Amateurs with Knives

Let’s get one thing straight from the get-go:  Brett Favre retired.  Retired.  From unofficial reports he actually retired, told Packer management he wanted to play, then changed his mind AGAIN and stayed retired.  Then he decided to un-retire and the Packers had moved on, with Aaron Rodgers as their quarterback.  So Favre had to play somewhere else, eventually landing with the Vikings after a disappointing season with the Jets.

So it drives me only a little bit insane when the idiots on the ESPN pre-show talk about how Favre is motivated by revenge because “the Packers told him he wasn’t good enough to play for them.”  The man QUIT.  He was not kicked out because Aaron Rodgers was better, he was kicked out because by the time he made his goddamn mind up they were halfway through training camp!!

Also:  the Packers did not try to pay Brett Favre $200 million dollars to stay retired, as Chris Berman stated.  The $200 million was an endorsement deal with the Packers, negotiated long before he decided to retire, for him to continue on as an ambassador of the Packers after he quit playing.  He couldn’t do that if he didn’t actually stop playing.

Do I hold Ted Thompson blameless in all of this?  No.  Maybe he should have put up with a little more of his bullsh*t in order to keep Favre around for a few more years.  Was it worth the possibility of losing Rodgers?  Absolutely not.  Are the Vikings a better team with Favre?  Of course.  Are the Packers a worse team without him?  Jury is still out on that one.  Rodgers is not the reason for the Packers troubles.  Getting used to a new defensive scheme and an offensive line with more holes than Spongebob Squarepants both rank alot higher on that list.

I am a Packers fan first, and a Favre fan second, so that’s where my loyalties lie.  Brett Favre was the reason behind, for me, one of the greatest moments in sports history.   But the thing that bothers me about Favre playing for the Vikings, is that at some level, I believe he is doing it to stick it to Ted Thompson.  And you can’t stick it to Ted Thompson without sticking it to the Packers.  And you can’t stick it to the Packers, without sticking it to the Packers fans.  And that my friends, is weak f*cking sauce.

  So I decided to make chili for the game and here is the recipe!!

Woody DeSilva’s Championship Chili

 

Texas chili doesn’t get any better than this fiery-hot version.

Source: Saveur

Related Topics:

Photo: Andre Baranowski

  4 lbs. beef chuck, trimmed and cut into 1⁄2″ cubes
Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste
4 tbsp. canola oil
5 medium onions, chopped
5 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2  6-oz. cans tomato paste
4 tbsp. dried oregano
3 tbsp. chili powder
4 tsp. ground chile pequín    or cayenne pepper
1 tbsp. sweet paprika
1 tbsp. Tabasco
1 tsp. ground cumin
4 tbsp. masa harina

1. Season beef with salt and pepper. Heat oil in a 6-qt. pot over high heat. Working in 4 batches, brown beef, about 3 minutes per batch. Using a slotted spoon, transfer beef to a plate.

2. Add onions and garlic; cook until lightly browned, about 5 minutes. Return beef to pot; stir in tomato paste. Cook, stirring frequently and scraping bottom of pot with a wooden spoon, until tomato paste is caramelized, about 12 minutes. Add oregano, chili powder, chile pequín, paprika, Tabasco, and cumin; cook, stirring frequently, for 1 minute.

3. Add 5 cups water; bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low; simmer, stirring occasionally, until meat is tender, about 2 hours. Stir in masa harina; season with salt. Simmer, stirring, until thickened, about 5 minutes.

SERVES 6

This article was first published in Saveur in Issue #121

I am really tempted to end the article there, because it would be pretty damn funny.  But I’ve got some pretty good pictures of the process, so I will continue.  First thing to do is get yourself a Brontosaurus steak:

…and an onion or two…

..and using your mad knife skillz, turn them into this:

and this

What really intrigued me about this recipe was the use of pequin peppers, which I did find at a spice shop.  They have a really nice smoky-sweet almost citrusy aroma.

They are also scary-ass hot, which is why I wore gloves.  Actually it turns out they are not quite as hot as habaneros, but still nothing to take lightly.  I ground this up in my mortar and pestle, but ended up only using about 2t instead of the called-for 4t, because Mrs Citizen Chef isn’t a huge fan of hot stuff, except of course, for me.  Here is the spice combo money shot:

Now the reason why you spent all that time turning your hunk-o-cow into little 1/2 inch cubes, is so you can brown it and have all that surface area to caramelize.  Like so:

When all was said and done, this was a damn fine chili.  But I might go with 3t of the pequins next time.

~Citizen Chef

Miss Macchiato, I accept your challenge to create a healthy and great-tasting dish in 30 mins or less!!  Well Ok, it wasn’t really a challenge per se, more like a casual mention in her last article that dovetailed with what I was going to make for dinner tonight anyway.  BUT A CHALLENGE ACCEPTED, EVEN UNKNOWINGLY, IS A CHALLENGE ISSUED!!!

So the recipe I chose was from Chili Pepper magazine.  I originally was going to try to do this post while I was cooking and see if I could really wow the judges (of which there are none) by getting the whole thing done in 30 mins.  But you will soon notice that there is no recipe listed here.  That brings us to the first obstacle:  the recipe isn’t online so I couldn’t cut and paste the stupid thing.  That’s ok, I decided to post after the cooking was over, as long as I got that done in 30 mins I’ll be fine.  Second obstacle, and I quote here:  “Combine orange juice (2 cups), lime juice (1/3 cup) and brown sugar (1/3 cup) in heavy sauce pan over medium heat.  Bring to a low boil, stirring often, about 20 mins or until syrupy and reduced to about 1/2 cup.”  2 cups plus of liquid to 1/2 cup in 20 mins?  I’m thinking …. no.  Not going to happen.  Never does for me anyway.  Ok, so lets make it a “weekday meal” kind of challenge but not a hard and fast 30 min kinda deal.  Third obstacle:  the recipe kinda sucks.

We were doing well in the beginning.  While the orange juice mixture was boiling I made the salsa, the quick and dirty version of which is this: 

• 1 (11oz) can mandarin oranges, drained and sliced in half
• 1/4 cup chopped red onion
• 1/4 cup diced radishes
• 2 T finely chopped cilantro

It called for the oranges to be sliced once, but I did it a few times because the texture of mandarin oranges can get kind of slug-like when the pieces are too big.  I looked ahead and noticed that I was going to put half of the orange juice brown sugar reduction in this as well, and I didn’t think the red onion and radishes would be enough to counteract that sweetness, so I diced up half a jalapeno and threw it in there too.  This tasted nice and bright and lovely and looked like this..

For the pork chops, they were simply broiled 3 mins on a side, and brushed with the glaze after flipping.  The rest of the glaze went in to the salsa, which turned it into a saccarine-sweet mess.  But the saving grace is this, before the wheels came off the cart, we had a pretty decent dish.  AND without all the reduction crap you can EASILY make this in less than 30 mins.  SO I DECLARE THEORETICAL VICTORY!!!!!

~Citizen Chef

Let me first say that I love recipes.  LOVE them.  Slavishly devoted to following them exactly in most cases.  Anything I have ever made that was really really good, was probably somebody else’s recipe.  Some people like to “tweak” recipes, and that’s fine as long as your intentions are pure.  Most of the time I find that “tweaking” something comes from some sense of self-aggrandizement instead of a desire to make the food better, and I do have a problem with that. 

But if you did want to start developing your own recipes, a good place to start is something that is about combining flavors without messing around with the internal chemistry of a dish.  Messing around with a hollandaise recipe requires knowing how the chemistry of that dish works, and that’s a 200 level course at least.  But things like stews and chilis are easier because you just concentrate on flavor.  Or burgers. 

As long as you aren’t messing around with the internal structure of the patty, burger recipes are all about putting flavors together.  Anybody can do that!  Even, say.. a ridiculously bright and adorable 10 year old!  Like say, oh I dunno, my daughter!

The Wisconsin Guys radio show and Quaker Steak and Lube had a Burger Cook Off, that my daughter entered.  And she got in the Finals!  And then she and her mom left for Montana to visit her relatives and I got stuck making the darn thing.  It was a close battle, and her entry ended up getting Second Place, only 6 points behind the winner!  I have to think that if she was there charming the judges instead of me pandering with her picture, we would have taken it hands-down.  So now, in her own words (but my spelling), Citizen Chef Jr’s recipe:

Jade’s Awesome Blue Cheese Burger Put 3 strips of bacon in microwave for 1 1/2 min, crumble when cool.  Mix bacon and hamburger meat.  Make into patties then grill.  Mush up one avocado in a bowl.  Slice the other one.  Spread mushed up one on bun (top only!).  Apply blue cheese.  Slice tomato.  Put patty on bun with tomato and avocado.

The finished product, with and without pandering cute child photo:

~Citzen Chef

I’d like to think that my photography has improved since the beginning of the site. You may think differently, but I definitely think there’s been some improvement. My photos are something I’ve been working on, just because they’re fun and when you have a delicious dish accompanied by an ugly photo, there’s obviously less desire to make the dish. So, I want my photos to at least do the dish a little bit of justice.

Recently, I remade a dessert that we had featured in a previous Magazine of the Month, the Warm Double-Chocolate Brownie Cakes. Actually, this is a dessert that I still bake up a lot because it only takes 20 minutes of prep time, the ingredients are something I always have on hand, and they’re amazingly delicious. I thought I’d try out a little photographing redux, to see if I couldn’t provide better photos.

I think I picked a difficult one to start with. These brownie cakes are dark and moist inside with melted chocolate chunks, and the top is a glossy, cracked brownie top. After popping these open to try and take a nice shot, I just end up with this brown mass that really doesn’t do the dessert justice. I did try, so hopefully it’s at least not a turn off.

This is a top down version, so you can see the crispy, cracked surface. I baked these a couple of days prior to the photos and kept them inside a sealed plastic bag. They keep quite nicely. To reserve, just pop them in the microwave for 30 seconds and serve with a little ice cream.

Here’s a side view – you can see the ice cream starting to melt from the warm cake. It’s not the most elegant looking dessert, but the taste is fantastic. Chocolate lovers will be big fans!

This one came out a little blurry, but I was trying to show the inside texture — very moist, with melted chocolate bits inside.

So there you have it, a photo redux! We don’t really get a lot of comments on this site but if you have any thoughts or tips, drop me an email (check the “Contact Us” button in the top left corner) or post a comment below.

~MM

Cooking good food nightly can be an overwhelming task, especially for cooks just starting out. But where to start? After a long day it’s important to get food on the table, but there are a hundred chores that need to be done before you can even sit down. With little time to stop and figure out what you’re in the mood to eat, most people will fall back on buying food, or heating up frozen or boxed meals. In many cases, this is either expensive or less healthy than being able to cook from scratch.

For this reason, I have a short list of “standby” meals that I fall back on when I need to cook on the weeknight. These meals are generally healthier fare, quick to prepare and easy to clean up. A standby list is a must have for anyone who cooks regularly, or anyone who endeavors to. Maintaining a regular list will help you keep a certain ingredients on hand, so if you need to whip something up on the fly with no time to run to the store, something can always be put together with what you already have in your pantry.

My list evolves as my household’s tastes evolve. This doesn’t happen often; it’s a gradual process. Periodically recipes will get put into the back of my card file and replaced with newer ones. If you’re someone who is endeavoring to cook home more or change eating habits for a healthier fare, I would highly recommend creating a standby list of weeknight meals.

Here’s a peek at a few things currently on my standby list; everything I make regularly is on the site.

Peanut Chicken with Jasmine Rice
My spouse loves anything with peanut sauce. When we eat out at a Thai restaurant, he orders something with peanut sauce plus extra sauce on the side. Then he pours the sauce on something bizarre and asks me if I want a bite. (In case you’re wondering, the answer is no.) This lovely little weeknight meal has become a staple that I serve about once a week.

Indian Chicken Curry with Golden Raisins
A fast and healthy one-dish meal. Adding golden raisins and plain, nonfat yogurt help balance out the spice.

Sweet & Sour Tangerine Chicken Stir Fry
Another healthy one-dish meal. (Are you starting to see the pattern yet?) Vegetables and chicken with a tangy tangerine sauce… Love it.

Angel Hair Pasta with Peas, Prosciutto and Lemon
By far, the fastest meal in my repertoire. Peas and prosciutto mingling together in a cream and white wine sauce. There’s never a complaint in my house when I put this on the table.

Arroz con Pollo
Sometimes I just want something really packed with flavor that sticks to my ribs. This gets cooked up in a single pan, then simmers until the rice is done. Spice is determined by how much red pepper flakes you add, if any. My threshold for spice isn’t that high, so I add very little. Served with warm flour tortillas, cheese and a little sour cream, it’s a great weeknight meal. It’s also great heated up in the microwave as leftovers.

Pork Tenderloin Medallions with Cherry Sauce
Sometimes I want something other than chicken. Cherries and balsamic vinegar with tender pork medallions… meow.

Wolfgang Puck’s Chicken Bolognese with Penne
It’s got a zippy sauce, meat and vegetables. Recently I recommended this to my mom for a potluck, and she had a lot of raves about it.

Updated Chicken Chow Mein
This is one of the newest additions to my list. If you recall, this came from our January 2009 Magazine of the Month, Food & Wine. I switched it up a little bit to accommodate my own tastes. Rather than using rounded breakfast sausages, I upped the overall flavor and texture ante by using sweet Italian sausage patties. Tearing them into small, bite-sized pieces eliminates the mess of cutting them up, and I toss them right into the skillet to cook. The snow peas are cut into thirds, and I still use regular egg noodles. The hoisin and orange juice are fantastic together as a sauce. This dish is fast and delicious. Highly recommend.

Chicken Breasts with Potatoes and Mashed Peas
Another Magazine of the Month find. Despite the debacle I had by trying to use drumsticks, I recreated this using boneless, skinless chicken breasts which are cooked in the frying pan for a few minutes, then transferred to the oven with chicken broth to bake. Right before everything is done and ready to come out of the oven, I finish the pan gravy, substituting the chicken fat with a bit of cornstarch for thickening and low-sodium chicken broth. I’m still working on the final formula and once I get it down, I’ll bring this back as a redux!

The trick is, once you find something you like, hang on to it and keep ingredients on hand so you can refer to it often. Other things that help are finding other recipes that utilize the same ingredients. For example, the Creamy Penne I reviewed the other day uses a little bit of prosciutto and tomato paste. Instead of letting the rest of those ingredients spoil, it’s important to find other things that will use the rest of the ingredients — for the tomato paste, I can use it to make Chicken Curry with Golden Raisins and for the rest of the prosciutto I can make Angel Hair Pasta with Peas, Prosciutto and Lemon. If you have any suggestions for weeknight meals, let us know — if you haven’t noticed, they’re pretty much my staple!

I’m going to brush over most of this episode to get to handicapping the finale, except for a few things.  Yes, I got wood when Fabio said he was going to cut his thumb off and sear it on the grill to finish the competition.  And I thought the Last Meal challenge was a great one, and more over one where innovation was not at a premium.  The horror of impending death really brings out the need for comfort for some reason, and comfort dishes are about bold warm flavors with a minimum of gastriques.  It’s about what your mom made for you.  And beyond that, it is alot less about what mom made, but that mom was the one making it. 

So Leah left, which was the right choice I feel.  And now Hosea has “one more person to win for”.  Well now you have one less person to win for, because if your girlfriend back home stuck with you through the kissing and the cuddling, she sure as hell just left you for that comment. 

and now, the belabored Beatles comparison of the final four!!!!

Fabio = John

Fabio is as cool as John Lennon, before he met Yoko and went crazy.  A welcoming, inviting, ego-less cool that brooks no detractors.  His soul is pure, his intentions noble.  He loses his way sometimes, when his imagination strays too far from center.  But at his best, he is the best in us and the best of us.  I really hope he wins.

Stefan = Paul

Undeniably talented, but in a calculated, measured, meticulous fashion.  Stefan, like Paul, is the one you don’t want to like, even though you begrudgingly do.  He has gotten this far in the competition by not making mistakes.  Obviously the odds-on favorite, and if he did win no one would be surprised.  But no one would be too happy about it either. 

Hosea = Ringo

Hosea is the guy who shows great promise but just never quite gets the job done.  Sure they let him sing on a few songs, but they are always the dumb ones that sound like nursery rhymes.  I like Hosea, and not just because he dislikes Stefan, all though that is a point in his favor for sure.  He just never seems to bring it when it needs to be brung.  I hope he proves me wrong.

Carla = George

Mystical, mercurial, maybe just batsh*t crazy.  You never know what you are going to get with Carla.  It could be something as great as “If I Needed Someone”, or as not so much as “Octopus’s Garden”.  She is peaking at the right time though, and if she stays on course she might just win this thing.  But how long can she keep a straight trajectory before something goes in to retrograde and throws her off??

So who is going to win?  I really hope Fabio does, but Stefan probably will.  But it wouldn’t be any fun if I didn’t pick an underdog, so the official Citizen Chef prediction for the winner of Top Chef Season 5 is……

Never bet against batsh*t crazy.

~Citizen Chef

Author’s note: This was originally written months ago. I have decided that the time is right to post this before MM sneaks in and fills the front page with more recipes (who ever heard of recipes on a cooking blog?!?)

While on a flight to California for the ultimate in geeky conferences (Blizzcon), I decided to try to explain a fascination that I have had for years. While I have been geographically close, I have never been to Scotland, nor do I have (as far as I know) any Scottish blood flowing through my veins. But since I have been a teenager, I have had a fascination with Scotch Whiskey.

That is not to suggest that I started drinking Scotch as a teenager, because I didn’t. Heck, I didn’t hardly drink anything (Dad, I hope you are reading this, and believe me). As a teenager, I actually had a part in a play which mentions “Chivas Regal” as a sign of “making it” in life, as in “sitting back and sipping Chivas”. I always had this picture in my head of a dignified gentleman, sitting in a high backed leather chair with a small string quartet playing Mozart in the background as the man sipped a small glass of Scotch, smirking, very pleased with himself, all the while.

My first experience with Chivas Regal, a blended Whiskey (not from a single malt, more later), was not the idyllic situation that I had planned. I poured a glassful (perhaps a water glass was too big) of Chivas and took a big gulp. Up until that point in my life I had tasted pretty normal liquors. Dr. McGillicuty’s, Jaegermiester, Goldschlager, Beer, Wine Coolers, etc. are pretty normal upper teens and lower 20’s fare, right? But, I can not possibly describe the burning and coughing and hacking that followed my first taste of Scotch. If any of you have thought, “I like Rum and Cokes… I should just try Rum straight up!” you may have experienced something close. The fact was, I HATED it. I thought to myself, “If this is making it, I don’t want to.” That first bottle of Chivas, minus that virginal glassful, lasted me many, many moons after I first tasted it. But so powerful is memory that I couldn’t get my original, utopian, vision of what Scotch was supposed to represent in my life out of my head.

Then I discovered the real truth. The key to unlocking the secrets of Scotch: 7-up and ice! (Or, Sprite if you prefer.) These wonderful add-ons to my Chivas tastings prevented (or allivated, a much more desired effect) the burn of the alcohol of the whiskey, while sweetening it and making it much more palatable. For those of you, like me, who feel strongly that you have become an adult (finally!), and that you should be able to enjoy sip of Whiskey (Bourbon, Irish, Scotch or Kentucky) without gasping for breath for 10 minutes afterward, try a little 7-up and a couple of ice cubes with it. Things will proceed much more smoothly.

Ok.. Here’s the basics that you need to know about Scotch Whiskeys (as a beginner myself, I would never try to advise a true connoisseur of the libation, I let a wiki do that… http://www.wikihow.com/Taste-Single-Malt-Scotch):

1) There are, to an American, two different types of Scotch Whiskey. The first, and most common, is the “blended” Scotch. Dewers and Chivas are two examples of a blended Scotch. The second type, while much more pricey and snooty, are not that different. They are called Single-malt Scotches. The difference between these two is pretty easy to distinguish. Blended whiskeys come from more than one different kind of malt and/or barrel of whiskey. Single malts are made with a single malt (usually grown nearby) and casked all at once, however there can be flavor differences even between two different casks (again, more later). The biggest thing to remember about point one is that Single-malt Scotches are usually MUCH more expensive and usually have a defining characteristic that make them specifically tasty for a certan palate. Blended Whiskeys are usually a good place for beginners, smoother and not as full of character, and then you can move into single-malts as you decide what you like and don’t.

2) There are about as many different kinds of Scotches as there are Scotsmen. Actually… There may be more Scotches (especially if you include butterscotch). Scotland itself recognizes 6 different varieties of single-malt Scotch. These are based on where, in Scotland, the Whiskey is made. Here’s a tip: If you are new to Scotches, avoid Speyside or Islay scotches, unless you have a weird craving for sucking on bandaids (I kid you not!). The reason for all of the variations? Malt, peat and mixture. When you mix different malts with different peats and waters, the outcome in favors can be varied from the aformentioned bandaids to the smoky salitness of the sea. The Scots also have this talent for taking used things, in this case, barrels, and re-suing them, and potentially making them better. What they do is take wine or sherry or even bourbon casks and fill it with the new Scotch. These all wood barrels can’t help themselves, they let out some small bits of their previous inhabitants flavor. So you get sherry oak notes in the tasting, or you will taste the chocolatey goodness of a fine Pinot in your Scotch. These casks become standards that also give you different tastes. This is the point where you have to buy many different scotches and see what you like and don’t like and start doing your research to see what else you might like. Drinking Scotch begets drinking more Scotch. Consider yourself warned!

3) More expensive scotches do not mean better scotches. Remember that bandaid thing I mentioned above? That comment came from the fact that I bought and tried a couple of Scotches that I really thought were going to be something special because they were priced that way. Spending $75/bottle on a Scotch is a good way to drink a bottle that you think you have to like, but don’t. Then again… When I was younger and more easily impressed with my accomplishments, I passed some certification exams and obtained my MCSE from Microsoft. (This was back in the NT 4.0 days for those of you who know what that means). After getting my cert, I decided to reward myself with a bottle of 25 year-old MacCallan. At the time, that bottle cost $175. So, how good does something have to be to warrant spending $175/bottle? Well. This bottle was so TOTALLY worth it! One of the bestest (note: do not use this word at wine or Scotch tastings), smoothest, mellowest, yet with character, liquors I have ever drank. This was before the distillery was bought out by Japanese investors, which hasn’t degraded the flavor, merely changed it and the price. That bottle lasted me over a year and unfortunately, it was not shared with my friends. Mostly because my friends didn’t want to appreciate the sublte flavors and texture, or like Citizen Chef, has yet to meet a Scotch they liked. But also because I hadn’t realized the cardinal rule of all Whiskeys, which is that they are much better shared with friends. Was that bottle worth the much higher price than $40-$50/bottle of most single malts? You bet your sweet bippy it was. I still rank that beverage as one of the best that I have ever had the honor of tasting. Does that mean you have to spend $175/bottle in order to enjoy scotch. Not hardly. Find yourself a good cheap “house” brand and go for it. There is no shame in getting yourself a merry little buzz on Dewer’s at $15/bottle instead of buying the 30 year-old MacCallan or other high faulutin’ brand.

Long story short… Buy yourself a fine Scotch and enjoy. Just remember the basics. Good Scotch should be enjoyed and shared. It should not be a “Bataan death march” for your, or your friends’ mouth and throat. Add some soda if you need to. Ice also helps. A little water is often used, even by Scotsmen. But in its purest form, a good Scotch in a nice glass (you don’t have to use crystal or anything fancy, but avoid plastic or paper for this!) really does help you feel like you have “made it!”

Enjoy!

Squig Legs

We’re going to dive right into the action this week because I sprained my wrist and am typing one-handed (har har).  But I can’t let this first paragraph go without some kind of tangential comment, so I’ll mention that fried avocado tacos are freakin awesome.

QUICKFIRE CHALLENGE:  ERIC RIPERT!!  AND ALSO FISH!!!

This was a tough one, no doubt.  And much has been made around the blogosphere of Leah’s giving up on the challenge.  I am not calling for her head on a spike like alot of people are, but only because I am not really that surprised.  She gives up, to one degree or another, quite a bit.  We saw it during restaurant wars, and her head has just never seemed that much in the game.   Even when she is on top in a challenge, she looks uninspired. 

Stefan got lucky with eel as the last challenge, I mean why not throw in some fugu for cryin’ out loud.  It was a niche kinda deal, but a niche Stefan excelled in, and he wouldn’t have gotten to the final test if he hadn’t aced the first two, more pedestrian fish.  Well as much as fish can be pedestrian without feet.

ELIMNATION CHALLENGE:  NO YOU ARE NOT GOING TO A NICE LUNCH YOU BUNCH OF DUMB ASSES!

Hey it’s a nice day-off lunch with Eric Ripert!  And we are having fish, just like the challenge!  Wow that’s a coincidence!  And there are 6 dishes!  And 6 chefs left!!  That is a wild and totally unrelated fact!!  Seriously?  Congratulations, you guys have become the stupid girl in the scary movie that the audience yells at.  “DON’T GO IN THAT HOUSE!!!  ASK ERIC WHAT”S IN THE REDUCTION!!!”

Now this was a serious challenge, even if you were paying attention.  Stefan really got the most out of his quickfire win advantage by picking the one dish that most Top Chef viewers could have figured out.  We probably would have broken the hollandaise, or overcooked the lobster, but still, we would have had a shot.

Jamie’s cardinal sin, and it’s too bad because I like Jamie, was not “having time” to ask Ripert about her dish in the practice session.  Again, seriously?  You have a chance to get your dish graded before the test and you don’t take it??  Hell I would have done it just to talk to him face to face again.   I mean he’s no Fabio (mi amore… be still my heart) but he’s still pretty damn cool.

So the thought experiment question for the episode, is it better to know what you did wrong and not fix it (Jamie)?  Or be clueless but not mess up as badly (Leah)?  My heart says the former, but as was so eloquently expressed last week, intentions are meaningless.  You are judged by your food and your food alone.  And I still take some comfort in that.

~Citizen Chef

“Bunky beds”.  Can we just end the show and make Fabio the winner already?  Fabio is another great example of why everyone wants to be Italian.  It’s not just the coolness, it’s the zen-like ego-less coolness that allows them to be cool without being annoying for being so damn cool.   It’s the complete effortless cool  of Jude Law in “The Talented Mr. Ripley”.  Which I guess is a bad example because it got his head bashed in by an oar, but only because he didn’t let Matt Damon get in the bath with him which you know he totally wanted him to do anyway but whatever.

QUICKFIRE CHALLENGE:  DO SOMETHING WITH OATS BECAUSE QUAKER PAID US 30 SILVER COINS

Enough with the product placement already!  How much does this show f***ing cost to produce??  I’ll give you the omnipresent Glad-ware and the stacks and stacks of Diet Dr Pepper in the stew room, but for God’s sake can we just let them cook without shoehorning another product in?  Because nothin’ says Super Bowl like oats!!

So Stephan wins, again.  Dude is looking pretty unstoppable…….(ominous music plays)……

ELIMINATION CHALLENGE:  BEAT THE LOSERS!!

Our contestants go head-to-head with previous contestants using the regional cuisine of NFL team cities.  I have to say I really like this challenge.  20 minutes is too short, in my opinion, to really showcase those regional cuisines but what the hey.  The issue I have (oh come on, you knew there’d be one) is the use of the phrase “All-Stars”.  So we got  Heckel and Jeckle, the pasta chick , Chunk le Phunk and some other people I don’t remember.  Anybody in this group win Top Chef?  Make it to the final show??  Anyone of you have a shot at winning at all?  That would be, in reverse order because it’s funnier that way, no, NO and NOT ON YOUR LIFE.  If we want to continue with the  NFL analogy, you are not playing the NFC Pro Bowl team, you are playing the Detroit Lions.

The three losers were Jeff, Fabio … and Stephan!!  (ominous music crescendo)  Stephan thinks he’ll be fine because it’s his first time at the bottom.  Sorry bucko, that’s not how it works.  In the end, Stephan didn’t go home because his dish was uninspired, but Jeff’s didn’t taste good.  And let’s give the judges a lot of credit here for making taste the sine qua non of a winning dish.  I imagine it would suck to get beat out by a warm seviche, that quite honestly looked like crap compared to his plate.  But hers tasted better.  And while that is a tough criteria for us to judge at home, it is really the only thing that matters.  In this touchy-feely, nobody-loses, perception-is-reality world we are currently in, I find it refreshing to have a discipline where intentions don’t matter, results do.  But, acid with cheese, Chef? 

The preceding blog article was brought to you by the hyphen.  HYPHEN-ATE YOUR LIFE – WITH HYPHENS!!

~Citizen Chef

This is going to be a shorter post, since I’m already one episode behind, and for the first time in a while, nothing really cheezed me off in this episode.  Well relatively speaking anyway…

QUICKFIRE CHALLENGE:  Cook like a normal person!!!

As much fun as it was to see how many syllables Fabio could jam into the word “aquarium” this challenge was all about using (gasp) canned ingredients!!  Then it was a race  to see them all tripping over themselves to prove that they always use farm-fresh ingredients of the highest quality.  Yeah, none of your restaurants ever get shipments from the huge Sysco food truck.  Ok, gonna have to call shenanigans on that one.  SHENANIGANS!!!  There, I called it.  Anyway,  Stephan won with a sandwich or something.

ELIMINATION CHALLENGE:  Down on the farm

I really wish they would have made them kill the animals themselves to see how “farm-fresh” the chefs really want to be, but that’s just me.  And that brings me to the only rant I have on this episode.  Let’s not all gush about “honoring” the ingredients like it’s a moral high ground.  If you really wanted to “honor” the animal YOU WOULDN’T CUT IT UP AND EAT IT!!  The organic movement, or the localvore movement or any of the related uh, movements, do themselves a disservice when they set their sights too high.  I don’t want to hear about my carbon footprint, I want to know if it’s going to taste good.  And in that regard, aiming at our lower appetites is the more effective, not to mention honest, way to go.  If your rationale for eating within a 100 mile radius of your house is that you want to decrease the gas emissions from the cargo trains not to mention the lower acreage required for root vege – I’m sorry, I stopped listening to myself after “house”.  Why do we have to stray beyond the basic formula (fresher food = tastier food)?

So Ariane butched her butchering and got sent home.  On a side rant, yes I think the right person went home, even though Radhika and Leah didn’t “do much”.  If everything got done, then they did enough.  And if we are talking about honoring the ingredient, Ariane failed.

~Citizen Chef