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Top Chef “Culinary Games” Final Four
Anyone seen the 70’s Depression-era flick “They Shoot Horses Don’t They?”. Don’t bother if you haven’t. Suffice it to say it is really earnest. Jane Fonda is one half of a dance team trying to win some much-needed money by outdancing, over several days, dozens of other couples. To get the flavor, you can just catch a rerun of tonight’s episode of Top Chef, as the Final Four endure several physical challenges, utilizing British Columbia’s Olympic ski area, which have nothing to do with how good a chef you are, and a whole lot to do with amping up the game show/Survivor quality of this once-great series. You will win $100,000 and get a whole lot of food business publicity. Just dance, damn you, dance!
Back in the misty days of Season 2 or 3, a last chef standing might fight through to a win with hard ingredients, wacky time limits, and maybe the impediment of a booted chef, brought back to “help” as sous chef. Usually this was the one who oversalted and could be counted on to cut a finger and drip blood on a plate just before service. Not tonight. And also, for the first time, a formerly eliminated chef was allowed to fight her way back onto the show by defeating other losing chefs in the online-only “Last Chance Kitchen”. Web traffic to Bravo, anyone? Sure. But that meant Beverly Kim, who indeed got another chance, was back, having taken the worthy Ed out last week. Ed, why did you use canned pre-smoked oysters for your sauce? Why?
So the falsely smiling Beverly joined Sarah, Lindsay and last man standing Paul for a cook-off in a swinging gondola going up a mountain at Whistler ski resort. Lindsay won a spot in the Final Three with her perfectly crisped salmon with sausage. Crisping is very hard at high altitudes. Good one, Lindsay.
Now who is going down? I know! Let’s have all three chip ingredients out of huge blocks of ice and cook outdoors. Paul chivalrously helped Beverly with ingredients and ice smashing. For once, he was not punished for his classy kindness and won a spot.
Now, what all foodies want to see (not). Chefs doing cross country skiing and marksmanship. Is there a crossover demographic I don’t know about? Winter Olympic biathlon viewers who love arcane cooking shows? Anyway, if it exists, Bravo nabbed it tonight, as Beverly and Sarah staggered through a cross country course, slipping and falling, then had to shoot at targets which would earn them enough ingredients to cook with. That’s not where amazing plates of food come from. It’s where okay plates of food come from. They both got enough to pound out a meal, but while we’re at it, it would have been intriguing to see someone miss every target and have no ingredients. Would they be the first in the history of the show to be eliminated for bad marksmanship instead of cooking?
Beverly’s arctic char was overwhelmed with too many earthy flavors and Sarah’s kinda dry rabbit ruled the day. So Beverly, who did not deserve a second chance, really, was off. Thankfully.
Next week, real cooking, no gimmicks. I hope.
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Valentine’s Dance at School
Somehow last year, we missed the school Valentine’s Dance. Were we sick? Oh wait. We were in Paris. Aaaah. Back to earth. That was not going to happen this year. Meaning going to Paris. And meaning not missing the dance. We sent our $4 a person check for $16, covering us 4, only three days late, which in school fund-raising terms was right on time. From 6:30 to 8:30 there would be a deejay in the school Multi Purpose Room (MPR for the cognoscenti). Families were asked to bring a dessert to share. Translating as an excuse to make cookies. Since John Sr. and Jr. don’t really like chocolate chip (!) it was a Snickerdoodle (recipe) kind of night.
Our mild rainless February continues but we drove the 2 blocks to school, as carrying cookies and a camera in heels is a drag. Juliet donned a lacy black dress, and put her hair up. She had slapped on some unauthorized lipgloss, so pale I missed it till the end of the night. Which was fine. At this age, the few boys dragged by their parents hover at the edge of the dance or hop around if the music is especially loud and bouncy. The girls dance with each other or their parents, but eventually it’s all a big game of chase except for the 11 year olds, who looked terribly mature to us parents of 2nd graders. They wore heels! They looked at boys! The boys kind of looked at girls! God help us in three years.
The MPR had dim lights, a disco ball, a deejay playing everything from “Thriller” to “Party Rock” (that’s by LMFAO, and is current, to you readers who lost track of pop music with Nirvana). When Katy Perry or Taylor Swift songs came up, you could hear only screaming as the girls worshiped their heroines. In short, it was a great night. With a photo booth you could enter as many times as you want. A sample:
Outside the dance, various parents chatted, passing around a bottle of. . . water. The lemonade inside was juiced with. . . lemons. The popular kids were. . . no doubt cruising the mall, as this was the little kid dance, people! Get your minds out of the gutter!
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Snickerdoodle Cookie Recipe
I don’t like cinnamon. But I like Snickerdoodle cookies. Somehow, they aren’t very cinnamony even though the cookies are rolled in a cinnamon and sugar mixture before baking. I tweaked a good recipe for them after we broke down and bought some frozen dough from the Girl Scout on our street who needed to make her quota. After reading all the chemicals and stabilizers on the ingredient list on the side of the leaden plastic bin the “Gourmet” dough came in, I very quickly got out a mixing bowl. And so:
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees and get out a baking sheet. I have a teflon baking pan I have been using forever. The dough is buttery so don’t grease the pan. It messes up the intended crunchy texture. Another weirdness is I don’t use a mixer since I hate cleaning the equipment. I just soften the butter so mixing is easy and use the back of a soup spoon to incorporate the ingredients. Please, feel free to use a mixer, but don’t overbeat once the eggs are in.
You’ll need:
1 1/2 cups white sugar or Zukar brand cane sugar, which I use quite a lot
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs
2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon cream of tartar (some say it ‘s not necessary but it makes the cookie nice and crumbly)
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
Some bakers call for 1/4 teaspoon salt. I leave this out as the baking soda is salty enough.
Cream butter and sugar together. Add the vanilla and eggs. Mix well. Meanwhile, measure out the flour into a big enough cup or bowl so you can add the cream of tartar and baking soda. I run a knife through so the flour has this worked through a bit. Mix the flour etc. into the egg, sugar and butter. It takes some persistence as this is a stiff dough. You’re then going to make little 1 to 1.5 inch dough balls and roll them in:
2 tablespoons white sugar mixed with 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon. I always end up with extra, so put more sugar in it and you have enough for cinnamon toast the next day.
Note the spacing. Space them 2 inches apart and bake for 8-10 minutes. Last time, I set the timer for 8 hours instead of 8 minutes, but luckily a certain smell beckoned me into the kitchen and I got them in time.
Mmmm. Voila, as they say in Paris. I think Snickerdoodles would sell well in France. But how to translate the name?
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Roast Chicken
Raise your hand if you like dry chicken. Thought not. My multi-year quest for moist oven-roasted chicken has been realized over several attempts in a row. To do this, I did not climb any mountains, fight a lion or find a sword in a lake. Unfortunately. Still, I present you with The Grail. You need a 3-4 pound chicken (ha), plain Greek yogurt, a head of garlic, and some kind of steak or poultry rub.
Preheat oven to 425 degrees. If you have a gas oven, even better, but electric will do. I have done this with grocery store non hormone chickens, organic chickens, sometimes even farmer’s market just-plucked. It always works. You split the chicken in half along the breastbone to butterfly it. Spread is as flat as you can in a roasting pan. Then you season it all over with poultry rub (non spicy). I like Santa Maria rub, lately, a salt and pepper rub sold at Whole Foods.
The chicken is pretty flat. You get even cooking and white meat stays moist. This time I put about 2o whole cloves of garlic under the skin all over the chicken, with a few under the open cavity. I don’t always do this.
The flat side of meat pounder opens garlic very easily. Then I slather the chicken with about a cup of thick plain Greek yogurt.
This is the secret to moistness. High heat melts it into the chicken. I cook it in the high heat for about 35 minutes, which a restaurant chef told me was TOTALLY WRONG. You are supposed to slow cook chicken then blast high heat at the end. Not when the chicken is wearing yogurt sunscreen, it seems. After 35 minutes (check earlier for brownness as your oven may be “fast” or slow), you flip the bird with your handy tongs so the white meat does not dry out. Cook it another ten minutes at the high heat, then lower it to 325. This will go another 20 minutes or so, and, in a pinch, you can turn the oven off right now and go get your child from gymnastics, walk the dog, or whatever. I’ve done it this way, trust me. There is a lot of residual heat which keeps cooking the chicken. After 20 minutes (or when you get back), flip the chicken one more time and give it one more blast at 425 for about 5 or 10 minutes.
Yeah, it’s a tad too brown for professional purposes. Tasted great, though. I serve it with brown or white rice, and, often, an iceberg lettuce salad with sliced oranges, dressed with oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper. Pepper on oranges is a surprisingly delicious flavor if you have never had it.
This is a very refreshing salad, a variation on a Sicilian orange, olive oil and pepper salad Grandpa Romano makes. -
The Misfit Restaurant Review
I went on a top secret Valentine’s gift mission to Santa Monica a couple days ago. Yes, we have a splendid fancy mall here, and a couple of indy type shops where you can get odd gifts. There is even an elderly engraver along the main drag, 85 if he is a day, in a tiny store with about 11 products right out of Dickens. The roof leaks when it rains, but buckets are strategically placed, and he shares one wall with a meat smoking joint and another wall with a tire shop. Sorry Mr. Man From Another Time, the west side of L.A. still rules for quirky sole proprietor shops with hard-to-find merchandise. So I found something the (no name, please) shop posted on the internet, emailed them to hold it for my perusal and took a typical SoCal three freeway drive to see it. In parts of Europe, I’d have crossed a couple of borders making the trek. I parked in one of the public structures where I could get 2 hours of free parking, enough time for my errand and maybe a snack.
When I lived in Santa Monica, February meant a turtleneck against foggy weather, so I wore one. Saturday it was an unreal 80 degrees. I stopped at Gap to buy a t shirt lest I melt. Right nearby was an inviting little storefront promising small bites and an extensive wine list. It was called The Misfit. And you thought the title of the article was about me? Trust me, I’m pretty mainstream. Outside the joint, people in yoga clothes (really fit people, looking perfect) lounged. Maybe all the small bites involved yogurt? Looked at the menu. There was kale, but also skinny fries. There were tons of fresh made cocktails (not for a three freeway drive day, sadly), and ribs, and fresh dips and. . . all right I’d stop in before going home.
The 3rd street Promenade is an open air mall which is car free. The only traffic is human. You simply can’t go 20 yards without overhearing strolling tourists with international accents and seeing street musicians, comedy acts and today, a fire and brimstone preacher. Penn and Teller paid their dues down on the Venice Boardwalk and the dream indeed is still alive. Lotsa hope down there. Not so for the “psychic” Irish tea leaf reader, dressed in too much green velvet, who looked seriously cranky. Maybe it was the boy band near her. I mean boy. I mean 10 years old, loud and doing covers of songs much older than their parents. They had guts, anyway. Stopped in to the shop, examined, totally changed my mind about what to buy, and headed back to the car.
Ha, gotcha.
Went to The Misfit.
I sat at the bar and got an immediate menu from someone cheerful, then ordered and almost immediately got roasted chicken and kale soup ($6). Water (free). Watched the bartender make their homemade sangria with white wine and fresh fruit. Eye wandered over the decor, which included a collection of vintage cocktail shakers, vintage decorative only stereo speakers straight from my teen years. (JBL). Younger readers will say: what’s a stereo? what’s a JBL? why would a speaker be 18 inches long? Ask your grandpa. In keeping with retro decor was retro food in all the right way. No premade broth that I could detect. Nothing from the restaurant supply Cisco truck. Neat wine list. Decent prices. I cracked and ordered the hand cut fresh made skinny fries. Half order $3. You could taste the beef fat they were finish fried in (all the rage lately) but they needed salt. Had the yoga crowd quietly protested with deep looks and sighs? Why would beef fat be okay but not salt? A misstep corrected by asking for a salt shaker, delivered basically, yes, immediately. I finished up, nosed around. The kitchen is upstairs with an open window you can see into (not hiding much). The wait staff gets the added bonus of cardio all day and night with the Parisian-style restaurant stairs.
Great service, reasonable menu, busy but friendly. Such a find. What magic alchemy of financing, staffing and sourcing made this happen?
I research it. It’s owned by a mini restaurant group from Phoenix who does this kind of thing. They have a couple places in Pasadena. So unicorns and the magic restaurant fairy were not involved. Pros who train their staff really well were behind the magic, for a change. Yay. I’ve now read like 300 raves and near raves on yelp, and learned I completely missed getting their salted chocolate chip cookies to go (6 for $3). You know what? I like a place you find without yelp or the internet, and learning about it later. But this does explain why the busy staff was surprised when I looked like a greenhorn at the menu, was curious at the decor and displayed no “please me, I expect the moon” behavior .
Go. We’ll meet for cookies and cocktails. It’s at 225 Santa Monica Blvd., Santa Monica, CA 90401, and the public garage across from the Laemmle theater is really close. We’ll go early. Happy hour is noon to 7 every day.
