Archives for the 'Chefs' 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.
Sooo SoCal: The Pomme Bébé Organic Baby Food Bar
Should any baby food be permitted more than one accented letter in a word? Most people’s knee-jerk reaction to Pomme Bébé is probably something like giggle snort snark egad.
But I’ve got nothing against an organic baby food bar–even one called a “bébé-bar™” that boasts a French-trained chef who churns out gold-standard strained veggies. Here’s chef Laurent Brazier, in today’s OC Register, talking about cooking for the small and toothless:
“I liked the idea of making really good, 100 percent organic food for babies,” says Brazier, whose experience ranges from working in 2- and 3-star Michelin restaurants in France, to being chef-owner of a Zagat-rated restaurant in Laguna Beach.
Sure it’s totally silly and indulgent, but then most of what I like to eat is, too. You too, right?
Check out Pomme Bébé online, or stroll on down to their Newport Beach, Ca. baby bar.
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.
Thomas Keller on Charlie Rose
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.
Headline of the Century
Paul Prudhomme should change his name to Paul Ferhomme.
Bullet Bounces Off Chef Paul Prudhomme
Chef Paul Prudhomme was shot Tuesday, but the bullet didn’t do any damage, according to Jefferson Parish deputies.
The chef was cooking at the TPC golf course in Avondale when, according to deputies, he felt something hit his arm. A .22 caliber bullet then fell from his sleeve. Prudhomme was attending The Zurich Classic, where he was cooking fish.
Deputies said the bullet did not penetrate.
Dom Deluise was unavailable for comment. More here.
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.
Awesome Web TV: John Bull’s Reggae Kitchen
Chez Pim is hyping John Bull and his Reggae Kitchen as the best. web. cooking. show. evar. And she’s right.
The show is utterly amazing. John Bull looks at first a bit crazed — kind of like ODB (RIP), actually — but (as Pim notes) he’s very much like early Emeril — back when Emeril’s show was about mixing about 135 different spices together in a constant search for perfection.
Check out John Bull cook up some awesome-looking saltfish fritters below, and catch the rest of his shows here.
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.
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.
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.
Israeli Government Looks to Deport Asian Chefs
The first victim of xenophobia is the people who directly suffer its consequences. The second victim is a nation’s cuisine. Immigrants are always found in a free nation’s kitchens, and they’re usually doing the bulk of the good cooking. Which is why an Israeli government plan to enforce a protectionist, anti-immigrant law specifically aimed at Asian chefs in Israel is sure to hurt both immigrants and diners.
Israel’s nationwide sushi craze is being endangered by a wasabi-strength threat: The government, seeking to protect local jobs, wants to send all foreign-born Asian chefs packing by January 2009.
Asian food has become increasingly popular in Israel, fueled by the large number of young Israelis who travel to the region in an unofficial rite of passage after compulsory army service.
Thai, Chinese, Japanese and Indian restaurants have grown into a $280 million industry, accounting for 10 percent of the local dining landscape, according to the Ethnic Restaurant Association.
For the moment, Asian restaurants employ 900 foreign chefs and kitchen workers. But if the government has its way, that number could soon drop.
“We feel an Israeli can hold a wok as well as a Thai or a Chinese person,” said Shoshana Strauss, a lawyer at the Industry and Trade Ministry, which regulates work permits for foreign workers.
Restaurant operators said the Israeli plan posed an existential threat to their thriving businesses, saying the foreigners have expertise that cannot easily be replaced.
“If we don’t have cooks, we don’t have food. If we don’t have food, we don’t have customers,” said Steven Lobel, a sushi operator who owns two Asian restaurants that employ 14 Asian kitchen workers in the Tel Aviv area. “It’s pretty much one of the biggest threats we have as restaurant operators.”
What an outrage. I’m with Lobel, obviously. If there’s any justice in the world, Israel will cut out this xenophobic crap and put Strauss on the first plane to Bangkok, where I’m sure she’ll find that Thai chefs can’t make just as good a matzoh ball soup as she could find back home.
Coincidentally, tonight is gay Jewish sushi night in Philly.
Former First Chef Scheib On WH Eating Habits
Walter Scheib, the longtime White House head chef who was fired by Laura Bush in 2004, dishes on the carni-, herbi-, and omni-vorous habits (but not on the firing, which the NYT recounted here) of the White House denizens he cooked for during his 11-year tenure there in an amNY Q&A.
One would imagine that the two presidents had different tastes, but according to Scheib, the culinary camps were determined by gender, not politics.
“If we opened up a burger joint in the basement, both presidents would have been just as happy. They both believed if something was good, putting melted cheese on it would improve it 100 percent.” Predictably, the first ladies were more diet conscious: Hillary Clinton was a fan of local, regional cooking; Laura Bush was “adament about organics.”
[…]
[”]If you look at it geographically, Texas and Arkansas are pretty close. They both have lots of barbecue and lots of spicy foods. The main difference was the steak dinners. The Bushes would more often look for beef.[”]
Scheib, who published The American Chef last year and runs a haute cuisine catering company of the same name — also serves up Bill Clinton’s favorite steak recipe, which boasts buttermilk and 24-ounce porterhouses — and talks about Chelsea Clinton’s teenaged veganism, from which she’s seemingly (and thankfully) recovered.
Pigs Shudder in Blankets During Cooks’ IHOP Knife Fight
With chefs a combustible lot and surrounded by knives, it’s surprising we don’t hear more about kitchens plagued by battles between one, say, fancying himself Bill the Butcher and a fellow combatant acting out a Sweeney Todd fantasy in the other. I’m always waiting for this sort of thing to happen on Top Chef or Hell’s Kitchen, but I guess (let me be the first to break the news) reality TV isn’t always as real as reality itself. Which takes us to an IHOP in Boston’s Brighton neighborhood:
A knife duel between two workers at a Brighton greasy spoon turned the eatery into the International House of Pain.
The fracas broke out about 5 p.m. yesterday inside the International House of Pancakes on Soldiers Field Road, just as early dinner guests were sitting down to enjoy the food chain’s all-you-can-eat pancakes. But in short order, the clinking of coffee cups was replaced by the sounds of battle.
“We heard someone say, ‘Fight! Fight!’ And we heard a ruckus,” said a departing diner who was quizzed by cops before he and his wife were let go. “I think the cooks were going at it.”
More here. To see IHOP presenting a less dystopic vision of society, let’s venture back to 1969…
Actually, that was downright creepy. Instead, learn more about IHOP’s charitable doings with Miss America, as part of its sponsorship of the 3rd annual National Pancake Day, here.
No TV or Cafetorium Safe from Jamie Oliver
Who is the worst pop chef in the world? Rachael? Emeril? Tyler Florence? Paula Dean? No, no, no and no.
I’m tempted to say it’s none other than mushmouth Jamie Oliver — and it has nothing to do with the quality of his food. On the contrary. His eponymous early Food Network show (before the neon took over) was quite good. His cookbooks — including one he autographed for me at a book-signing — offer up simple and flavorful recipes. No harm there.
So what is it that makes Oliver so awful? It’s not what he cooks, but what he demands we cook. Oliver is on a crusade to have government stamp out obesity, and this burgeoning nanny-state obsession is turning him into a laughingstock, even as his own paunch grows.
Rather than following the mantra he established on those early episodes of the Naked Chef, or in his cookbooks — simple foods and good flavor, and a Gusteau-like “anyone can cook” mentality — Oliver is hellbent on using the British government to enforce his view of what his fellow countrymen should eat.
And so while English tabloids go gaga over meaty “broads” like Brooke “Hulk is my Dad” Hogan, here’s Jamie playing TV host to an obese man’s autopsy — apparently to shock people into eating better. But that’s hardly the worst of it, as Oliver is costing British taxpayers boundless sums they might otherwise have used to buy… I don’t know… Better foods? Treadmills?
Ministers have so far spent £220 million on improving school meals after bowing to the campaign led by celebrity chef Jamie Oliver in 2005.
That’s close to $500 million! Thankfully, some measure of Oliver’s pontificating does come back to bite him. But it’s certainly not enough. Who’s waiving this study in his pudgy face, for example?
This man is a Huckabee-like menace to diners everywhere. If he wants to educate people about eating fresh foods, I’m aboard. But when Oliver crosses the line to cost taxpayers half a billion dollars, and pulls TV stunts that would embarrass even Geraldo, I say he’s an enemy of cooks, diners, and taxpayers everywhere.
