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Top Chef Final Three: “Fire and Ice”
Watching chefs who innovate a dish, work within challenge parameters, and win or lose based on execution. Yay! We are back to what Top Chef is all about, after last week’s detour into game show/Survivor hell. There were even kind of boring points, which is fine. Do I need to get every piece of minutae about the instructions to the waiters headed out to serve the 150 plates of food to Vancouver’s food elite? Well, the show’s editors think so. And the j.v. theme “fire and ice” was a call back to Season 2, when it was considered cool beans just to have a theme for what amounted to a cook off.
So Texas in the summer was fire and Vancouver in winter, the Final Three location, was ice. Get it? For the Quick Fire, and to win $20,000, furnished by the new wine label Top Chef is putting out, Lindsay, Paul and Sarah were paired with Top Chef Masters (super successful name brand chefs who are all Asian) to cook an Asian dish in ten minute increments. Meaning, whoever stepped in as chef would not know what the prior ten minutes was prep for. Okay, a little gimmicky, but designed to show us whether the Final Three could make a dish out of various assembled chopped and partially poached food items. There was a curry dish (Sarah), a raw giant clam dish (Paul) and a scallop dish (Lindsay). Side note: scallop dishes are the go-to quick dish on Top Chef episodes and almost never win. Get a clue, chefs!
Note the arm scar on Padma Lakshmi, co host. And Sarah won the $20,000. Aramanth was the yummy secret flavor which put it all over the edge, according to co-host Padma, who hinted she’d be stealing this. What? Padma cooks? Who knew? She’s slim, she shows her odd, unexplained arm scar proudly in short sleeved shirts. She cooks? Seriously? Flush from that, Sarah et. al. were off to cook a fire and ice small plate dish, plus an accompanying fresh-made cocktail, for 150 Vancouver foodies, plus the judges, with no sous chefs. No prior contestants would be coming back to help for the traditional “sous chef from hell” segment. If you had me make 150 fussy small plates I’d faint, go nuts or take a hostage. The Final Three were chummy and calm. Damn them.
Sarah sent out hand made pasta for 150, covered by a ginger-laced frozen “sauce” meant to melt over the pasta. Which didn’t melt. Paul did an intense poached lobster in a lobster broth (killed the poor squirming buggers on camera to make the sauce extra fresh), then he pulled a cooking class 101 move and threw arugula garnish over it all. Arugula is for pikers, Paul! And that’s what Tom Colicchio said in the evaluation. Lindsay did poached halibut and carefully rendered tomato soup and a tomato-y ice. Poached fish, girl? Last season we would have seen one of the Voltaggio brothers smoking, rendering and molecuralizing that fish in some way. Duuuude! The game is to be raised! Don’t tell me you were true to yourself (as Lindsay explained in the post mortem) when being true to yourself conveniently meant you were poaching fish rather than hand-cranking mountains of pasta or making lobsters scream on camera.
And so. Lindsay was out. The extra slaving done by Paul and Sarah means they are heading to the Final Two.
Get to cooking!
Not you, Padma. But please explain that scar at some point?
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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.
