overkill and a long discussion about acidity and its desirability ensued.
Our conversation became so involved that we failed, at first, to notice the rather excessive hiatus between our first and second courses. Soon, however, just as my fascinating exposition about traditional Japanese pickling methods was winding down, our server appeared. She apologized for the delay and explained that Chef was in the process of knocking his be-toqued head against the wall, since most of the upcoming courses contained soy sauce in various guises and required, in her words, 'reworking'.
You will no doubt remember that over a year ago, newly reeling from my quack's gluten-free decrees, I engaged in some extensive internet research and concluded that - even though wheat is used in its production - shoyu contains no gluten because during its distillation the protein chains are broken down into their constituent amino acids. Since I have not yet been able to raise sufficient funds to undertake the necessary laboratory testing myself, I must confess this belief is more a matter of faith than hard science. Nonetheless, I stick by it and defy anyone to convince me differently.
Clearly, though, Chef had failed to receive the memo.
I was instantly filled with remorse. My desire to cause as little fuss in restaurants as is humanly possible is well-recorded. If I had known I was going to cause a kitchen kerfuffle I would have either a) ordered off the a la carte menu as per usual or b) kept my mouth shut and discreetly left to one side any obviously gluten-filled morsels. It had certainly not been my intention to require that every dish coming out of the expeditor's window (at a Japanese restaurant, no less) contain no soy sauce! I considered passing my wheat wisdom on to the cooks (who were no doubt by this point cursing the heavens and punters like me who have outrageously faddy dietary requirements), but Sir threatened to walk out if I did. We were at this point committed, he pointed out, and who were we to say the establishment's hash slingers weren't enjoying the thrilling novelty of cooking something new? Dubiously but obediently, I agreed to take what came with good grace.
From this point onwards the dishes Sir and I ate differed in several important respects, so I decided to document the meal for posterity. I didn't have my trusty wee Olympus with me and was therefore obliged to use my Smartyphone. An additional technical snafu occured when I accidentally set the camera to 'video' and I was forced subsequently to edit the footage using the device's rather troublesome screen-capture function. This was helpfully demonstrated to me by the Kid Squid when we finally returned home six hours later.
Second Course
Tuna poke with caramelized onion puree, tasaka seaweed salad, Hawaiian sea salt and a poached quail egg. We detected few obvious dissimilarities except for the soy schmear on Sir's gluten-filled plate. It is possible I was also missing the onions, but it was hard to tell without a direct taste comparison (an impossibility without the risk of approbation and flying santoku hurled from the direction of the kitchen). The quail egg was roughly the size of my thumbnail and oozed everywhere when I jabbed it. It was like eating a very diminutive steak tartare. Divine.
Third Course
The restaurant's signature sushi tasting, which has long been a soyless sakana serenade. On this occasion it consisted of maguro with onion, hamachi with yuzu paste, sake with mustard miso and mint, and suzuki with lemon and shiso:
Fourth Course
Wild mushroom soup with truffle oil. This took ages and ages since, as it turned out, they had to come up with something completely different for me. I was presented with a bowl of heavenly clam soup with enoki. The enoki were a revelation - they acted and tasted just like very al dente strands of pasta. I was inspired.
Fifth Course
A pan-seared diver scallop with edamame humus, green peas, haricot verts, and cinnamon foam. This was a complete triumph. The scallop sat atop a nabe of hot salt on which were arrayed toasty cinnamon sticks and star anise. I was lacking the cinnamon foam but didn't really miss it what with all the aromatic waftings going on. The scallop was the size of a hockey puck, and the texture of one, too - if the puck in question were made of warm melting butter.
Sixth Course
The much-anticipated wild boar chop with a sweet potato croquette, lamb meatball, and mustard greens. This was the only course about which I had actually been concerned in the first place and with good reason, as it turned out. Chef duly pulled out all the stops to give me something special. He went to the trouble of de-boning the chop and adorning it with all manner of deliciously wasabi-enrobed veg, such that I felt healthy and virtuous as well as gluten-free. The meat itself was pink, juicy, and rich. I permitted Sir to pick up his bone and gnaw on it, just this once.
Final Course
Pumpkin souffle. As far as we could tell, the two plates were identical: the souffle (unfortunately fallen by the time I was able to arrange a suitable composition) was accompanied by sweet cinnamon cream and homemade eggnog ice cream. As I scraped my cup clean I pondered the beauty of souffles and made a new year's resolution to produce some of the sweet variety in my own kitchen when the first available opportunity presented itself.
So ended my first experience of special handling in a restaurant. The meal took about seven times longer than might usually have been the case, but the staff imdulged my weirdness with grace and aplomb. I went from feeling downright guilty and regretful to pleased and satisfied - pleased because the kitchen had clearly gone to a good deal of trouble to appease me and satisfied because I had been served a wonderful gluten-free meal that had neither the feeling of 'second best' nor 'making do.' The kitchen outdid itself to make my holiday dinner a memorable and enjoyable one, despite the inconvenience and trouble I had no doubt caused.
But then, as Sir pointed out, it wouldn't be Top Chef without the challenge.
Next up: requiring a holiday challenge of my own, I attempt to make spiced bread pudding from Schar's gluten-free panettone.
Or so I gather.
The reason I missed my favorite show this week was that I was having a Top Chef experience all my own courtesy of Sir, the holiday season, and the good people at our local high-end pan-Asian-but-mostly-Japanese chow house, of which we have been loyal fans for years. The restaurant has proved to be one of those places where a wheat-free warrior can present herself for a post-movie meal and - with minimum fuss - be rewarded with gluten-free delights such as foie gras with roasted pineapple and eel salsa; sous vide salmon with pistachios and pine nuts; and tuna with tomato yuzu chutney. Wash it all down with a sake-and-cucumber on ice and one is able either to celebrate a new four-star-find or recover from a regrettable two-thumbs-down turkey. Either way it's difficult to lose.
Since none of the flicks we are desperate to see has as yet come to the Valley (although there are tantalizing rumours that Gary Oldman's new Tinker, Tailor etc. will be appearing only 40 miles away come mid-January), we showed up for dinner sans cinematic hors d'ouevre. The Kid Squid's absence and something akin to holiday giddiness led us absentmindedly to peruse the chef's tasting menu, something we rarely do for three reasons:
- the Squid refuses to sit still long enough for the rest of the family to eat more than two courses. Since he is not a dessert eater, this tragic state of affairs used to result in my being denied my favorite part of a restaurant meal. As most eateries of my acquaintance are unable to offer a gluten-free sweet other than creme brulee, however, this is no longer the heartbreaker it was in my distant cake and tart-consuming past
- Sir and I have a deep suspicion of chefs' menus. Having experienced (let there be no mistake) a few by chefs of great renown, we have come to the conclusion that sitting through a four-hour dinner of small courses is like watching avant garde theater or a runway show of Lacroix couture. To be sure, one admires the artistry and skill on display and utters knowingly appreciative oohs and aahs, but it's difficult to come away with a sense of one's soul having been satisfied. But that's just us. Heathens.
- Sir and I are usually too fiscally responsible to spring for a tasting menu. See above.
But how, on this occasion, could we resist oysters, quail eggs, diver scallops, and (be still my heart) wild boar? Not easily, that's for sure. Besides, the number of times I've seen wild boar on a menu hereabouts I could count on one hand and not even worry about carpal tunnel syndrome.
The bill of fare was admirably effuse in its descriptions and all the offerings looked pretty safe, gluten-wise. I double-checked with our server, who said she would, in turn, double-check with Chef and that was that. Sir and I sat back with our ridiculous cocktails and waited expectantly for the delights that would no doubt soon be coming our way.
Soon afterwards, the First Course arrived: a quicksmoked Kumamoto oyster with Reisling caviar, pickled cornichon, pearl onion and paddlefish roe. The dish was served in a large glass snifter with a lid on it, just like they have been doing at Alinea since time immemorial and everywhere else on the planet for the past three years or so. Still, it was the first time I'd experienced such sophistication in the Valley and it was pretty exciting, I must say. Chef had clearly been practicing with his spherification kit to produce the sparkly-sweet caviar and we contentedly slurped away, enjoying the play of sea and smoke. Sir thought the cornichon was briny overkill and a long discussion about acidity and its desirability ensued.
Our conversation became so involved that we failed, at first, to notice the rather excessive hiatus between our first and second courses. Soon, however, just as my fascinating exposition about traditional Japanese pickling methods was winding down, our server appeared. She apologized for the delay and explained that Chef was in the process of knocking his be-toqued head against the wall, since most of the upcoming courses contained soy sauce in various guises and required, in her words, 'reworking'.
***
I'd forgotten that the rest of the world believes soy sauce is filled with gluten!
***
I'd forgotten that the rest of the world believes soy sauce is filled with gluten!
***
You will no doubt remember that over a year ago, newly reeling from my quack's gluten-free decrees, I engaged in some extensive internet research and concluded that - even though wheat is used in its production - shoyu contains no gluten because during its distillation the protein chains are broken down into their constituent amino acids. Since I have not yet been able to raise sufficient funds to undertake the necessary laboratory testing myself, I must confess this belief is more a matter of faith than hard science. Nonetheless, I stick by it and defy anyone to convince me differently.
Clearly, though, Chef had failed to receive the memo.
I was instantly filled with remorse. My desire to cause as little fuss in restaurants as is humanly possible is well-recorded. If I had known I was going to cause a kitchen kerfuffle I would have either a) ordered off the a la carte menu as per usual or b) kept my mouth shut and discreetly left to one side any obviously gluten-filled morsels. It had certainly not been my intention to require that every dish coming out of the expeditor's window (at a Japanese restaurant, no less) contain no soy sauce! I considered passing my wheat wisdom on to the cooks (who were no doubt by this point cursing the heavens and punters like me who have outrageously faddy dietary requirements), but Sir threatened to walk out if I did. We were at this point committed, he pointed out, and who were we to say the establishment's hash slingers weren't enjoying the thrilling novelty of cooking something new? Dubiously but obediently, I agreed to take what came with good grace.
From this point onwards the dishes Sir and I ate differed in several important respects, so I decided to document the meal for posterity. I didn't have my trusty wee Olympus with me and was therefore obliged to use my Smartyphone. An additional technical snafu occured when I accidentally set the camera to 'video' and I was forced subsequently to edit the footage using the device's rather troublesome screen-capture function. This was helpfully demonstrated to me by the Kid Squid when we finally returned home six hours later.
Second Course
Tuna poke with caramelized onion puree, tasaka seaweed salad, Hawaiian sea salt and a poached quail egg. We detected few obvious dissimilarities except for the soy schmear on Sir's gluten-filled plate. It is possible I was also missing the onions, but it was hard to tell without a direct taste comparison (an impossibility without the risk of approbation and flying santoku hurled from the direction of the kitchen). The quail egg was roughly the size of my thumbnail and oozed everywhere when I jabbed it. It was like eating a very diminutive steak tartare. Divine.
 |
| Gluten-filled poke |
 |
| Gluten-free poke |
Third Course
The restaurant's signature sushi tasting, which has long been a soyless sakana serenade. On this occasion it consisted of maguro with onion, hamachi with yuzu paste, sake with mustard miso and mint, and suzuki with lemon and shiso:
Fourth Course
Wild mushroom soup with truffle oil. This took ages and ages since, as it turned out, they had to come up with something completely different for me. I was presented with a bowl of heavenly clam soup with enoki. The enoki were a revelation - they acted and tasted just like very al dente strands of pasta. I was inspired.
Fifth Course
A pan-seared diver scallop with edamame humus, green peas, haricot verts, and cinnamon foam. This was a complete triumph. The scallop sat atop a nabe of hot salt on which were arrayed toasty cinnamon sticks and star anise. I was lacking the cinnamon foam but didn't really miss it what with all the aromatic waftings going on. The scallop was the size of a hockey puck, and the texture of one, too - if the puck in question were made of warm melting butter.
 |
| Gluten-filled scallop |
 |
| Gluten-free scallop |
Sixth Course
The much-anticipated wild boar chop with a sweet potato croquette, lamb meatball, and mustard greens. This was the only course about which I had actually been concerned in the first place and with good reason, as it turned out. Chef duly pulled out all the stops to give me something special. He went to the trouble of de-boning the chop and adorning it with all manner of deliciously wasabi-enrobed veg, such that I felt healthy and virtuous as well as gluten-free. The meat itself was pink, juicy, and rich. I permitted Sir to pick up his bone and gnaw on it, just this once.
 |
| Gluten-filled boar chop |
 |
| Gluten-free boar chop |
Final Course
Pumpkin souffle. As far as we could tell, the two plates were identical: the souffle (unfortunately fallen by the time I was able to arrange a suitable composition) was accompanied by sweet cinnamon cream and homemade eggnog ice cream. As I scraped my cup clean I pondered the beauty of souffles and made a new year's resolution to produce some of the sweet variety in my own kitchen when the first available opportunity presented itself.
So ended my first experience of special handling in a restaurant. The meal took about seven times longer than might usually have been the case, but the staff imdulged my weirdness with grace and aplomb. I went from feeling downright guilty and regretful to pleased and satisfied - pleased because the kitchen had clearly gone to a good deal of trouble to appease me and satisfied because I had been served a wonderful gluten-free meal that had neither the feeling of 'second best' nor 'making do.' The kitchen outdid itself to make my holiday dinner a memorable and enjoyable one, despite the inconvenience and trouble I had no doubt caused.
But then, as Sir pointed out, it wouldn't be Top Chef without the challenge.
Next up: requiring a holiday challenge of my own, I attempt to make spiced bread pudding from Schar's gluten-free panettone.
Friday, December 16, 2011
Top Chef Texas, Episode 7: L Words
L is for Tim Love, the cutest guest judge to appear on Top Chef in some time. 'Good tequila is made to be sipped - like a fine wine or a good craft beer,' he winsomely declared, before tasking our culinary combatants with a quickfire challenge involving food pairings with many varieties of Mexican agave juice.
L is for Lush, Lighthearted, and Lubricious, all of which are useful adjectives that might be employed to describe tequila's impish profile. Sadly, the marketing folks at Don Julio have not cottoned on to these valuable modifiers, requiring our chefs to shill for their product using descriptors such as 'aloe vera green-ness,' 'caramel woodsy notes,' 'sweet, smoky, and earthy,' and 'crisp and clear.' To be fair, aloe vera does have an L in it.
Lacklustre seemed an adequate summary of the quickfire dishes, although Chris J. paired his blanco with pan-seared chicken, lime vinaigrette, and something called 'puffed quinoa', which I thought sounded intriguing. A 45-minute search on Bravo's appalling website revealed that one puffs the substance in question by frying it in 350 deg oil until it becomes crispy and - you guessed it - inflated with its own importance. If I weren't boycotting quinoa until such time as Bolivian agriculture gets its priorities straight, I'd try it myself. It would make for a lively and luring gluten-free accompaniment to plain grilled proteins - especially if one used the red stuff.
L is also for my girl Lindsay who got a shout-out for her excellent pairing of anejo with salmon, fennel puree and brown butter sauce (tragically, she didn't win the $5000 - the prize went to Ty-Lor, whose name might start with an L. I'm not really sure, but I suppose it's possible that his unusual sobriquet is quite common in the distant galaxy from which he no doubt hails). Poor Lindsay! Upon hearing from her fellow cheftestants that her rack of boar-adorning kohlrabi slaw was watery, she lagubriously admitted that the news was 'gut-wrenching.' Never mind, Lindsay, I still think you're laudably lovely, with the sweetest little old accent this side of Lee County!
Loopy is how Heather behaved when working with Bev for the game-inspired elimination challenge. I say working, but it would be more correct to call it heckling, baiting, bossing, and bullying. Attempting to defend a substandard dish of insufficiently-rendered duck breast and pickled cherries, she blethered on and on about Bev's deficiencies in the kitchen during challenges past - causing Bev's allies (of whom there were legion) to spring into a sort of fending-off action. It was an unedifying spectacle, calling to mind the words 'snotty' and 'bitch', even though neither of them contains the letter of the day.
Losing heart is how I would describe the Heimlich Maneuver at this point, disappointed as he was by polenta side-dishes; black-and-blue venison; sweat-covered plates draped with 'bouquets of greens' (we call them salads in my house, but what do we know?); sweet-potato daisy chains; and nervous breakdown-inducing squab sausage. Is it my imagination or is the HM losing his enthusiasm for the process? He certainly doesn't seem to be enjoying himself at judges' table these days.
I know he feels: let down and listless. Or as Che would say, desinteresado.
I would say it too - but it doesn't start with an L.
L is for Lush, Lighthearted, and Lubricious, all of which are useful adjectives that might be employed to describe tequila's impish profile. Sadly, the marketing folks at Don Julio have not cottoned on to these valuable modifiers, requiring our chefs to shill for their product using descriptors such as 'aloe vera green-ness,' 'caramel woodsy notes,' 'sweet, smoky, and earthy,' and 'crisp and clear.' To be fair, aloe vera does have an L in it.
Lacklustre seemed an adequate summary of the quickfire dishes, although Chris J. paired his blanco with pan-seared chicken, lime vinaigrette, and something called 'puffed quinoa', which I thought sounded intriguing. A 45-minute search on Bravo's appalling website revealed that one puffs the substance in question by frying it in 350 deg oil until it becomes crispy and - you guessed it - inflated with its own importance. If I weren't boycotting quinoa until such time as Bolivian agriculture gets its priorities straight, I'd try it myself. It would make for a lively and luring gluten-free accompaniment to plain grilled proteins - especially if one used the red stuff.
L is also for my girl Lindsay who got a shout-out for her excellent pairing of anejo with salmon, fennel puree and brown butter sauce (tragically, she didn't win the $5000 - the prize went to Ty-Lor, whose name might start with an L. I'm not really sure, but I suppose it's possible that his unusual sobriquet is quite common in the distant galaxy from which he no doubt hails). Poor Lindsay! Upon hearing from her fellow cheftestants that her rack of boar-adorning kohlrabi slaw was watery, she lagubriously admitted that the news was 'gut-wrenching.' Never mind, Lindsay, I still think you're laudably lovely, with the sweetest little old accent this side of Lee County!
Loopy is how Heather behaved when working with Bev for the game-inspired elimination challenge. I say working, but it would be more correct to call it heckling, baiting, bossing, and bullying. Attempting to defend a substandard dish of insufficiently-rendered duck breast and pickled cherries, she blethered on and on about Bev's deficiencies in the kitchen during challenges past - causing Bev's allies (of whom there were legion) to spring into a sort of fending-off action. It was an unedifying spectacle, calling to mind the words 'snotty' and 'bitch', even though neither of them contains the letter of the day.
Losing heart is how I would describe the Heimlich Maneuver at this point, disappointed as he was by polenta side-dishes; black-and-blue venison; sweat-covered plates draped with 'bouquets of greens' (we call them salads in my house, but what do we know?); sweet-potato daisy chains; and nervous breakdown-inducing squab sausage. Is it my imagination or is the HM losing his enthusiasm for the process? He certainly doesn't seem to be enjoying himself at judges' table these days.
I know he feels: let down and listless. Or as Che would say, desinteresado.
I would say it too - but it doesn't start with an L.
Friday, December 9, 2011
Top Chef Texas, Episode 6: Feeling Saucy
Did you know that the position of saucier is the most prestigious on the line in any commercial kitchen? Neither did I. In fact, I'll bet an entire boatful of bordelaise that in 98% of the restaurants frequented by yours truly, the substance in question comes straight out of a jar - and I don't suppose a specialist is required to do the scraping. To be fair, though, some of those lids can be pretty tough to unscrew and accessing the last belligerent dollop from the bottom of its vessel can be a trial if you're in a hurry and the spoon is slightly too large to fit.
But I'm willing to play along with Bravo's most-recent conceit, particularly when it's perpetrated by as preeminent a guest judge as Dean Fearing, of whom - before his appearance on my favorite show - I had previously heard not at all. The competitors sure had, though, and worried whispers about 'classical training' and 'James Beard Awards' percolated throughout the Top Chef kitchen faster than a lumpy mornay through a China cap.
The quickfire challenge he set our coulis contenders? To make an original dish using a prototypal variation of one of Escoffier's mother sauces. Just in case our gravy gladiators didn't know what on earth The Dean of Dallas Dining was on about, the customary knives of doom were distributed with helpful clues: espagnol, bechamel, veloute, tomate, and hollandaise. Furrowed brows, full-blown panic, and mutinous rumblings about 'putting a spin on things' ensued as the cheftestants labored for one and one-half hours to put together suitably-sauced Fearing-pleasing plates.
Dismayedly watching flour zephyrs wafting from saucepans and the furious whisking that followed, it immediately became clear to your gluten-free correspondent that a preponderance of roux were in production all over the GE monogram stovetops. I feared the worst.
Sure enough, roux were a recurring theme during the QF judging. Paul (who had earlier THd that a classic espagnol was made with tomato paste - an assertion that didn't seem quite right to me), was asked what color his roux was before he constructed his sauce. He laid a proverbial oeuf by explaining to Mr. Classically-Trained James Beard Award Winner that he hadn't, in fact, bothered to create a roux at all. Disbelief all round.
Whitney (who kept referring to her creation as 'tomato sauce') was asked, 'What roux did you use?' Her answer of 'none' was greeted with the pitying reply that a classic tomate never fails to have one. She rebelliously THd that 'I have never used a roux in my tomate nor would I ever. The judges can just go jump in a raging river of rouille!' I made that last part up, of course, but her intent was clear.
Dean's disappointments didn't end there. None of the hollandaise handlers clarified his butter before making his sauce, prompting a barely-disguised sneer from our now-disillusioned guest judge. Beverly destroyed her espagnole by adding so much soy sauce she was obliged to put very little on the plates, inviting criticism of imbalance and stinginess. Dakota's bechamel drizzled and dripped all over her dish like thin cream, much to the consternation of all. Many sauces were deemed 'over-acidic', while others were 'too sweet'. A few displayed 'good seasoning', but clearly not enough to please the judges.
The competitors were sent abashedly away to try and cook some beef for cow pokes and their gals, but even this relatively simple task proved defeating. Overdone steaks, safe sides, and insipid salads received a disenchanted 'What are they doing here?' from an incredulous HM, who finally sent home Whitney for serving raw potato gratin in 104 degree heat. Poor HM - he seemed pretty discouraged by the whole experience.
I must confess my mind was elsewhere as the bovine bother unfolded. A few comments during the quickfire and my own hazy knowledge of classical cuisine had got me to thinking about how much flour is used in the creation of traditional French sauces. Was my next trip to Paris doomed before the tickets were even booked? I'd long ago accepted that my favorite breakfast of pains aux chocolats was forevermore denied me, but was it possible I wasn't going to be able to eat dinner, either?
My usual go-to source of wisdom and knowledge, the internet, was forbidden me because Sir was hogging the family computer, futilely attempting to get his ancient copy of Company of Heroes up an running. I therefore retrieved my battered edition of the New Larousse Gastronomique (grandfathered in and therefore exempt from my dead-tree book embargo) from its hallowed place on my kitchen's Metro shelves and got to work.
It was a sobering experience. The section on sauces (not including those for desserts) in my faded blue tome extended from page 806 to 827. At an average of 16 entries per page (with a few photographs thrown in for excitement), that made for something like 320 varieties. Indeed, the introductory text explained there are almost 200 sauces to be found in classic French cuisine, not including variations (of which there are legion).
That's a lot of sauce.
Of course, the Larousse differs from Top Chef in its definition of 'mother' or 'great' sauces in a number of important ways. It divides sauces into two groups only: brown (including espagnol and tomate plus lots of others); and white (bechamel and veloute are only two examples). Hollandaise is listed as only one of dozens of compound white sauces, which also include bearnaise, butter sauces, curries, zingara, and something called ravigote, which is mind-bogglingly described as being appropriate 'for offal and US-style meat and poultry'. A quick dip into Julia revealed yet another organizing construct: she divides French sauces into white and brown (like Larousse) but lists hollandaise and tomate as their own thing. Sigh. Why is nothing ever simple? I was just about to dive into Careme when I realized I had become, as usual, distracted by minutiae.
I needed to find out how many sauces spelled certain death for gluten guerrillas such as myself!
Hollandaise I already knew was safe, since I am a dab hand with a blender version I have been using for years. Just on the off-chance that old Escoffier had a few tricks up his sleeve, I double-checked the classic recipe. Sure enough, not a molecule of gluten in sight, although I was surprised to see that lemon juice features as only a few drops for seasoning, rather than the full tablespoon I am wont to use. A few grates of nutmeg are also considered de rigeur - I shall be adjusting my strategy next time I have five egg yolks to spare.
The rest of of the news was not so rosy:
I'll be damned if Whitney wasn't right after all. Of course, having been ingloriously auf'ed, she will unlikely be taking much satisfaction from her small victory - but her resistance should serve as inspiration for the wheatless warriors who will no doubt follow.
But I'm willing to play along with Bravo's most-recent conceit, particularly when it's perpetrated by as preeminent a guest judge as Dean Fearing, of whom - before his appearance on my favorite show - I had previously heard not at all. The competitors sure had, though, and worried whispers about 'classical training' and 'James Beard Awards' percolated throughout the Top Chef kitchen faster than a lumpy mornay through a China cap.
The quickfire challenge he set our coulis contenders? To make an original dish using a prototypal variation of one of Escoffier's mother sauces. Just in case our gravy gladiators didn't know what on earth The Dean of Dallas Dining was on about, the customary knives of doom were distributed with helpful clues: espagnol, bechamel, veloute, tomate, and hollandaise. Furrowed brows, full-blown panic, and mutinous rumblings about 'putting a spin on things' ensued as the cheftestants labored for one and one-half hours to put together suitably-sauced Fearing-pleasing plates.
Dismayedly watching flour zephyrs wafting from saucepans and the furious whisking that followed, it immediately became clear to your gluten-free correspondent that a preponderance of roux were in production all over the GE monogram stovetops. I feared the worst.
Sure enough, roux were a recurring theme during the QF judging. Paul (who had earlier THd that a classic espagnol was made with tomato paste - an assertion that didn't seem quite right to me), was asked what color his roux was before he constructed his sauce. He laid a proverbial oeuf by explaining to Mr. Classically-Trained James Beard Award Winner that he hadn't, in fact, bothered to create a roux at all. Disbelief all round.
Whitney (who kept referring to her creation as 'tomato sauce') was asked, 'What roux did you use?' Her answer of 'none' was greeted with the pitying reply that a classic tomate never fails to have one. She rebelliously THd that 'I have never used a roux in my tomate nor would I ever. The judges can just go jump in a raging river of rouille!' I made that last part up, of course, but her intent was clear.
Dean's disappointments didn't end there. None of the hollandaise handlers clarified his butter before making his sauce, prompting a barely-disguised sneer from our now-disillusioned guest judge. Beverly destroyed her espagnole by adding so much soy sauce she was obliged to put very little on the plates, inviting criticism of imbalance and stinginess. Dakota's bechamel drizzled and dripped all over her dish like thin cream, much to the consternation of all. Many sauces were deemed 'over-acidic', while others were 'too sweet'. A few displayed 'good seasoning', but clearly not enough to please the judges.
The competitors were sent abashedly away to try and cook some beef for cow pokes and their gals, but even this relatively simple task proved defeating. Overdone steaks, safe sides, and insipid salads received a disenchanted 'What are they doing here?' from an incredulous HM, who finally sent home Whitney for serving raw potato gratin in 104 degree heat. Poor HM - he seemed pretty discouraged by the whole experience.
I must confess my mind was elsewhere as the bovine bother unfolded. A few comments during the quickfire and my own hazy knowledge of classical cuisine had got me to thinking about how much flour is used in the creation of traditional French sauces. Was my next trip to Paris doomed before the tickets were even booked? I'd long ago accepted that my favorite breakfast of pains aux chocolats was forevermore denied me, but was it possible I wasn't going to be able to eat dinner, either?
My usual go-to source of wisdom and knowledge, the internet, was forbidden me because Sir was hogging the family computer, futilely attempting to get his ancient copy of Company of Heroes up an running. I therefore retrieved my battered edition of the New Larousse Gastronomique (grandfathered in and therefore exempt from my dead-tree book embargo) from its hallowed place on my kitchen's Metro shelves and got to work.
It was a sobering experience. The section on sauces (not including those for desserts) in my faded blue tome extended from page 806 to 827. At an average of 16 entries per page (with a few photographs thrown in for excitement), that made for something like 320 varieties. Indeed, the introductory text explained there are almost 200 sauces to be found in classic French cuisine, not including variations (of which there are legion).
That's a lot of sauce.
Of course, the Larousse differs from Top Chef in its definition of 'mother' or 'great' sauces in a number of important ways. It divides sauces into two groups only: brown (including espagnol and tomate plus lots of others); and white (bechamel and veloute are only two examples). Hollandaise is listed as only one of dozens of compound white sauces, which also include bearnaise, butter sauces, curries, zingara, and something called ravigote, which is mind-bogglingly described as being appropriate 'for offal and US-style meat and poultry'. A quick dip into Julia revealed yet another organizing construct: she divides French sauces into white and brown (like Larousse) but lists hollandaise and tomate as their own thing. Sigh. Why is nothing ever simple? I was just about to dive into Careme when I realized I had become, as usual, distracted by minutiae.
I needed to find out how many sauces spelled certain death for gluten guerrillas such as myself!
Hollandaise I already knew was safe, since I am a dab hand with a blender version I have been using for years. Just on the off-chance that old Escoffier had a few tricks up his sleeve, I double-checked the classic recipe. Sure enough, not a molecule of gluten in sight, although I was surprised to see that lemon juice features as only a few drops for seasoning, rather than the full tablespoon I am wont to use. A few grates of nutmeg are also considered de rigeur - I shall be adjusting my strategy next time I have five egg yolks to spare.
The rest of of the news was not so rosy:
- Espagnol. There are two versions, grasse (meat) and maigre (fish). Both begin with a roux simmered with stock, to which are added mirepoix, bacon, white wine, thyme, and bay. The fish version also contains mushroom skins. Of tomato paste, there was no mention.
- Bechamel. No surprise there, as my previous understanding of roux, milk, chopped onion, thyme, bay and nutmeg went unchallenged. I was, however, surprised by the inclusion of diced veal in the classic recipe.
- Veloute. Three versions (meat, chicken, and fish), all of which are simply created from a roux and stock. Seasoning is not required, since the stock should have enough going for it in that department, although mushroom skins may be included for additional 'delicacy.'
- Tomate. Three versions (meat, meatless, or au naturel). The first two are made with a roux enriched with bacon fat and mirepoix to which are added tomatoes, garlic, a ham knuckle, bouquet garni, and stock. The third, most natural version is made - hold onto your toque blanche - without any roux at all!
I'll be damned if Whitney wasn't right after all. Of course, having been ingloriously auf'ed, she will unlikely be taking much satisfaction from her small victory - but her resistance should serve as inspiration for the wheatless warriors who will no doubt follow.
Friday, December 2, 2011
Big Macs
Once again, as predicted, I have missed the latest exciting installment of Top Chef: Texas. My understanding is that this week's casualty de cuisine was none other than Rick Bayless protege Chuy Valencia, about whose departure I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, I thought this guy was an egotistical ass - in stark contrast to his guru, whose class and self-effacement made his crowning as Top Chef Master an all-the-more impressive achievement. On the other hand, dinner at Frontera Grill is one of the reasons why I am always threatening to fly to Chicago the minute I receive sufficient air miles from the misers at Continental Airways (the other reason, of course, being a visit to Alinea or Next). Bravo's appalling website informs me that Chef Chuy no longer works the line at the Mexican meister's upmarket cantina, so I won't need to worry about the aufe'd one smirking at me while I enjoy Manitas de Cangrejo and Sopes Rancheros. And for that I say a big, 'Gracias, Senor.'
I was unable to take first-hand satisfaction from his being sent packing (for salmon stuffed with goats' cheese, gross) because yesterday morning I was preparing to speed my way east on I-78 for my annual lunch with DMR at Le Bernardin. And what a lunch it was! I will spare readers the salacious details except to report that the recent redesign of Eric's piscatorial pleasure palace has left me a bit nonplussed. Where before the airy dining room was decorated in tasteful shades of pink and peach (all right, I admit it, it was a bit girly) with huge paintings of fish-related subjects on every wall, diners are now tucked snugly into dark brown banquettes amidst wood panelling and mysterious lighting (controlled by a computer in California, if our server was to be believed). A single impressive seascape on the back wall provides the sole indication that the menu is heavily seafoodistical.
The ambience wasn't the only thing that has changed since last year's visit with Sir. The restaurant formerly served as a refuge for a wide variety of lunching ladies, visitors from out of town, and business types wheeling and dealing, but now appears to be the exclusive preserve of Masters of the Universe on Obscene Expense Accounts - and the male section of that population to boot. When we arrived, DMR and I saw only five other women in the whole place, seated singly at tables full of outrageously-accented hedge-fund managers: we're pretty sure at least two of these besuited damsels were tasked with note-taking. It was fascinating in a keep out the hoi polloi sort of way - the new design even cuts off the dining room's view of the bar, lest the movers and shakers be unnervingly treated to the unwanted sight of somebody coming in off the street for a *shudder* sandwich (albeit a $35 croque monsieur with smoked salmon and osetra) and a negroni.
Still, the set menu was divine as ever and we left feeling at peace with the world, confident that we'd successfully impersonated members of the 1% for a couple of hours. We had the added pleasure of speaking briefly with pastry perfectionist Michael Laiskonis: my dedication to full disclosure compels me to report that he's a bit shorter than he appears on TV, but with chiseled bone structure to die for.
All that is secondary, however, to my main observation of the day, which is that my favorite gluten-free tea-time treats of all time, macarons, are now to be found on every street corner in the city - even in shops that don't otherwise do patisserie, such as La Maison du Chocolat (to which I repaired for a box of truffles for Sir and two marrons glaces for me: now that I am privvy to the hard labour that is involved in the manufacture of these sugary little gems, I was unable to quibble with the extortionate price tag).
I might have been unsurprised by this sudden macaron mania had I previously been party to the intelligence contained within this week's edition of Time magazine, a photocopy of which I now happen to have in my possession. In a full-page expose on The Cupcake Coup, our breathless correspondent Josh Ozersky reports that paper cup-bedecked mini-cakes (which I have always maintained are stupid and pointless) are now out, whereas buttercream-filled French gateaux are these days most definitely la mode. He cites as evidence the inauguration of the world's first macaron truck (in Chicago, as luck would have it - there's now a third reason to hie to the Windy City as soon as is humanly possible) and the opening of Laduree in NYC. Apparently, Laduree macarons are now a must-have accessory for Those In the Know, rather like Louboutin heels and La Perla underwear.
While I can't claim to any great expertise on the unmentionables worn by the fashionistas of the Upper East side, I do know from macarons - and I am obliged to remind readers where the best ones are to be found. Last year I reported at length on my extensive taste-tests and concluded that - in all important respects - the three-inch beauties from Financier Patisserie at 48th St. and 6th Ave. are superior examples of the breed. This is why, on our way back to Port Authority, DMR and I whiled away a happy half-hour at a pavement table, enjoying the holiday lights and sipping rich hot chocolate with a gayly-striped green and white paper bag full of pistachio and hazelnut goodness close at hand.
There's a macaron sitting beside me even as I write this - batting its eyelashes alluringly and tempting me with its siren song. Have I digested sufficient calories from yesterday's lunch to merit a few chewy bites of marshmallowy goodness?
The answer has got to be a resounding yes. After all, a girl must be willing to make any sacrifice for fashion.
I was unable to take first-hand satisfaction from his being sent packing (for salmon stuffed with goats' cheese, gross) because yesterday morning I was preparing to speed my way east on I-78 for my annual lunch with DMR at Le Bernardin. And what a lunch it was! I will spare readers the salacious details except to report that the recent redesign of Eric's piscatorial pleasure palace has left me a bit nonplussed. Where before the airy dining room was decorated in tasteful shades of pink and peach (all right, I admit it, it was a bit girly) with huge paintings of fish-related subjects on every wall, diners are now tucked snugly into dark brown banquettes amidst wood panelling and mysterious lighting (controlled by a computer in California, if our server was to be believed). A single impressive seascape on the back wall provides the sole indication that the menu is heavily seafoodistical.
The ambience wasn't the only thing that has changed since last year's visit with Sir. The restaurant formerly served as a refuge for a wide variety of lunching ladies, visitors from out of town, and business types wheeling and dealing, but now appears to be the exclusive preserve of Masters of the Universe on Obscene Expense Accounts - and the male section of that population to boot. When we arrived, DMR and I saw only five other women in the whole place, seated singly at tables full of outrageously-accented hedge-fund managers: we're pretty sure at least two of these besuited damsels were tasked with note-taking. It was fascinating in a keep out the hoi polloi sort of way - the new design even cuts off the dining room's view of the bar, lest the movers and shakers be unnervingly treated to the unwanted sight of somebody coming in off the street for a *shudder* sandwich (albeit a $35 croque monsieur with smoked salmon and osetra) and a negroni.
Still, the set menu was divine as ever and we left feeling at peace with the world, confident that we'd successfully impersonated members of the 1% for a couple of hours. We had the added pleasure of speaking briefly with pastry perfectionist Michael Laiskonis: my dedication to full disclosure compels me to report that he's a bit shorter than he appears on TV, but with chiseled bone structure to die for.
All that is secondary, however, to my main observation of the day, which is that my favorite gluten-free tea-time treats of all time, macarons, are now to be found on every street corner in the city - even in shops that don't otherwise do patisserie, such as La Maison du Chocolat (to which I repaired for a box of truffles for Sir and two marrons glaces for me: now that I am privvy to the hard labour that is involved in the manufacture of these sugary little gems, I was unable to quibble with the extortionate price tag).
I might have been unsurprised by this sudden macaron mania had I previously been party to the intelligence contained within this week's edition of Time magazine, a photocopy of which I now happen to have in my possession. In a full-page expose on The Cupcake Coup, our breathless correspondent Josh Ozersky reports that paper cup-bedecked mini-cakes (which I have always maintained are stupid and pointless) are now out, whereas buttercream-filled French gateaux are these days most definitely la mode. He cites as evidence the inauguration of the world's first macaron truck (in Chicago, as luck would have it - there's now a third reason to hie to the Windy City as soon as is humanly possible) and the opening of Laduree in NYC. Apparently, Laduree macarons are now a must-have accessory for Those In the Know, rather like Louboutin heels and La Perla underwear.
While I can't claim to any great expertise on the unmentionables worn by the fashionistas of the Upper East side, I do know from macarons - and I am obliged to remind readers where the best ones are to be found. Last year I reported at length on my extensive taste-tests and concluded that - in all important respects - the three-inch beauties from Financier Patisserie at 48th St. and 6th Ave. are superior examples of the breed. This is why, on our way back to Port Authority, DMR and I whiled away a happy half-hour at a pavement table, enjoying the holiday lights and sipping rich hot chocolate with a gayly-striped green and white paper bag full of pistachio and hazelnut goodness close at hand.
There's a macaron sitting beside me even as I write this - batting its eyelashes alluringly and tempting me with its siren song. Have I digested sufficient calories from yesterday's lunch to merit a few chewy bites of marshmallowy goodness?
The answer has got to be a resounding yes. After all, a girl must be willing to make any sacrifice for fashion.
Sunday, November 27, 2011
What's French for 'I Surrender'?
Readers waiting breathlessly for my recap of Thursday's Top Chef: Texas will, I'm afraid, be suffering disappointment this week. Despite four days' passing and the temptations provided by a hot-pepper Quickfire and chili cook-off elimination challenge, I have so far been unable to sit down with my DVR to enjoy the spectacle.
Thanksgiving, of course, intervened. Once again, I am forced to question the judgement of Bravo's producers: how can fans such as myself, with Turkey-Day cooking commitments of our own, possibly be expected to spend a whole hour watching TV? It's not possible.
I had planned to get caught up on the cheftestants' latest adventures on Friday but fate once again intervened. It intervened on Saturday, too. And today. In fact, I'm not sure I'm going be able to see TC:T at all before the DVR - full to bursting with Sir's and the Kid Squid's crime procedurals and sci-fi sagas - wipes my favorite show from its memory forever.
And who, you might wonder, is the fell transgressor in this saga? What sinister individual has unforgivably come between me, Pads, and the HM?
Can you guess?
That's right, Campers. Madame has struck again.
It started as a very simple plan, really. Several weeks ago I purchased two boxes of lovely little tulip-shaped Weck jars for the particular purpose of filling them with Christine Ferber's chestnut jam and giving them away as holiday gifts to sundry special folks. I adore candied chestnuts (marrons glaces and the Japanese dessert monburan are two of my favorite things in the whole wide world) and have been intrigued by the jam recipe ever since I first purchased Mes Confitures last Spring.
As a public service to readers I offer the recipe below, together some additional details garnered through the hard experience of Yours Truly.
Are you sitting comfortably? We shall begin.
Ahem.
Make a deep cut in each chestnut with the point of a knife.
Did I mention the recipe called for three pounds of whole uncooked chestnuts? That's a lot. Also, the shells are extremely durable. Using my priceless Japanese paring knife with the watered steel blade I was able, at the cost of severe blistering to my right thumb and index finger, to make deep gouges on the nuts' flat sides. Reasoning that one always cuts a cross into roasted chestnuts to facilitate peeling, I had at it with these bad boys as well. Fearing the worst (a premonition, perhaps), I made a big X on each of their curvy sides, too. It took forever and was extremely dangerous, what with an exceedingly sharp tachi, increasingly slippery cutting board, and customary Ferber-induced anxiety.
Put the chestnuts in boiling water. After three minutes you will be able to remove the outer shell and the inner skin. Chestnuts can be easily peeled if they don't cool off.
I looked at the daunting pile and realized there was no way I could cook them all at once if they were to stay warm for peeling. I decided, therefore, to cook them in batches of five. After the stipulated three minutes, I pulled the first lot out of the water. Although the tough outer shell came off, the brown-paper inner skin stuck stubbornly to the flesh beneath, causing angst and vexation on my part. I threw the nuts back into the pot for additional boilage and was eventually able to peel them with some success. After experimenting with several hundred specimens, I concluded ten minutes was the minimum processing time required for straightforward shell removal.
Sir, alarmed by my cursing and impatient slamming of pan lids, came into the kitchen, bless him, to see if he could help. I called his bluff and set him to work peeling. After some initial whining about the effects of the red-hot chestnut epidermi on his delicate fingers, he settled down and performed admirably. An hour into our task, I asked him if he wouldn't rather be outside raking leaves. He responded that there was nothing in the world he would rather do than provide jam-making assistance and redoubled his efforts.
Psychologists, take note.
Roughly two hours after I first brought my water to the boil, we had two pounds of warm peeled chestnuts. They looked like small tan-colored brains ...
... and I was already sick of the sight of them. 'Never mind,' I thought. 'From this point forward the recipe seems like child's play!'
In a preserving pan, combine the chestnuts with four and two-thirds cups sugar, one and three-quarters cups water, and a vanilla bean. Bring to a boil and cook for fifteen minutes, stirring gently. The chestnuts will be soft.
Soft my eye! After fifteen minutes of cooking my chestnuts were still the texture of driftwood. Thinking that perhaps I was supposed to have chopped them into pieces before introducing them to their bath (no, Madame never said I had to, but one has to be a bit of a mind-reader where Mes Confitures is concerned), I removed them from the molten sugar lava and gave them a rough chop on my cutting board.
Back into my maslin pan! I cooked them for a further ten minutes. Then ten minutes more. Finally, forty minutes had elapsed and my chestnuts were kind of soft, sort of. Not cooked exactly, but not the consistency of an antique oaken chair leg, either. More importantly, the syrup had by this time reached 220 deg F, betokening imminent crystallization should I not get the contents off the heat ASAP.
Pour the mixture into a ceramic bowl. Cover with a sheet of parchment paper and refrigerate overnight.
Oh, for crying out loud. I used a Pyrex bowl like a normal American and covered it with plastic wrap. I couldn't put it in the fridge because it was already nine o'clock at night and the contents of the bowl were still mad hot. I could have returned to the kitchen later that night, I suppose, but the adjoining family room was disturbingly full of huge pizza-eating teenage boys. Under such circumstances, I try to keep my distance from that end of the house.
Next day, bring the preparation to a boil, stirring constantly. Remove the vanilla bean. Crush the large pieces of chestnut with a wooden spoon.
Is anybody keeping track? At this point I was 24 hours into my consternating confiture contretemps. Of course, that is no more than an academic point because I never got to this stage of the recipe. In the cold light of day I realized my chestnuts were still tooth-challengingly hard. I couldn't return them to the stove for extra cooking whilst they were in their syrup (and yes, a few accusatory crystals were already forming about the edges of the bowl) so I rinsed them well and returned them to a pan full of boiling water.
After another half hour of cooking, they became soft. Also tasteless. The long boiling had leeched every ounce of flavour from the precious $15 supply over which Sir and I had labored so long. After consigning the glop to my garbage disposal I considered my options and decided that Madame had left the recipe unfinished.
I've taken the liberty of completing her work.
You don't want to peel three more pounds of chestnuts, do you? That's why god invented vacuum packs. Get into your silver Element and drive to the supermarket. Present yourself in the produce section and buy the last two packs of pre-cooked and pre-peeled organic Italian chestnuts ($4.99 for 6 ounces!) and one jar of French beauties from the baking aisle ($9.99 for seven ounces!). Decide that you cannot possibly afford to make the full recipe and conclude that half will be sufficient for your purposes. How many people do you know that really deserve homemade chestnut jam, anyway?
Take your chestnuts home and taste the Italian ones. Realize that they are stupefyingly disgusting and cannot possibly be used as anything but garden mulch. Ponder your jar of French marrons sadly but with resolve. Do some quick mental math and realize that you can produce roughly one-quarter of Madame's recipe with minimum fuss. Pop the nuts (already soft and scrummy-tasting, praise be) into your maslin pan with one and one-sixth cup of sugar and seven-sixteenths cup of water. Don't forget to retrieve the vanilla bean from your failed batch of jam! Bring the water to a boil and continue to cook until the syrup reaches 220 deg F. Pour the mixture into a very small Pyrex bowl and cover with plastic wrap.
Since it's now after dark on the second day, you should probably have a stiff drink and maybe go to a movie. Not necessarily in that order.
The next morning (Day 3!), whizz up the mixture in your food processor using the big metal blade that looks like the sort of fearsome implement you might find in a defunct sawmill. Scrape the jam into a very small saucepan and bring to a boil. Put a little bit of the vanilla bean into each jar and pour the jam over. Madame never reveals the yields for her recipes, but I will: one-quarter of her original ingredients produces eleven ounces of chestnut jam - less than two little Weck tulip jars.
Sigh deeply and survey all the empty jars arrayed upon the table before you. Whip up some pineapple conserves with some fruit you bought on special offer a few days ago and the leftover vanilla beans.
Vow never ever to be tempted by one of Madame's recipes again. Not even in a million years.
Or until next time. Whichever comes first.
Coming soon: whilst enjoying my annual gala lunch with DMR at Le Bernardin this Thursday, I also manage to miss the next episode of Top Chef Texas.
Thanksgiving, of course, intervened. Once again, I am forced to question the judgement of Bravo's producers: how can fans such as myself, with Turkey-Day cooking commitments of our own, possibly be expected to spend a whole hour watching TV? It's not possible.
I had planned to get caught up on the cheftestants' latest adventures on Friday but fate once again intervened. It intervened on Saturday, too. And today. In fact, I'm not sure I'm going be able to see TC:T at all before the DVR - full to bursting with Sir's and the Kid Squid's crime procedurals and sci-fi sagas - wipes my favorite show from its memory forever.
And who, you might wonder, is the fell transgressor in this saga? What sinister individual has unforgivably come between me, Pads, and the HM?
Can you guess?
That's right, Campers. Madame has struck again.
* * *
It started as a very simple plan, really. Several weeks ago I purchased two boxes of lovely little tulip-shaped Weck jars for the particular purpose of filling them with Christine Ferber's chestnut jam and giving them away as holiday gifts to sundry special folks. I adore candied chestnuts (marrons glaces and the Japanese dessert monburan are two of my favorite things in the whole wide world) and have been intrigued by the jam recipe ever since I first purchased Mes Confitures last Spring.
As a public service to readers I offer the recipe below, together some additional details garnered through the hard experience of Yours Truly.
Are you sitting comfortably? We shall begin.
Ahem.
Make a deep cut in each chestnut with the point of a knife.
Did I mention the recipe called for three pounds of whole uncooked chestnuts? That's a lot. Also, the shells are extremely durable. Using my priceless Japanese paring knife with the watered steel blade I was able, at the cost of severe blistering to my right thumb and index finger, to make deep gouges on the nuts' flat sides. Reasoning that one always cuts a cross into roasted chestnuts to facilitate peeling, I had at it with these bad boys as well. Fearing the worst (a premonition, perhaps), I made a big X on each of their curvy sides, too. It took forever and was extremely dangerous, what with an exceedingly sharp tachi, increasingly slippery cutting board, and customary Ferber-induced anxiety.
Put the chestnuts in boiling water. After three minutes you will be able to remove the outer shell and the inner skin. Chestnuts can be easily peeled if they don't cool off.
I looked at the daunting pile and realized there was no way I could cook them all at once if they were to stay warm for peeling. I decided, therefore, to cook them in batches of five. After the stipulated three minutes, I pulled the first lot out of the water. Although the tough outer shell came off, the brown-paper inner skin stuck stubbornly to the flesh beneath, causing angst and vexation on my part. I threw the nuts back into the pot for additional boilage and was eventually able to peel them with some success. After experimenting with several hundred specimens, I concluded ten minutes was the minimum processing time required for straightforward shell removal.
Sir, alarmed by my cursing and impatient slamming of pan lids, came into the kitchen, bless him, to see if he could help. I called his bluff and set him to work peeling. After some initial whining about the effects of the red-hot chestnut epidermi on his delicate fingers, he settled down and performed admirably. An hour into our task, I asked him if he wouldn't rather be outside raking leaves. He responded that there was nothing in the world he would rather do than provide jam-making assistance and redoubled his efforts.
Psychologists, take note.
Roughly two hours after I first brought my water to the boil, we had two pounds of warm peeled chestnuts. They looked like small tan-colored brains ...
... and I was already sick of the sight of them. 'Never mind,' I thought. 'From this point forward the recipe seems like child's play!'
In a preserving pan, combine the chestnuts with four and two-thirds cups sugar, one and three-quarters cups water, and a vanilla bean. Bring to a boil and cook for fifteen minutes, stirring gently. The chestnuts will be soft.
Soft my eye! After fifteen minutes of cooking my chestnuts were still the texture of driftwood. Thinking that perhaps I was supposed to have chopped them into pieces before introducing them to their bath (no, Madame never said I had to, but one has to be a bit of a mind-reader where Mes Confitures is concerned), I removed them from the molten sugar lava and gave them a rough chop on my cutting board.
Back into my maslin pan! I cooked them for a further ten minutes. Then ten minutes more. Finally, forty minutes had elapsed and my chestnuts were kind of soft, sort of. Not cooked exactly, but not the consistency of an antique oaken chair leg, either. More importantly, the syrup had by this time reached 220 deg F, betokening imminent crystallization should I not get the contents off the heat ASAP.
Pour the mixture into a ceramic bowl. Cover with a sheet of parchment paper and refrigerate overnight.
Oh, for crying out loud. I used a Pyrex bowl like a normal American and covered it with plastic wrap. I couldn't put it in the fridge because it was already nine o'clock at night and the contents of the bowl were still mad hot. I could have returned to the kitchen later that night, I suppose, but the adjoining family room was disturbingly full of huge pizza-eating teenage boys. Under such circumstances, I try to keep my distance from that end of the house.
Next day, bring the preparation to a boil, stirring constantly. Remove the vanilla bean. Crush the large pieces of chestnut with a wooden spoon.
Is anybody keeping track? At this point I was 24 hours into my consternating confiture contretemps. Of course, that is no more than an academic point because I never got to this stage of the recipe. In the cold light of day I realized my chestnuts were still tooth-challengingly hard. I couldn't return them to the stove for extra cooking whilst they were in their syrup (and yes, a few accusatory crystals were already forming about the edges of the bowl) so I rinsed them well and returned them to a pan full of boiling water.
After another half hour of cooking, they became soft. Also tasteless. The long boiling had leeched every ounce of flavour from the precious $15 supply over which Sir and I had labored so long. After consigning the glop to my garbage disposal I considered my options and decided that Madame had left the recipe unfinished.
I've taken the liberty of completing her work.
You don't want to peel three more pounds of chestnuts, do you? That's why god invented vacuum packs. Get into your silver Element and drive to the supermarket. Present yourself in the produce section and buy the last two packs of pre-cooked and pre-peeled organic Italian chestnuts ($4.99 for 6 ounces!) and one jar of French beauties from the baking aisle ($9.99 for seven ounces!). Decide that you cannot possibly afford to make the full recipe and conclude that half will be sufficient for your purposes. How many people do you know that really deserve homemade chestnut jam, anyway?
Take your chestnuts home and taste the Italian ones. Realize that they are stupefyingly disgusting and cannot possibly be used as anything but garden mulch. Ponder your jar of French marrons sadly but with resolve. Do some quick mental math and realize that you can produce roughly one-quarter of Madame's recipe with minimum fuss. Pop the nuts (already soft and scrummy-tasting, praise be) into your maslin pan with one and one-sixth cup of sugar and seven-sixteenths cup of water. Don't forget to retrieve the vanilla bean from your failed batch of jam! Bring the water to a boil and continue to cook until the syrup reaches 220 deg F. Pour the mixture into a very small Pyrex bowl and cover with plastic wrap.
Since it's now after dark on the second day, you should probably have a stiff drink and maybe go to a movie. Not necessarily in that order.
The next morning (Day 3!), whizz up the mixture in your food processor using the big metal blade that looks like the sort of fearsome implement you might find in a defunct sawmill. Scrape the jam into a very small saucepan and bring to a boil. Put a little bit of the vanilla bean into each jar and pour the jam over. Madame never reveals the yields for her recipes, but I will: one-quarter of her original ingredients produces eleven ounces of chestnut jam - less than two little Weck tulip jars.
Sigh deeply and survey all the empty jars arrayed upon the table before you. Whip up some pineapple conserves with some fruit you bought on special offer a few days ago and the leftover vanilla beans.
Vow never ever to be tempted by one of Madame's recipes again. Not even in a million years.
Or until next time. Whichever comes first.
Coming soon: whilst enjoying my annual gala lunch with DMR at Le Bernardin this Thursday, I also manage to miss the next episode of Top Chef Texas.
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Top Chef Texas, Episode 3: Nobody Likes a Smartass
As is my custom on Thursdays, I woke up at 4:30 this morning ready to caper down the stairs so I could watch our sixteen qualified culinary competitors cook themselves some rattlesnakes. First, though, I decided to check my Smartyphone for e-mail, just to make sure I wasn't missing anything important out there in the big wide world.
Imagine my chagrin when I discovered in my Inbox a diatribe from an outraged West Coast reader berating me for yesterday's gluten-free chocolate/hazelnut bar posting in which I maligned (unfairly in this camper's opinion) Wegmans' frozen-turkey bowlers and their cavalier price-labelling policies. Aggressive questioning from said fan ('To what did the weight refer, each bar or all of them together?') was followed by a link to a Wikipedia entry that described in stupefying detail a wide variety of mass-measuring strategems. The note went on to accuse me of an incomplete (well, let's not mince words - 'totally perverse' was the implication) understanding of the meaning of the term net weight. The e-mail closed with the hypothesis that ambiguous verbiage on the part of the manufacturer, rather than the rotten education of my supermarket's employees, was to blame for the misunderstanding and that I should be a bit less quick to cast stones, already.
The epistolarian - you will no doubt have guessed - was Sir, currently three hours' behind the times in California and with nothing better to do than bury me under smug pedantry. What did the details of the case matter when I had been confronted by specious signage that led me to believe my new-found coffee-time accompaniments were three times more expensive than they actually were? I was so upset by my spouse's disloyalty and lack of sympathy that I had to send Che down to watch Top Chef without me while I stewed, grumbled, and plotted revenge.
An hour later my faithful notebook reported that rattlesnake had indeed been on the Quickfire menu (very tasty, apparently, when covered in tempura beer-batter and served with zucchini-almond gazpacho) and that Keith from Wilmington (the one in North Carolina) got auf'ed for serving a soggy and disgusting chicken enchilada made with a wheat tortilla. Che, in an heart-warming bid to provide me with some much-needed cheer, empathically editorialized that it served Keith right for preparing gluten-filled wraps when the blameless corn variety would have been both tastier and more auténtico.
I was forced to agree and took comfort from the fact that my notebook, at least, knows where his true allegiance lies.
Imagine my chagrin when I discovered in my Inbox a diatribe from an outraged West Coast reader berating me for yesterday's gluten-free chocolate/hazelnut bar posting in which I maligned (unfairly in this camper's opinion) Wegmans' frozen-turkey bowlers and their cavalier price-labelling policies. Aggressive questioning from said fan ('To what did the weight refer, each bar or all of them together?') was followed by a link to a Wikipedia entry that described in stupefying detail a wide variety of mass-measuring strategems. The note went on to accuse me of an incomplete (well, let's not mince words - 'totally perverse' was the implication) understanding of the meaning of the term net weight. The e-mail closed with the hypothesis that ambiguous verbiage on the part of the manufacturer, rather than the rotten education of my supermarket's employees, was to blame for the misunderstanding and that I should be a bit less quick to cast stones, already.
The epistolarian - you will no doubt have guessed - was Sir, currently three hours' behind the times in California and with nothing better to do than bury me under smug pedantry. What did the details of the case matter when I had been confronted by specious signage that led me to believe my new-found coffee-time accompaniments were three times more expensive than they actually were? I was so upset by my spouse's disloyalty and lack of sympathy that I had to send Che down to watch Top Chef without me while I stewed, grumbled, and plotted revenge.
An hour later my faithful notebook reported that rattlesnake had indeed been on the Quickfire menu (very tasty, apparently, when covered in tempura beer-batter and served with zucchini-almond gazpacho) and that Keith from Wilmington (the one in North Carolina) got auf'ed for serving a soggy and disgusting chicken enchilada made with a wheat tortilla. Che, in an heart-warming bid to provide me with some much-needed cheer, empathically editorialized that it served Keith right for preparing gluten-filled wraps when the blameless corn variety would have been both tastier and more auténtico.
I was forced to agree and took comfort from the fact that my notebook, at least, knows where his true allegiance lies.
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Top Chef Texas, Episode 2: Mussels and Brussels
This morning Che and I got up an hour early, skipped downstairs, and poured ourselves a cup of coffee with extra sugar before addressing our latest DVR'd installment of the ninth season of Top Chef. What awaited us were no less than the third qualification round and long-awaited Back-of-the-Pickup Cook-Off, which taken together would determine the occupants of the final places in the GE Monogram kitchen. My notebook and I settled into our favorite toile-upholstered armchair, got up again to search for the remote, and returned to our seat in anticipation of the spectacle to come.
Once again, we were foiled by technology. Loyal readers are painfully aware that my DVR has become somewhat temperamental of late and sure enough, it had failed to record the latest adventures of Pads, the Heimlich Maneuver, the Unibrow, et al. Disconsolate, I retreated back upstairs with my latest read (Cruise Confidential by Brian David Bruns), while Che had harsh words with the mischievous device.
Several hours later, Sir figured out the reason for the malfunction. Having been programmed to record Top Chef, it had subsequently failed to recognize Bravo's use of the qualifier Texas when scanning the schedule and neglected to spring into action when my favorite show aired at 10:00 last night. I'm not blaming anyone, but I suspect that nefarious agents of certain candidates' presidential campaigns have infiltrated and sabotaged my cable box's search parameters. I shall be writing a sternly-worded letter to the Republican Party of the Lone Star State as soon as I can find the time. Fortunately for me, Bravo repeats every episode of every series like, a zillion times a day, so we were able to record the mayhem while I was at work today. Wasn't that lucky? I knew you would.
Off to the Top Chef kitchen, where our last group of culinary combatants was confronted by Pads wearing something that looked suspiciously like a circus tent. Unibrow, smirking beside her, was introduced as an ex-Master and responded with a lame comment about how good it was to be on the other side of the judging table for a change. This rather obvious statement was greeted with the sort of sycophantic giggles one might expect from ten chefs about to have a collective nervous breakdown.
As well they might! Each competitor was given an ingredient and a random amount of time in which to make from it something reasonably edible, if not truly fabulous. The challenges ranged from What's the Fuss? (trout in twenty minutes, Brussels sprouts in forty) to Full-Blown Panic Stations (forty-minute short ribs and sixty-minute oxtails). The customary frenzy ensued, during which we were introduced to Chaz who - despite having to cook risotto (the downfall of more would-be Top Chefs than any other single dish) - took the time to TH about his love of our bodacious host, 'the most beautiful woman in the world'. He confided to the camera (and however many hundreds of sad sacks like me who watch the show) that throughout his middle-school career, he hung in his locker a poster of Pads before which he bowed down and duly worshipped.
All I can say to that is if she knew, she'd probably feel really really old.
Fatally distracted by his memories and daydreams (a quick trawl of the internet reveals that his poster might have been quite salacious indeed!), Chaz was unable to plate his risotto in a timely fashion and got sent home for failing to feed anything to the judges. Although the editors made it look as though the HM was lobbying to try the dish anyway, Pads wasn't having any of it. I imagine the poster went straight onto the compost heap upon the would-be-arborio-artiste's ignominious return to wherever.
A lot of the not-quite Top Chefs were booted in this round. Kim, concerned by her fennel's failure to cook properly, was auf'ed instead for a greasy, over-cooked 20-minute lamb chop. Jonathan was sent home for 40-minute Brussels sprouts that were neither 'cooked nor seasoned'. Bernice's short ribs were so appalling they didn't merit a comment or an explanation, just an admonishing finger pointed towards the door. Ashley was dismissed for her failure to cook her oxtails sufficiently: I myself would have sent her packing for her incompetent handling of her pressure cooker. She claimed never to have used one before (that's almost as bad as a microwave phobia, in my opinion) and, watching her attempt to open it while it was still on the burner - angrily hissing and steaming - I could well believe it.
Two were sent to the Back of the Pickup: Andrew (who looked like he was suffering from apoplexy), for greasy spinach, gritty mushrooms, and a sloppy plate; and Laurent, a guy from France. 'Een Fraaahhhnz, you eyezair beecalm a kook, a preest, or an arhmy guy. Zee whairst beecalms a kook.' Whatever: he's the sort of French kook that in Paris probably couldn't get a job as a plongeur. Into the Back of the Pickup for a dish that left the judges, to put it politely, embrouillé.
This left six Bubblers to fight it out for the remaining two places. Janine, showing remarkable mathematical insight for one about to go into deadly combat, remarked that they each had a 33% chance of certain stardom - not bad for a gal lacking computational aids of any description. Tragically for one of such intellect, she failed to impress the judges with the 'raw-tasting' relish that accompanied her scallop. Molly overcooked her shrimp; Andrew produced a baffling panna cotta to accompany his otherwise praiseworthy mussels; and Laurent made a scallop tartare in a shade of unappetizing grey - just like they do at Le Grand Vefour, no doubt. Grayson emerged victorious with her bacon-wrapped shrimp and intriguing fig sauce, and Edward (despite very nearly amputating his finger and having to cook one-handed while the medic tried to sew the errant digit back on) squeaked through despite an overcooked duck breast.
So that's that. Two weeks of foodie fisticuffs and we've only just now decided who the final sixteen will be. The previews make it look as though we're going to be in for a pretty rough ride, Texas-style. I just hope my DVR is up to the task.
Yee haw.
Addendum: My money is on dear sweet Lindsay, who cooked a dish of sixty-minute veal chops that managed to stun the HM into an admiring 'Well done'. And somehow she still found the time to instruct Ashley on the use of her pressure cooker!
Once again, we were foiled by technology. Loyal readers are painfully aware that my DVR has become somewhat temperamental of late and sure enough, it had failed to record the latest adventures of Pads, the Heimlich Maneuver, the Unibrow, et al. Disconsolate, I retreated back upstairs with my latest read (Cruise Confidential by Brian David Bruns), while Che had harsh words with the mischievous device.
Several hours later, Sir figured out the reason for the malfunction. Having been programmed to record Top Chef, it had subsequently failed to recognize Bravo's use of the qualifier Texas when scanning the schedule and neglected to spring into action when my favorite show aired at 10:00 last night. I'm not blaming anyone, but I suspect that nefarious agents of certain candidates' presidential campaigns have infiltrated and sabotaged my cable box's search parameters. I shall be writing a sternly-worded letter to the Republican Party of the Lone Star State as soon as I can find the time. Fortunately for me, Bravo repeats every episode of every series like, a zillion times a day, so we were able to record the mayhem while I was at work today. Wasn't that lucky? I knew you would.
Off to the Top Chef kitchen, where our last group of culinary combatants was confronted by Pads wearing something that looked suspiciously like a circus tent. Unibrow, smirking beside her, was introduced as an ex-Master and responded with a lame comment about how good it was to be on the other side of the judging table for a change. This rather obvious statement was greeted with the sort of sycophantic giggles one might expect from ten chefs about to have a collective nervous breakdown.
As well they might! Each competitor was given an ingredient and a random amount of time in which to make from it something reasonably edible, if not truly fabulous. The challenges ranged from What's the Fuss? (trout in twenty minutes, Brussels sprouts in forty) to Full-Blown Panic Stations (forty-minute short ribs and sixty-minute oxtails). The customary frenzy ensued, during which we were introduced to Chaz who - despite having to cook risotto (the downfall of more would-be Top Chefs than any other single dish) - took the time to TH about his love of our bodacious host, 'the most beautiful woman in the world'. He confided to the camera (and however many hundreds of sad sacks like me who watch the show) that throughout his middle-school career, he hung in his locker a poster of Pads before which he bowed down and duly worshipped.
All I can say to that is if she knew, she'd probably feel really really old.
Fatally distracted by his memories and daydreams (a quick trawl of the internet reveals that his poster might have been quite salacious indeed!), Chaz was unable to plate his risotto in a timely fashion and got sent home for failing to feed anything to the judges. Although the editors made it look as though the HM was lobbying to try the dish anyway, Pads wasn't having any of it. I imagine the poster went straight onto the compost heap upon the would-be-arborio-artiste's ignominious return to wherever.
A lot of the not-quite Top Chefs were booted in this round. Kim, concerned by her fennel's failure to cook properly, was auf'ed instead for a greasy, over-cooked 20-minute lamb chop. Jonathan was sent home for 40-minute Brussels sprouts that were neither 'cooked nor seasoned'. Bernice's short ribs were so appalling they didn't merit a comment or an explanation, just an admonishing finger pointed towards the door. Ashley was dismissed for her failure to cook her oxtails sufficiently: I myself would have sent her packing for her incompetent handling of her pressure cooker. She claimed never to have used one before (that's almost as bad as a microwave phobia, in my opinion) and, watching her attempt to open it while it was still on the burner - angrily hissing and steaming - I could well believe it.
Two were sent to the Back of the Pickup: Andrew (who looked like he was suffering from apoplexy), for greasy spinach, gritty mushrooms, and a sloppy plate; and Laurent, a guy from France. 'Een Fraaahhhnz, you eyezair beecalm a kook, a preest, or an arhmy guy. Zee whairst beecalms a kook.' Whatever: he's the sort of French kook that in Paris probably couldn't get a job as a plongeur. Into the Back of the Pickup for a dish that left the judges, to put it politely, embrouillé.
This left six Bubblers to fight it out for the remaining two places. Janine, showing remarkable mathematical insight for one about to go into deadly combat, remarked that they each had a 33% chance of certain stardom - not bad for a gal lacking computational aids of any description. Tragically for one of such intellect, she failed to impress the judges with the 'raw-tasting' relish that accompanied her scallop. Molly overcooked her shrimp; Andrew produced a baffling panna cotta to accompany his otherwise praiseworthy mussels; and Laurent made a scallop tartare in a shade of unappetizing grey - just like they do at Le Grand Vefour, no doubt. Grayson emerged victorious with her bacon-wrapped shrimp and intriguing fig sauce, and Edward (despite very nearly amputating his finger and having to cook one-handed while the medic tried to sew the errant digit back on) squeaked through despite an overcooked duck breast.
So that's that. Two weeks of foodie fisticuffs and we've only just now decided who the final sixteen will be. The previews make it look as though we're going to be in for a pretty rough ride, Texas-style. I just hope my DVR is up to the task.
Yee haw.
Addendum: My money is on dear sweet Lindsay, who cooked a dish of sixty-minute veal chops that managed to stun the HM into an admiring 'Well done'. And somehow she still found the time to instruct Ashley on the use of her pressure cooker!
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Top Chef, Episode 1: Texas Toast
Previously on Top Chef Just Desserts:
As luck would have it, almost the entire second season of Just Desserts coincided with my blogging hiatus. In the final analysis, this mattered not at all, since Chris 'I Have a Passion For Helping People' Hanmer won the whole catastrophe. I know, I know - like we didn't see that coming from a mile away. I predicted his eventual triumph the minute I espied his black Converse All-Stars and he himself had no doubt of his final victory, which he foresaw in the very first episode. So really, I saved us all a lot of time and trouble in the end. Don't bother to thank me, just consider it another valuable public service courtesy of Fractured Amy!
On to the Lone Star State, where Pads, the Heimlich Maneuver, and the Shoes awaited our next group of culinary contenders. In anticipation of an overwhelming flurry of names, faces, and personalities (such as they are), last night I logged on to Bravo's appalling website before the festivities began in order to introduce myself to the cheftestants. I clicked on 'bios' and duly waited while a bazillion adds for GE Monogram appliances scrolled by, only to be then confronted by the sneering Voltaggio brothers shilling for Samsung. I axed all the pop-ups cross-promoting various housewives and matchmakers and tried to ignore the exhortation to sign myself up for two free issues of Food and Wine magazine (could it be any worse that Bon Appetit?). When my desired link opened up roughly two hours later, I was dismayed by two equally disturbing revelations.
- First, only the judges' smiling faces appeared, which I thought was bizarre. Usually Bravo are at great pains to get as much mileage out of the competitors as possible, so it was strange to have their presence so blatantly ignored on the website. I concluded that the fact there were more than twenty would-be top chefs in the running this time round might have had something to do with their absence - or perhaps Bravo had already used up all their webserver space on that ridiculous 'Tweet Tracker' and Top Chef merchandise marketing.
- Second, the identity of the judges themselves came as something of a shock. Instead of my cherished Eric Ripert and Hubert Keller were the smirking mugs of ... wait for it ... Emeril and the Unibrow! Hyperventilating ensued as a result of this unwelcome development. In order to recover, I was forced to make myself a soothing cup of Earl Grey and take to my bed, not to emerge until this morning when I had calmed myself sufficiently to address to horror.
The chefs were divided into three groups (not enough GE Monogram appliances to go around, I guess!) for the fun. In the process, the rather complicated rules for the qualifying round were explained. For each competitor, three outcomes were possible: s/he could cook well enough to be ushered directly to Bravo-sponsored immortality; s/he could make a dish of such an egregious nature as to be sent summarily packing; or s/he could be relegated to something called 'The Bubble', the middling residents of which would have to cook again in a sudden-death elimination before admission to the Promised Land. Why the producers chose to call this purgatory The Bubble and not some sort of Texas-appropriate conceit (The Border Fence? The Chain Gang? The Pickup Truck?) I am unable to explain satisfactorily.
The first group crept warily into the kitchen to be confronted by a butcher's block with a lovingly slaughtered pig stretched out upon it, looking rather like a 3-D version of one of those anatomical diagrams one finds in better cookbooks detailing where on the animal all the different cuts may be found. We were simultaneously introduced to Tyler, the creepiest individual to grace my LCD in some time, who THd endlessly about his experiences as a personal chef cooking for 'international celebrities' and other gourmets. 'Uh oh,' Che and I thought. 'Here comes another one!'
Sure enough, given the task of chopping the large porcine pieces into something called sub-prime cuts (I'd never heard the term before, but they sounded a lot like sub-prime mortgages, with equally disastrous results), he retrieved a hacksaw from somewhere and with a fearsome cackle was soon sending bits of bone and skin flying all around the place. He was opining how amazing he was and how the other competitors might as well go home and leave him to it, when the Heimlich Maneuver - angered by such disrespectful treatment of 'the protein' - rushed over and bodily stopped him from doing any further damage. Quivering with rage - or the nearest Colicchio equivalent - the HM sent Tyler out of the kitchen before he'd even had a chance to put pan to burner. It was some of the most gratifying television I've seen in some time - it isn't often that such obviously incompetent crazies are dispatched even before the party has begun.
The rest of the show proceeded with minimal shenanigans. Into the Back of the Pickup were sent Molly (who earns her living making soup on cruise ships) for a mediocre soup (quite) and Grayson, who was fatally hampered by a tenderloin butchered to three-inch smithereens by the aforementioned Villain of the Piece. Sent packing were Colin the Vegan from Seattle, too grossed out by Wilbur to think straight; and Simon, who overcooked his pork to stringy oblivion. I was sad to see Simon go - he was one of those self-taught tattooed guys that probably got his start washing dishes and peeling spuds. Che expressed the hope that one day such a chef will run away with the whole shebang, showing the Voltaggios a thing or two, but alas, it has yet to happen. Maybe in Season 10.
The second group cooked its rabbits without incident. The only drama was provided by Edward, who couldn't get the vacuum sealer to work properly. The undercooked result of his machinations got him relegated to the Back of the Pickup ('There's talent in there somewhere,' the HM ruefully admitted) to be joined by Janine, who didn't get her sauce onto the plate. Nina was sent home for somehow forgetting to serve the rabbit, thus ignoring the cardinal rule that the secret ingredients must always take center stage.
Oops - wrong show.
Next week: the results of the final group's qualifying challenge and the long-awaited Back-of-the-Pickup Cook-Off.
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Madame Mao and the War on Wheat
I have at long last completed the unexpectedly problematic and time-consuming business of reorganising and redesigning my scribblings in a manner that befits my vision. Check it out - it's genius ... genius, I tell you!
With all the HTML hysteria and rebranding brouhaha safely behind me, I can now return to the serious business of recording in minute yet invigorating detail the progress of the war on wheat a chez Fractured Amy. Campers, what a busy time these last several weeks have been! They've seen several new cheeses go into the cave for percolation; the purchase of two exciting pieces of kitchen paraphernalia; the discovery of an untried variety of cake mix from the good folks at King Arthur Flour; a bumper butternut squash harvest; and the news that the ninth season of Top Chef debuts tonight (in Texas, of all places, which I assume means we will be treated to the titillating spectacle of Pads in a ten-gallon hat and alligator-skin roper boots). It is all too thrilling for words.
But first, news of Sir, who went jetting off to Shanghai without me a few weeks ago and has recently returned with tales to tell and cadeaux for all. Now, I confess that I was initially more than a bit miffed that Sir had forsaken me in this way. Shanghai has always held a particular allure in my imagination - I suspect too many movies are to blame for my romantic image of the Paris of the East. I always envisioned the city as being preserved in the aspic of the 1930's, with Marlene Dietrich or Ralph Fiennes lounging in the dark corners of smoke-filled rooms, wearing Chinese silk and white linen respectively whilst plotting international intrigues and looking suitably angst-ridden and mysterious.
So it was with great dismay that I waved good-bye to Sir with my tear-soaked handkerchief, disconsolate that laboratory duties and the Squid's pesky school schedule had colluded to prevent my first-ever journey to China.
In the end, it was reported to me that Shanghai possesses very little romance these days, or at least very little that is discernible to the average harried business traveller. When I first heard this regrettable news, I was prepared at once to forgive Sir for his desertion. When he further described the city's deficiencies, I was positively gleeful I had not made the trip.
It turns out that Shanghai is full of gluten!
Who knew? Not me, that's for sure, my knowledge of the Yangtze River Delta being woefully inadequate. I have since come to discover that the area's cuisine relies heavily on noodles, dumplings, and soy sauce (although loyal readers will recall that I have decided soy sauce is gluten-free). Breakfast is a total nightmare, often featuring youtiao, which as far as I can gather is a double insult consisting of deep-fried dough wrapped in a pancake. A pancake! Of the French Concession, the less said the better: Sir confided sadly that croissants are everywhere prominently displayed in piles the size of Huangshan the Yellow Mountain. There is seafood, of course, which is usually safely cereal-less, although Sir feels the local delicacy of mitten crabs (in season in October and therefore practically obligatory at every meal) are overrated.
It is a great irony, then, that in the midst of all this grain-filled bounty Sir should have presented himself (for souvenir-scouting purposes) at a tourist shoppe known as Madame Mao's Dowry, hoping to find revolutionary accoutrements to offer as a sop to the disgruntled family when he got home. He hit pay dirt with a vintage poster from 1973, which my rather hazy knowledge of modern Chinese history tells me was at the end of the Cultural Revolution:
The accompanying blurb claims the heroical text goes something like 'Collect Grain to Prepare for War' - and although the identity of the enemy is unclear, I think I know what it is talking about. Those Gluten Guardsmen so cheerily depicted on their red battlefield had finally had enough of Shanghai's shengjian mantou and xiao long bao and declared themselves Ready For The Fight.
And as I embark on my second year of gluten freedom, I can say with some satisfaction that I know just how they felt.
With all the HTML hysteria and rebranding brouhaha safely behind me, I can now return to the serious business of recording in minute yet invigorating detail the progress of the war on wheat a chez Fractured Amy. Campers, what a busy time these last several weeks have been! They've seen several new cheeses go into the cave for percolation; the purchase of two exciting pieces of kitchen paraphernalia; the discovery of an untried variety of cake mix from the good folks at King Arthur Flour; a bumper butternut squash harvest; and the news that the ninth season of Top Chef debuts tonight (in Texas, of all places, which I assume means we will be treated to the titillating spectacle of Pads in a ten-gallon hat and alligator-skin roper boots). It is all too thrilling for words.
But first, news of Sir, who went jetting off to Shanghai without me a few weeks ago and has recently returned with tales to tell and cadeaux for all. Now, I confess that I was initially more than a bit miffed that Sir had forsaken me in this way. Shanghai has always held a particular allure in my imagination - I suspect too many movies are to blame for my romantic image of the Paris of the East. I always envisioned the city as being preserved in the aspic of the 1930's, with Marlene Dietrich or Ralph Fiennes lounging in the dark corners of smoke-filled rooms, wearing Chinese silk and white linen respectively whilst plotting international intrigues and looking suitably angst-ridden and mysterious.
So it was with great dismay that I waved good-bye to Sir with my tear-soaked handkerchief, disconsolate that laboratory duties and the Squid's pesky school schedule had colluded to prevent my first-ever journey to China.
In the end, it was reported to me that Shanghai possesses very little romance these days, or at least very little that is discernible to the average harried business traveller. When I first heard this regrettable news, I was prepared at once to forgive Sir for his desertion. When he further described the city's deficiencies, I was positively gleeful I had not made the trip.
It turns out that Shanghai is full of gluten!
Who knew? Not me, that's for sure, my knowledge of the Yangtze River Delta being woefully inadequate. I have since come to discover that the area's cuisine relies heavily on noodles, dumplings, and soy sauce (although loyal readers will recall that I have decided soy sauce is gluten-free). Breakfast is a total nightmare, often featuring youtiao, which as far as I can gather is a double insult consisting of deep-fried dough wrapped in a pancake. A pancake! Of the French Concession, the less said the better: Sir confided sadly that croissants are everywhere prominently displayed in piles the size of Huangshan the Yellow Mountain. There is seafood, of course, which is usually safely cereal-less, although Sir feels the local delicacy of mitten crabs (in season in October and therefore practically obligatory at every meal) are overrated.
It is a great irony, then, that in the midst of all this grain-filled bounty Sir should have presented himself (for souvenir-scouting purposes) at a tourist shoppe known as Madame Mao's Dowry, hoping to find revolutionary accoutrements to offer as a sop to the disgruntled family when he got home. He hit pay dirt with a vintage poster from 1973, which my rather hazy knowledge of modern Chinese history tells me was at the end of the Cultural Revolution:
The accompanying blurb claims the heroical text goes something like 'Collect Grain to Prepare for War' - and although the identity of the enemy is unclear, I think I know what it is talking about. Those Gluten Guardsmen so cheerily depicted on their red battlefield had finally had enough of Shanghai's shengjian mantou and xiao long bao and declared themselves Ready For The Fight.
And as I embark on my second year of gluten freedom, I can say with some satisfaction that I know just how they felt.
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