Fabio Wants You to Eat Pizza

Mama Mia! Look what I just found on YumSugar.com! Grocery Hags’ favorite Italian schmoozer is apparently shilling frozen pizzas.

Dr. Oetker, one of Europe’s top frozen pizza brands, is launching its Ristorante line in America, and has called on the reality TV personality to be the spokesperson for the thin-crust pizza. “We feel Fabio is the perfect voice for the brand,” Dr. Oetker USA said in a statement. “He has an incredible personality and a real passion for cooking.”

I don’t know if I’ll buy frozen pizza (in New York?! please) just because Fabs’ face is on the box, but I may try it. You know…because why not? It may make a good blog entry. Maybe we’ll hear more about this at the reunion spesh tonight? CARLA FOR FAN FAVORITE!

WOAW

Big shock this morning: this exceprt from Top Chef’s Casey Thompson re: her role as Carla’s Sous Chef 

from D Magazine:

Carla was not prepared and in over her head. The show did not talk about how the first course (crab) took her half of the friggin’ cooking time that day, I was left to work the rest of HER dishes.

I am done with TC. I did not influence her. She has NO ideas of her own, oh, except a cheese course.

She also did not have a plan. The ONLY thing she had in mind was a cheese course! I would NEVER do a cheese course. And where in the hell did french come from!? She is not even classically trained! It (the show) didn’t talk about how I worked on a sauce for 2 days and Carla forgot to put it on the plate… It didn’t show how the 2nd course (fish) was MINE. It didn’t show how she took the sous vide idea and decided to GRILL it last minute causing it to be tough… And it didn’t show how she WANTED to do the souffles which she does not even know how to make! That was HER food, because it certainly was me asking her how she wanted to do this and that while she was busy picking crab the entire time and making a souffle that didn’t rise!

Yowza! I get Casey’s anger: if all her accusations are true, I’d be angry as well. But I didn’t know Casey was so bitter about Top Chef! Seems someone never got over getting thwarted on live television. Damn, girl! This finale is so heated…

WORST. FINALE. EVER!!!

Wow….247 people have already checked this blog for our reaction to last night’s Top Chef, and its not even 10am! I guess you really care what we have to say. That, or you’re just as PISSED as we are and you’re looking for a place to vent. Either way, I think we all agree that the only possible reaction to last night’s Top Chef is: WHAT THE FUCK!?!??!

Never in my life have I been so unhappy at a Final episode of a series.  NEVER. Even the Sopranos ended better than this. My trust/love/respect for this show is shot to hell, truly. It’s been nearly 12 hours and I’m still angry. Mother Trucker!

Oh, you mean some of you don’t know? Ok: The idiot gap toothed baldie bear jerk , with the help of  Top Chef Season 4’s far superior Richard Blais, beat Carla and Stefan for the title.  The judges loved his venison…they loved his red snapper app…they thought his only mistake was serving meat instead of a sweet for his final course, but they loved the damn meat, so they forgave it! And Carla totally bombed. And Stefan shot himself in the foot with this dessert Padma so hilariously described as “Pedestrian at best.” HA! The one bright spot in the show, for me anyway. Padma is so stupid. Anyway…

It just kills me how Casey, Carla’s sous chef, came back and, in her one chance to redeem herself from her shotty showing at her own Top Chef Finale episode in season 3, she COMPLETELY recreated the exact scenario she was in 2 years ago: a strong contender who coulda gone all the way doesn’t cook what she knows how to cook and she ends up in a distant 3rd. So sad.

What killed me is how upset she was.  Carla – what did you learn when cooking for Wylie Dufrense? Jacques Pepin? Freakin  ERIC RIPERt? You succeed when you cook your food!! C’mon, there’s no Love in Sous Vide meat! You don’t do sous Vide meat! And why would you not make a tart!? The judges LOVE your tarts! Seriously Carla: I am so dissapointed.

But you know what? We still love you, HOOTIE – FOREVER! And I’m putting my money on Carla being Fan Favorite next week at the reunion. Screw Fabio. Yes – I said that.

It really sucks that the judges based their final decision on one meal instead of the competition as a whole (especially since they so obviously gave Stefan a pass in order for him to get into the finals) but that’s the TC policy since day one, weather we like it or not, and that’s why this guy is now “Top Chef,”

And why I have to go barf now.

Please comment and share your angry rants with us. We need to bond together in times like this. Its not healthy to go through these tough moments alone. To quote Harvey Milk, “I KNOW YOU’RE ANGRY! I’M ANGRY!!!!!” Let us heal together. In the comments.

AND NOW:

Paula Deen’s pants falling down:

http://community.livejournal.com/ohnotheydidnt/32520067.html

You’re welcome

To Mark Bittman, From the Great State of Texas

Dear Mr. Bittman,

I read the New York Times Dining Section on a weekly basis and enjoy most of the articles. And I usually enjoy your columns. Today’s for instance – I’ve been bored with my breakfast lately and your idea of polenta pizza with bacon seemed mighty tasty.

However once I got to page two of today’s article, I was shocked. SHOCKED. How could a food critic – one that is so well-traveled – describe my favorite meal, migas as the following:

Essentially stir-fried bread: Take 1/2-inch pieces of good whole wheat or rye and cook it in (lots of) olive oil with garlic, crumbled chorizo, or whatever else you like, until the bread is crisp.

Any self respecting Texan knows that this is incorrect information! Mr. Bittman, migas is DELICIOUS, greasy, certainly not healthy breakfast meal – most commonly eaten after a long night of drinking in Austin. It consists of the following:

1. Eggs
2. Beans
3. Salsa
4. Onions
5. Peppers (bell and jalepeno)
6. Tortilla Chips

Please get yourself down to Austin ASAP and visit one of the following: Trudy’s, Juan and a Million, El Arroyo, Taco Shack – I’m sure there are more. The commenters will fill in where my mind is blanking.

Love Always,
An Insulted Lone Star State

A little Gail Goes a Long Way

Thank heavens for BravoTV.com. I found today that they had a little bit of what I need, and that’s Gail Simmons

Gail does a fabulous job in her blog this week explaining the decision that ultimately got Jamie sent home. On TV, it doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense, but from Gail, I get it. Good parts bolded below:

 

Were you surprised that Jamie was sent home?

No. She went home because she didn’t like her dish as much as anything else. From the get-go she knew this was not a technique she liked. She didn’t want to do the bass right off the bat. It was her least favorite dish, so I think a lot of it became attitude. I love Jamie, I loved her from the first day, and I actually think she’s a great talent. I have a lot of friends in San Francisco who are obsessed with her restaurant. I know she had a shot at being Top Chef just as much as anyone, but I know she can be negative when she doesn’t like what she’s doing. That is a problem for chefs, because it’s easy for them to forget that they’re not cooking for themselves, they’re cooking for customers. There are always going to be tasks, dishes, flavor profiles and combinations, and ingredients you might not like or might not be your favorite thing to do.

You can argue that as an executive chef of restaurant you’ll never have to do something you don’t want to, but even that’s not true, especially now. If a customer comes into your restaurant and pays $100 a person or more, as they would be at Le Bernardin, and a customer says, “I want a side of Caesar Salad with my fish” or something like that, that’s what you do for them. Cooking cannot be about your ego. Chefs often get into a lot of trouble when they stop cooking for other people, and they start cooking for themselves only. I think Jamie can fall into that trap. I think part of her demise on this episode was that her head wasn’t in the game because she didn’t love what she was doing. She saw the challenge as a hindrance to her success.

Gail, right? She knows.

Now for a tiny spoiler:

Can you give us a little teaser about the Finale?

What I can tell you is that I had the most amazing time in New Orleans. I can’t believe how dynamic the city is, and how good and diverse the food is. You will get to see a lot of that on the show. New Orleans will really show the true colors of the remaining chefs. Nothing is as it seems. Nothing.

Ok, now I’m excited!

Return to Form

I think we can all agree that Top Chef was a return to form last night: It was a seriously entertaining episode with a good challenge, a great guest judge, and some quality dishes. Lets start at the beginning.

 

First: Ripert. When you see him, you know something good is coming. Before I continue, I have to post this picture I found of him on teh google image search:

I will love you and then I will cut you

Wow. Just, wow!  There are tons of pictures of Ripert on teh interwebz looking all sexy and shit. They’re a little silly, and they make me like him  a lot. He seems like a nice dude, and he gives the best quickfire challenges. Example: last nite’s fish off.

During round one I was totally caught off guard by fabulous, loveable Carla and the way she charmed the PANTS off Eric Ripert. How cute was that? She just talked to him like some dude, unlike Hosea who couldn’t stop going on and on about how he’s a fish chef and he was dissapointed in himself, blah blah blah. Is it just me, or is Hosea A LOT less likeable than he used to be? Seriously dude, enough with the America vs. Europe shit. As my friend Sophie said:  Its not a U.S . vs. E.U. thing, its a YOU vs. STEFAN thing. OOOOOO! BURNED!

Carla totally melted the ice  off this French fisherman’s heart, and you could tell that he liked it. 

 

Oh ya, Ripert likey!

Round two was boring (except when Leah just gave up for no reason, but I’ll get into that later) and then, I gotta tell you, when Ripert pulled out that eel – my eyes popped.  AND, when Stefan nailed that eel to the cutting board and ripped off its skin with his bare hands, my jaw pretty much hit the ground.  That was a little too much violent German for this Jewish girl’s taste, I’m just sayin.

So, Stefan wins OF COURSE, and the Cheftestants retreat to Williamburg where they go to bed, get up, and get all dressed up and snazzy for lunch at Le Bernadin. Except Jamie. What the hell, Jamie? Putting on hoop earrings does not appropriately dress up your t-shirt for lunch at a 5 star restaurant. This is New York, not San Fran. Adapt.

Anyone with an ounce of sence, besides the cheftestants it seemed, knew what was about to happen. They were going to eat 6 fabulous dishes, and then be asked to recreate them. I couldn’t beleive how suprised they all acted. Are they really that dumb? They’ve done this EXACT challenge on the show before: hello: Dale, Casey, Hung and Brian, Season 3 with that potato, leak, fish thing! Maybe that tall guy was there too. What was his name? Whatever. ANYWAY!

The elimination challenge went along as most elimination challenges do, and in the end, it was Jamie who went home. Personally, I think it was because she didn’t respect her large-egoed elders. She didn’t dress up for lunch, she talked shit about the dishes and, in the end, she was not excited to cook the food. She made her own bed, I get it.

But truly: I wish it was Leah who had gone home last night. I’m SO SICK of her. She never makes anything great, she never says anything great, she never acts great, she never nothing. She’s so bland. She’s like pasta with butter. She’s chicken you cook in the microwave. She a jelly sandwich. Enough with her. SO SICK of her.

 

And: I wish it was Carla who’d won last night. I know Ripert was DYING to give it to her, but he just couldn’t. Maybe Stefan’s dish was a tad bit better, but damn, can you imagine: Carla shadowing Ripert for a week and then roadtripping it to Aspen together?

FOOD AND WINE OR BUST!

WOOOOOOOOOOOO! CAN YOU IMAGINE? I’m sure Carla would trade her superbowl tickets for a chance at this trip. This scenario is SCREAMING spin off, or at least prime time special.

Let us pray for this in the future.

Chopped, One girls opinion

One of the elements I find severely lacking on this season of Top Chef is the disappearance of everyone’s favorite gastro-gay, Ted Allen.

Teddy Poo

Aww, what a doll, right? Shana Punim! Because I miss this man’s presence in my life, and because I’m becoming a bit of a Top Chef burnout, I decided to hope on over to the Food Network this weekend to try out Ted’s new reality competition show: CHOPPED!

In case you haven’t heard of it or seen it, let me break it down for you. Chopped is like a mixture of Top Chef, Iron Chef, and Elimidate. Each episode begins with 4 contestants, all of who are given a basket with the same “secret” ingredients. In the episode I saw, the four contestants were a cocky sous chef dude, a 21 year old female pastry chef, a vegan (bitch), and this old Southerner they kept referring to as “The Meticulous Texan,” (can you guess who I was rooting for?). So – they open their baskets and they have: octopus, bok choy, oyster sauce…mmmm…something else I can’t remember, and they all have 30 minutes to make an appetizer .

So they cook and scramble around while a panel of three judges (Food Network regulars, in the style of Iron Chef) and Ted sit around, watch and comment on their methods. Ted Allen is a bit of an awkward narrator, you can tell he doesn’t quite know what to do in the role of host, but he gets the job done and, once the half hour is over, he instructs the chefs to line up in front of the judges as they dig in to the recently prepared dishes.

This is where it gets fun. The judges eat the food, again, Iron Chef style, right in front of the contestants, and they really don’t hold back. Once they’re all done, one cheftestant gets, you guessed it, CHOPPED! The three remaining go on to the next round, the entree round, where they get a different basket of ingredients (in this case: duck, scallions, oranges and …umm, something else I can’t remember) and once again have half an hour to cook before the weakest link gets Chopped off, leaving only two to cook the final course, desert. The winner gets $10k.

What I like about the show is that it moves  fast, there isn’t a lot of drama, and all the chef’s get the same ingredient, so it seems like a more even playing field. For instance: two of the three cheftestants on this episode made Duck a’larange (spelling is definitely wacked there) on the entree course, but the pastry chef just roasted her duck and made a little chocolate crepe filled with ricotta to go long with it. Sounds weird, but apparently it was good because she got to the final round (where she blew it, sadly). Cool, right? Also, if you don’t like the contestants, all you gotta do is wait a week, and there are four new ones. Four new people to judge EACH WEEK!

What I originally blew off as a Top Chef rip-off is actually fun and worth watching – so go ahead, enjoy. If not for me, for sweet sweet Ted.

Beer Tasting? Yes please!

One of the perks of being friends with media people is they have fabulous events with fabulous little surprises even during fabulous recession-more-like-a-depression-times. That said, I want to tell you about the BEER TASTING Andie took me too last night at Gourmet Magazine.

Yes, you heard right, BEER TASTING. Can’t think of anything better? Nope, we can’t either.

So – the Beer tasting was in honor of/hosted by this guy named Justin Philips who has a little ”eating a drinking room” in Brooklyn called Beer Table that “serves rare and specialized” seasonal beers along with some tasty snacks. And let me just say – this dude knows his brew, and his nibbles. I had some of the best beers and best cheeses I’ve ever had last night.  For you beer and cheese lovers out there (and I know you exist, Wisconsin!) let me lay down a few faves for you:

First, the appetizers, we started with Beer Cheese, maybe the most unbelievable cheese I’ve ever tasted. Commonly made with soft cheese…and…um…beer…and…spices? It sort of speaks for itself, I guess. Anyway, the Beer Table people make their own version of it and I think I could probably eat about a pound of it if let loose in their kitchen.

Jesus God. Ok, secondly they had this homemade delicious ricotta cheese served on little lightly toasted baguettes and topped with almonds, black pepper and a little maple sugar:  unfortunately, I can’t show you a picture, but it was beautiful and it. was. DELICIOUS!!! a yummy sweet little treat which brings me to the beer:

We had six artisinal beers last night,  an assortment of IPAs, stouts, etc. made from small little independent breweries from all over the world.  They were all pretty good, flavorful and satisfying, but the one that stood out was the Hitachino Sweet Stout from Japan.

This beer was served with the ricotta appetizer and the pairing was incredible. The beer is made with lactose, which gives it a sweet sort of milky almost dark-chocolately flavor that really complimented the maple syrup. It was like having a dessert in a glass; Andie noted that it’d be a great substitute for a piece of cake or cup of ice cream after a meal and I have to say, I agree!

SO: survey says: we like beer tastings. I highly recommend attending one in the near future. So choice.

Happy weekend!

Dissapointment of a Lifetime: Mesa Grill

There are very fews things I like better than comming home around 11 on a Saturday night (yes, I’m boring) getting into my PJs (and slovenly) laying on the couch (not to mention lazy!) and turning on the TV to see watch my 2nd favorite (may be moving to first favorite anyday now) food show: IRON CHEF: AMERICA!

The Chairman!

Everyone has their favorite Iron Chef, mine has always been Bobby Flay: a man with a love for Southwestern Cuisine is a man after my own heart! With EVERYTHING Bobby makes I take one look at it and go, “OOO -Jalepeno crusted Swodfish with saffron herb oil – THAT’S what I want to eat!” So, when restaurant week rolled around this year, I got mad excited when Ben, being the good boyfriend that he is, got us reservations at Bobby’s restuarant, Mesa Grill. I’d been DYING to try this place, y’all! BIG NIGHT!! So excited!!

SO how was it? Well, let me try and sum it up in a word or two.

How ’bout… yuck?

Or maybe …ick? or blech! Or maybe even, “GOOD GOD!”

It was bad, y’all. Like, real bad. Like – Ben ordered a steak medium and it came out burned on the outside and pink on the inside. And I ordered a $21 Cornmeal Encrusted Chille Relleno and, while it was ok, it was maybe 5 bites and came with no side dish. The salad we split was literaly hearts of romain with creamy garlic dressing and 3 croutons…like, If I wanted a pretty good, heavy ceasar salad, I woulda made a reservation  at La Madeleine. Honestly, we didn’t even stay for dessert it was so bad. Really, I’ve had yummier meals at Chili’s. MMMMM, Chili’s.

Luckily we saved the night with a trip to the Momofuku Milk Bar on 13th and 2nd Ave where we split a peiece of candy bar pie. DDDDDDDDDDlish! I will be going back for the “Crack Pie,” if anyone wants to make a date.

Moral of the story – Bobby Flay = BAD! I am strictly a Batali supporter from now on.