Archives for the 'Celebrity' Category
Because You Can’t Spell ‘Cheat’ Without ‘Eat’
Delia Smith, who’s basically the Sandra Lee of England, is helping create a nation of cheaters, according to Britain’s Daily Express (which modestly bills itself as “the world’s greatest newspaper”).
Britain is breeding a generation of lazy cooks who cheat at dinner parties with dishes they pretend are home-made.
Millions of us admit to cutting corners when it comes to entertaining at home in a bid to impress our guests.
We serve up ready meals and packet sauces and pass them off as our own, according to a survey.
Eighty-five per cent of people said they simply do not have the time to cook meals for friends from scratch using fresh ingredients.
The research comes as TV cook Delia Smith, 66, continues to be criticised for promoting easy-to-prepare meals, often using frozen foods. Delia’s quick-fix method in her book How To Cheat At Cooking and BBC spin-off has struck a chord with busy families who simply do not have the time or energy to waste over a hot stove.
Delia was criticised for recommending recipes using ingredients including tinned minced meat, frozen mashed potato and cheese sauce from a packet.
In his famously outspoken manner, fellow TV chef Gordon Ramsay described her cooking style as an “insult”.
In one of my favorite moments from the underrated Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Angelina Jolie’s Mrs. tells husband Mr. (Brad Pitt), after he criticizes her aim with a gun as being “as bad as [her] cooking,” that she’d always ordered out and had never, in fact, cooked a meal for her hubby.
Compare Sandra Lee’s spaghetti “recipe,” which includes a jar of Newman’s Own sauce and packages of pre-sliced garlic and mushrooms, with Delia Smith’s less unambitious penne with asparagus and four cheeses, which includes Sainsbury’s fresh four cheese sauce and pre-grated parmesan.
D’Artagnan’s Duckathlon IV: Best. Invite. Ever.
I had the otherworldly good fortune to attend yesterday’s uber-competitive, uber-fun, invite-only Duckathlon, sponsored (as always) by the great folks at D’Artagnan. The event took place this year at and around the gorgeous Chelsea Market in New York City’s Meatpacking District. From the press invite:
D’Artagnan’s Duckathlon is a gastronomic obstacle course in which teams from top restaurants in the New York area are sent on an action-packed tour of the Meatpacking District’s hottest haunts - 20 stops in total. At each stop they earn points conquering feats such as: the blind wine and ham tasting, guessing the weight of a baby lamb, Chuck-a-Duck (don’t worry—they’re rubber!), mystery organ meat identifying, and, of course, racing with flippers! Returning from last year’s event will be the bodacious bra hunt at Hogs and Heifers.
Congrats to Le Cercle Rouge, which took home first prize, and to the talented kids from Cornell University’s School of Hotel Mgmt. (pictured), who rocked the best-dressed contest.
Some of my personal highlights:
One thing I didn’t really do, surprisingly, was eat. But I made up for that in good wine and beer.
I have a piece on the event that will be out soon. I’ll also have a duckload of photos up soon. In the meantime, check out this slideshow straight from the duck’s mouth.
Winehouse Fried
Amy Winehouse might not be ready to cut a record, but she’s always ready to chow.
Crispy sharing too much about Ms. Winehouse’s eating habits here.
Snap via The Superficial.
A Johnny Depp Tip Buys a Lot of Cheddar
In addition to his acting chops–having starred in the food-named cult hit What’s Eating Gilbert Grape and the food-themed demi-chick-flick Chocolat–and swashbuckling good looks, Johnny Depp knows how to dine out. While on location in Wisconsin, Depp dropped a few grand on dinner in the city of Appleton, Wis.
Downtown Appleton’s economy got an economic boost from the presence of the movie’s big star.
Johnny Depp stayed at the Copperleaf Hotel for four nights, ate at Flanagan’s Wine Review and Black & Tan, and had a drink at the DejaVu Martini Lounge.
The night at Flanagan’s, on April 16, started at 9 p.m. Depp and nine others had dinner ($300), wines from the reserve list at $300 to $500 per bottle ($2,350) and left a generous tip ($1,500).
[…]
Depp, by the way, ordered the flat iron steak, medium well.
That’s the right choice for steak, no doubt, but such a tender cut should never be cooked above medium, in my opinion.
More here. If Depp isn’t a Crispy reader yet, he’s just a smart guy generally for avoiding the taco pizza at Butch’s in Appleton.
[Via TMZ.com]
Bad Meatloaf, Good Meatloaf
If there’s anything more certain to give me a quick bout of indigestion while having my Morning Joe than the AT&T commercial featuring d-bag fake rocker Meatloaf, I don’t know what it is. (Unless, of course, it’s Joe Scarborough’s fellow travelers Mika Brzezinski and Willie Geist.)
Unprecedented overanalysis and misplaced acclaim for the Meatloaf ad here. Recent Gourmet mag meatloaf recipe–featuring bacon as both a filler and a garnish–here.
Rock Stars Cooking in a Restaurant? How is This Not a Television Show?
Former Hard Rock Hotel restaurant exec Lou Carrier is opening 220-seat steakhouse Bokx 109 in Newton, a wealthy Boston suburb, in early summer. (Like all restaurants, its opening was delayed.) It’ll feature loud rock music** and cooking appearances by celebrity rock chefs. The Boston Herald reports:
“We’re doing a very hip, high-end, sophisticated, modern American steakhouse,” Carrier said.
“We’re trying to add an element of energy and flare that might not be present in the market right now,” he said. “It’s going to be a music-centric environment, and there’s going to be a good sense of attitude.”
Interactive dining is key to his plans. A six-seat chef’s table with an eight-burner cook-top and ovens will be front and center in the dining room. In addition to demonstrations, the likes of Twisted Sister’s Dee Snider, KC from KC and the Sunshine Band, Sammy Hagar, Mark McGrath of Sugar Ray, Chad Smith of the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Joan Jett will cook alongside Percoco, formerly executive chef at the Loews Hotel in Vegas.
“You’ll never know when you’re walking in who might be here,” Carrier said.
A Cape native, Carrier formed personal bonds with many celebrities while working as executive VP of the Hard Rock Hotel in Vegas, developing Hard Rock’s San Diego hotel and opening its Orlando property as general manager.
It was at the Orlando Hard Rock Hotel that he created The Kitchen, from which he’s drawing some inspiration for Bokx. Guest rockers would visit The Kitchen, don chef coats with their names (which later would be framed and hung on a wall in the restaurant) and start cooking with Percoco. The sessions were often recorded for record label promos, the artists’ management companies, hotel guests’ viewing or visiting TV shows.
Visiting TV shows? That’s nice and all, but what’s going to make this place memorable–prior to its inevitable and fabulous and litigious flameout, of course–is rock stars. Cooking. Burning themselves. Burning food. Dealing with re-fires. And angry customers.
I bet Joan Jett is the only one of those listed above with the cojones to hang in the kitchen. She ain’t taking shit. But Dee Snyder? His makeup will streak with tears. Mark McGrath is already widely reviled as the world’s biggest wuss. He’ll make that culinary wonder duo Dweezil & Lisa look like those angry thrash-metal snacks in Aqua Teen Hunger for Colon Movie Film for Theaters. And Sammy Hagar? Have you been to Cabo Wabo? (Sadly, I have.)
C’mon, MTV! Christ! Here’s your chance to hop on the food TV bandwagon, for chrissakes, and give us some memorable programming for the first time in years. Please. I’m begging.
**The music will be played over Klipsch speakers. I note that because I’ve got a set, and they’ve been the nicest thing I’ve owned for nearly two decades. Klipsch rocks.
Letterman First to Ask Bourdain About That Whole Cobra Heart Thing
Not really. And as a result — despite Tony’s best efforts — Bourdain’s appearance on the Late Show last night was pretty boring.
It also followed the pattern any post-fatherhood Dave interview has taken: if a guest has had a child within the last 57 months, you can bet Dave’s going to bore his viewers by asking about the kid. When he wasn’t asking about Tony’s daughter, Dave really only seemed to be paying any attention when Tony brought up Eric Ripert. (It certainly wasn’t when he went to commercial claiming No Reservations is on “Mondays at 10 a.m.”)
Tony did manage to get in one good line. When Dave asked if he’d ever “been really ill” from eating, Tony talked about picking at “the business end of a warthog” in the Kalahari, and then offered up this truism:
Most of the time, if I find myself on a cold tile floor after a meal on the show, most of the time it’s alcohol-related.
No video up yet. Bourdain’s first Late Night Show appearance (requires Real Player) here.
Nigella Lawson’s Critics in Race to the Bottom
The NY Post gossip pages are reporting that producers for sexy Food Network commando Nigella Lawson will no longer show her on camera below the waist because she “has waaaay overeaten”.
“The result is a butt like a Budweiser horse,” sniped one detractor.
That would be a clydesdale, you devilish detractor.
All of this might be newsworthy — in that alternate universe where stories about the bum size of a woman approaching 50 is news — if it were not for the fact that London’s Daily Mail served up pretty much the same story (including the photo at right) in late 2007. It featured this quip:
TV critics claim her new series incorporates “scenes of gluttony not seen since the golden age of the Cookie Monster”.
Well bra-effin-vo! It’s a hell of a lot better than scenes of boredom not seen since the mythical age of Veggie Monster, let me tell you.
Repel the Nigella-hating by showing a little love to Nigella Feasts and Nigella Express.
Rachael Ray Can’t Be Feeling Bubbly
Via Slashfood comes news Rachael Ray’s ABC talk show is on the chopping block. Ray’s not happy. From the NY Post:
A rep for Ray fumed that she’s not alone in her falling numbers: Oprah, who discovered the bubbly chef, was down 15 percent from February 2007 as were “Live with Regis and Kelly,” “The Tyra Banks Show” and “The Martha Stewart Show.”
In 2007, Ray’s syndicated show averaged a 2.2 Nielsen rating and has already dipped to 2.0 this year. An insider said, “Anything below a 2.0 is asking for trouble.”
[…]
A rep for Ray pointed out that the average age for Winfrey’s viewers is 54.6, and said, “Our show is renewed through 2010 - so canceling is not an option.”
If Ray is axed, a possible replacement is already in the works: King World is producing a chat show for Marie Osmond, which would be ready by 2010.
Ray’s also dealing with a whole bunch of stuff, including revived tabloid rumors about her marriage hanging on the precipice and questions about whether she went under the knife.
Update: I should have noted earlier, but Oprah didn’t “discover” Ray in any way, shape, or form.
Bourdain Inspires… Vegan Blog?
Anthony Bourdain once called vegans the “Hezbollah-like splinter faction” of vegetarians. The vegan response generally mimicked what the more extremist elements of Pakistani society did after the whole Muhammad cartoon controversy.
But lo and behold — at least one vegan understands how to express her anger where it counts: in the kitchen. Thus, we have Hezbollah Tofu.
Last month, a North Carolina blogger named Sara (who self-identifies as a B-12 enema addict) decided to take Bourdain’s criticism of vegans’ bland, gas-inducing food and veganize the French classics Bourdain lovingly churned out for years from his perch in the Les Halles kitchen. In an open (and no doubt unopened) letter to Bourdain, Sara writes:
Because, Anthony, you’re kind of tragically wrong about us. But don’t worry, we’re not going to do something silly like picket the Travel Channel or go around bookstores drawing giant penises on your book covers with Sharpies. We have two key advantages over you in this game: we’re easily mobilized, and we can cook.
So we aren’t just going to “enjoy” food, we’re going to enjoy vastly improved, veganized versions of your masturbatory, blood-oozing recipes. And then we’re going to compile them, sell them in zine form, and donate the proceeds to vegan outreach organizations and farm sanctuaries–in your name. Anthony, I have to say, I’m really looking forward to the great work we’re going to do together for veganism.
This is an open call to vegan cooks of all stripes: professional chefs and bakers, cookbook authors, food bloggers, amateur cooks, and–perhaps most importantly–ordinary, everyday people who just want to live their lives and eat their dinners without unnecessary heckling from the heroin-addled peanut gallery.
This blog will serve as a meeting ground of sorts. Send in your veganized recipes, your ideas for veganized recipes, your photos of veganized recipes, and your thoughts in general to hezbollahtofu@gmail.com, and they will comprise the blog content and eventually the zine. In addition, I will periodically post Bourdain recipes in their original format, and you can veganize them as you see fit. Further, once the Hezbollah Tofu project reaches its zenith, the non-profits that receive the proceeds will be decided on by consensus.
I can’t wait to be part of the “consensus”. My vote? Send the donations to the Culinary Institute of America. Or the Artisan Farmers Alliance.
Mom and food writer Nancy Rommelmann reconsiders her tolerance for her daughter’s vegan boyfriend’s crappy palate here.
This Week in Bacon
The bacon & Nutella sandwich is one of those foods that makes no sense for about five seconds, and total sense thereafter. In that way it’s kind of like Leonardo DiCaprio’s command performance as undercover Boston cop Billy Costigan Jr.* in one of my favorite movies, The Departed.
Get more clever recipes like this one at Open Source Food.
Get your “spreadably delicious” Nutella here.
*You’re telling me you’ve got Bostonians Matt Damon and Mark Wahlberg in a movie centered around Southie, and you make a one-time pretty boy who was born in Hollywood like DiCaprio a tough, Boston-born hero? Actually, yeah, totally.
Amy Winehouse Stamps Out Cigarette on Own Face at Restaurant
I’m totally canceling my dinner reservations with Amy Winehouse, who apparently used her face to stamp out a cigarette last week, The Sun reports.
The gross piece of self-harming came in front of stunned diners in a London restaurant.
The troubled star was with pals when she was asked THREE TIMES by staff to put out her Marlboro Light because of the smoking ban.
As she received her final warning, Amy stared straight into the waitress’s eyes and pushed the burning tip of the fag into her own face.
A source at the diner said: “She hardly flinched because she was so high. The whole place was open-mouthed in horror.”
Nice! Crispy previously noted Ms. Winehouse’s sprint for McNuggets sauce here.
Restaurant Alleged to Have Taped Tom Brady, Other Celebs
Phillippe, an Upper East Side Chinese restaurant in NYC, apparently has been secretly videotaping diners in a purportedly private dining room, reports the NY Post.
[E]mployees at the Chinese eatery have screened the videos after the stars leave, says an insider. “They’ve watched tape of Diddy and Sienna Miller hanging out and Tom Brady and Gisele [Bundchen] hooking up. They get a kick out of it, they laugh and comment on people,” said our source….”
Ouch. More here. While a spokesman says the taping takes place for security reasons — got to keep the wines in the back room safe! — denies the tapes are even kept on site, and says no staff has access to them, it should go without saying that allegations like these won’t fill up tables.
Phillippe has a video segment at its website that allows you to meet the owners in the same wine room — and watch a few non-celeb diners eat.
Any NFL fan knows this is not Tom Brady’s first appearance in a videotape scandal, what with the New England Patriots taping brouhaha last year, which The Onion brilliantly parodied with the photo above.
Gordon Ramsay’s ‘La Noisette’ Abruptly Closes
Gordon Ramsay quietly closed his second restaurant in six months over the weekend. Problems at La Noisette seemed to center more on the space than the food. With the closing, he also loses one of his dozen Michelins, and further shifts the focus of his empire to a more mid-market clientele.
The closing of La Noisette also comes just weeks before Ramsay is set to open 180-seater Plane Food at the British Airways terminal at Heathrow Airport.
The shutdown was abrupt, and as of 2pm EDT, La Noisette — though most of their website was shuttered to all but the Google cache — was still accepting reservations. (I reserved online for today, and received immediate confirmation that “a member of our team will contact you shortly.”)
Adding insult to injury, Mario Batali recently served Ramsay some light snarks, calling him a staid showman.
Ramsay’s dealt with restaurant closings and much, much more in life, as he recounts in his excellent and aptly titled autobiography, Humble Pie, to let Batali or a business failure have much of an impact on his future. He’ll be fine.
William F. Buckley Dies
William F. Buckley, the National Review founder, died last night.
What’s that got to do with food? Plenty. First, he was discovered at his desk by his cook.
Second, one of my favorite Buckley stories includes what I consider to be the greatest, most evocative food sentence of all time, by Tom Reiss in a 2005 New Yorker profile of Buckley:
Buckley’s housekeeper, a stout Slovak woman, served us hamburgers, on fine china, with ramekins for ketchup and mustard on each plate, and I asked Buckley how he felt about conservatism’s current course.
That, my friends, is writing.
The NY Times obit notes Buckley’s own food writing, from Cruising Speed: A Documentary:
For example, in “Cruising Speed: A Documentary,” published in 1971, he discussed the kind of meals he liked to eat.
“Rawle could give us anything, beginning with lobster Newburgh and ending with Baked Alaska,” he wrote. “We settle on a fish chowder, of which he is surely the supreme practitioner, and cheese and bacon sandwiches, grilled, with a most prickly Riesling picked up at St. Barts for peanuts,” he wrote.
Obit here.
Update: NBC anchor Brian Williams remembers Buckley as a kind and affable man with a love of good peanut butter.
Bourdain, on SoBe, Makes Nice with his Enemies (or Vice Versa)
Anthony Bourdain filed three posts from the South Beach Wine & Food Festival over the weekend. They were great reading, of course, but also contained several bits of… well, there’s no other way to put it… alarming kindness shown to culinary enemies.
It’s been a confusing weekend on the beach. My Saturday event was a roaring, enthusiastically belligerent success–yet … I feel, I dunno, diminished and drained by the whole sordid enterprise. Maybe I’m just not angry anymore. I tell you, it shakes you to the core when people you’ve been insulting for years–at every opportunity–are decent to you.
In the last three, up-is-down and down-is-up days Rocco Di Spirito bailed me out, Emeril Lagasse generously fed me, Jamie Oliver talked child rearing with me for hours. Cat Cora was civil and … drum roll please … Rachael Ray was unfailingly polite. I fear I might even have hurt her feelings.
If one’s 50s are the second stage of life (after the LiLo and Paris stage) where some people start to make frenemies, my hope of hopes is that Bourdain avoids it like he avoids a mouthful of iguana.
More on SoBe from Bourdain here, here, and here. Full list of “personalities” who attended SoBe F&W here.
Other Things Red Bull Gives You
The life and times of retired British soccer legend Paul Gascoigne have basically taken a track akin to that of crotch-flashing legend Britney Spears — right down to the British accent and the whole involuntary commitment for mental issues angle.
Right before Gascoigne went “to hospital” — as the definite-article-hating Brits say — he was on the sort of bender only the deadest of rock stars might identify with: he was in rehab to try to dent his habit of drinking 50 cans of Red Bull a day.
…Gascoigne said he spent £16,000 trying to cure his addiction to RED BULL.
[He…] was downing 50 cans of the energy drink every DAY.
So he checked into a £4,000-a-week rehab clinic in America for a month.
The ex-England ace confessed to the bizarre addiction during late-night chats with a hotel worker at the Marriott in Gateshead.
The Sun has more. A mere 8 cans of Red Bull just last week sent another Brit to hospital, reports the BBC.
For those truly unconstrained by, say, work, Gateshead Marriott site here.
Britney Spears Sane, Attractive, and Rational Compared to PETA
The douchebags at PETA think they know why Britney Spears is a walking meltdown: it’s because she eats meat and dairy products.
It’s not as if celebrity vegetarians are a particularly healthy bunch: Alicia Silverstone (formerly fat vegan); Paula Abdul (often drunk, along with fellow vegetarians Peter Buck of R.E.M., Belinda Carlisle of the Go-Gos, and one-time actress Brett Butler); Brigitte Bardot (crazy); Posh Spice (dangerously thin and ugly); Fiona Apple (see Posh Spice); Kirk Cameron (possessed by the Lord); and Adolph Hitler (not exactly a celebrity, but a vegetarian for the most part nonetheless).
Speaking of eugenicists, PETA recently suggested Britney’s pregnant sixteen-year-old sister should be neutered. More PETA and Britney coverage at The Superficial.
Whales: Big, Cute, Lovable, Edible
If you listen to pint-sized actre-vist Hayden Panettiere**, whaling is all about cruelty, mercury, and Osama bin Laden. But if you choose to shape your views with the input of people who are not 18 years old, and who are not best known for wearing a form-fitting cheerleader’s outfit, you might learn that people eat whales because whale taste falls somewhere between excellent and passable.
You might also be interested to learn that sixty-five years ago, Time reported whale steaks (which were being reintroduced into the U.S., presumably to broaden the American diet during wartime) were set to sell at about 35¢ a pound in the U.S.
Norwegian recipe for whale steaks with herbs here. In lieu of buying illegal whale meat online, check out Carvel’s Fudgie the Whale MySpace page here. Amazon’s Japanese shop sells no whale meat, but does sell a Happy Whale mobile. Celebrate the late Swedish pop group Whale here.
**Panettiere’s opposition to whaling at least seems more rational and genuine than that of this Aussie columnist, who would “eat the sucker” abroad but doesn’t want it sold at home under some convoluted theory of cultural imperialism. His basic argument is that it’s wrong to impose his moral views about food on the world when he’s abroad — which is probably right — but he’s fine with telling his countrymen that they can’t eat what he’s just eaten abroad.
Thank Heavens This Show Didn’t ‘Stay’
Today is the four-year-and-fifteen-day anniversary of the debut of the worst food TV show of all time. Let’s all celebrate Dweezil & Lisa — or at least relish in the fact that it’s no longer airing. Here’s a sample episode highlight:
Lisa and Dweezil visit with maestro guitar maker Bob Taylor who also can create his famous shovel burgers.
No kidding? Bob knows how to make his own famous burger recipe? Who knew? (Well, besides Bob).
The Food Network seems to have rightly purged all links to the show from its website, but a Google site search does the trick. The Today Show let Dwee-sa near a hot stove here.
