Oompa Loompa

Pre-show text message that pretty much sums up my sentiments of this season:
Jess: Here's to Nikki getting voted off tonight!
Des: And to Lisa washing her hair!

The bad news is that a nice guy left, and neither of those two did...nor did my least favorite, drama queen Zoi. It's going to be so much fun to watch the whining when the couple gets broken up.

The good news:

We finally got a chance to see some actual culinary technique, after a few weeks of mac n' cheese and corn-dogs. During the quickfire, the chefs had to use 3 classical culinary techniques on vegetables...have the producers been listening to us about too much lowbrow cooking? Dale's nifty knife techniques got him immunity for the round. (By the way, i gotta get one of those cool scallion crowners!)

Lots of love was thrown around for my boy Richard...looks like I'm not the only one who thinks he's the guy to beat.

The movie themed dishes from the elimination challenge looked good overall. I think a few of the movie references were stretching it a bit, but the interesting techniques from Andrew's winning team were worth the price of admission. I was surprised not to see Mark in the finalists for that round, I thought his team did a nice job of combining Asian cuisine and Christmas flavors to get to A Christmas Story.

I'm feeling pretty good about my prediction. Richard all the way.

-S


The Ardmorons Top Chef Archive

Top Chef Chicago

The cable is working again (at least for now) and not a moment too soon...Top Chef Chicago debuted tonight.

Let's see what Des has to say about it:

First of all, I liked the commercials. Finally, an ad for boxed wine! It was Fish Eye, though, which I have never had and don't think I'd ever buy. But boxed wine is great - if you get something other than White Zinfindel or Franzia, it will be good. Try Pinot Evil, a good boxed pinot noir, or the Black Box Shiraz or Cab. Last season some of the commercial products were featured on the show - who knows, maybe they'll use boxed wine!

I don't have too much to say about the episode. I don't like Lisa - I don't like the way she looks or how she reacted to being told that she poached her egg better than the other guy - she acted like she was so superior just for poaching an egg better. Now, poaching an egg well can be hard - too short of a cook time and the white part is slimy, too long of a cook time and the yolk isn't runny (Steve sometimes has problems with poaching eggs; my dad is good at it if I remember correctly). But still.

The two people I do like are Mark and Andrew.

Mark is from New Zealand, so I'm getting my New Zealand fix until Flight of the Concords is back and I can listen to Bret and Jemaine. And Andrew seems like a tool, but I like him anyway. ("Yo, casa motherf***s, like fatness." - he's like the celebrities from the Geico commercials.) He reminds me of Adam Goldberg in his intense, spastic, and hyped up on cocaine way. Although it seems like he may be a jerk and co-contenstants will not like him, he will be entertaining.

I'm glad Nimma went home.

Now lets see what Steve has to say:

It seemed like the judges (Tom, Padma, and guests Rocco DiSpirito and Anthony Bourdain) were really impressed with the four finalists from the elimination challenge. Stephanie ultimately won with her duck a l'orange. On the other side of the challenge, Des and I held our breath as our favorite, New Zealander Mark, faced elimination for his own duck a l'orange, but ultimately Nimma's oversalted shrimp scampi flan-kenstein sent her home.

Two things I noticed with Bravo's positioning strategy: It seems that they made a point to bring in more corrosive personalities than before...I think it took at least a few weeks for people to start hating Howie last season, but I think I already see a few smacked-asses. Also, the product placement and brand plugs appear to be saturated into the programming more than ever before, following the general trend of the industry.

One last point. I have a feeling the lesbian couple situation won't end well, but we'll all enjoy watching the train wreck.

All in all, it looks like the Top Chef formula is still working, it will be interesting to see what they do to keep things fresh. My early pick for this season's winner: Richard, whose smoked crab cake wowed Chef Colicchio.

Steve's take on the tagine

I really liked it...sure it was a little less Moroccan than I expected and turned out more like a regular old stew. But that's not the worst thing that could have happened. The meat turned out nice and tender and the potatoes and veggies had a nice texture.

Now, about how Des normally "overspices the shit out of things." First of all, that quote may have been taken out of context, but in truth, Des is a good cook and I like her food. She occasionally falls victim, however, to the same misconception that led to the creation of Coke 2.

See, back in the day, Pepsi had its infamous blind taste test challenge where people were asked to take sips of both Coke and Pepsi (having no knowledge of which is which) and then decide which they liked better. The majority of blind taste testers chose Pepsi after this test, and Coke got very alarmed by the results. So they directed their chemists or cola-ologists to create a cola that would win in a blind taste test against Pepsi. The result was Coke 2. Unfortunately for CocaCola, Coke 2 was a massive flop, and there was a people's uprising to pull the nasty crap off of the shelves and put old Coke (now called CocaCola Classic) back on the market.

What does this have to do with anything? The lesson here is that a blind sip test is not the correct measure of a beverage's overall flavor quality...Because you don't just sip a soda, you drink the whole thing. For more on this, read Blink by Malcolm Gladwell.

This same principle applies when cooking. You don't necessarily know if the dish needs more spice just from a small taste test. When you eat the whole dish, the spices compound on you and pack a lot more kick than they do in a little taste. This is why great chefs require a combination of talent and experience.

Anyway, like I said, Des is a great chef, and the tagine dish is not going to end up in the garbage, but we will know next time to let her follow her instinct and go a little heavier on the spices.

S

Tagine... 1st attempt

This is my first time blogging and I don't like it. I don't think that anyone cares what I have to write about what we made for dinner tonight. But Steve says that we signed up to blog because we might make a few dollars if enough people click on the ads and we are poor because I have no income, so I have to write. So here I go, but know that I feel really stupid doing this.

I got a Moroccan tagine for Christmas this year and Steve and I were really excited to use it. We have gone to Marrakesh in Philadelphia a few times and have loved it - it is a 7 course Moroccan meal and it is a lot of fun - I would recommend going - it is $25 and it is your night's entertainment. It used to be BYO, which was great, but now it's not. But the carafe of wine is only $12, so that's not too bad. Anyway, we were excited to use the tagine since we love Marrakesh so much. Then I saw a Take Home Chef episode where Tyler made a lamb tagine. So I invited my parents over for it on the last day of my finals. However, instead of shopping and cooking for my parents after my final, I decided to go to the bar at 11: 30 am with classmates to celebrate by getting drunk on margaritas. While drunk I cancelled on my parents, invited my friend Leah over to hang out, and then cancelled on her because I was hungover. I have to remember to stay away from sugary drinks like margaritas in the future - they are really too syrupy and give me headaches. Beer, red wine, or gin & tonics for me. Even the tonic can be too much - I wonder what a gin & diet tonic would be like?

Anyway, the stupid TLC website doesn't have the Take Home Chef tagine recipe up yet even though the episode was on close to 2 weeks ago and may have been a rerun. But the lamb was going to go bad soon, so since I'm off from school this week so I decided to find another recipe on http://www.foodnetwork.com/. Here's the recipe I used if you are interested: http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,,FOOD_9936_6848,00.html. My tagine unfortunately cannot be used on the stovetop, so my options were limited. If you are in the market for one, I'd definately say to get one that you can use both on the stove and in the oven. I made a few changes to the recipe based on other recipes I saw out there - added almonds, minced ginger, and 1/2 lemon. I also didn't make the harissa (I'm not even sure what that is) and made a saffron couscous instead of the basmati rice.

The tagine kind of turned out like a stew without too much moroccan flavor. Next time I'll have to be more aggressive with the spices. Usually Steve complains that I "overspice the shit out of things", but this time I didn't because it was the first time I've made anything moroccan, and I wish I had altered the recipe as usual. I think next time I'll add more cumin (yum!), paprika (yum!), honey, and lemon. I think I will also sear the cubed lamb on the stove before putting it in the tagine in the oven - it might keep the flavor in more. Everything was cooked really well though (it cooked for 2 hours!), and Steve said he liked it, so it wasn't a failure or anything. Just a learning experience.

So that was the tagine experience. My parents and Mal are coming over for tagine in 2 weekends (after they get home from spring break in Vero Beach - this is the 2nd time they've taken Mallory on spring break, and they never took me!). So hopefully it will turn out a little more flavorful next time. Then we'll probably go out for karaoke at Yeats and the karaoke-mummer guy will hit on Mal.

So this whole blogging thing wasn't so bad once I got into it. Now back to my boxed wine (Pinot Evil) and the Buddy Holly Story on TV Land.

D