It’s really getting down to the wire on Top Chef: Las Vegas, with the remaining chef-testants having to endure a culinary Olympics this week. Of course, one unlucky cooker didn’t make it to the finish line. Our (spoiler) chat with them is after the jump.
Read More›
The latest and greatest news about celebrity chefs, served up buffet style.
– Apparently, this is not a figment of your twisted imagination: Rachael Ray is selling a suitcase that will transport your lasagna.
– Alton Brown + Multitaskers + Bacon = five kinds of awesome!
After the jump…fresh fruit from a Food Network personality, Garces looks to exact revenge for the defeat of the Phillies and Tom C. goes On the Road.
Read More›
Editors Note: My neighbor Kashou Bennett who blogs at The Straight Torquer has been bragging about his garden for months. As we wrap up our outdoor activities, Kash gives us one more remembrance of warmer days.
The leaves are turning, the wind is getting chillier, and I have finally retired my garden.
I had harvested most of the vegetables a few weeks ago, but my basil plants this year just kept on kicking. It was a small garden, not difficult to keep weeded and tended to, just a tidy patch of tilled earth in the front yard of my house in Columbia Heights, Washington DC.
The reason I kept those last hardy basil plants around as long as I could was that the little group of plants represents more to me than just a place from which I can get a bit of food. My garden was a public statement — and when I say public, I mean front yard public — of organic living and self-sufficiency that I was inspired to undertake by Michelle Obama’s organic garden in the backyard of the White House.
Sure, I could have avoided some sidewalk casualties had I protected my pepper plants in pots on the back porch. Several times I rescued the fragile flora from incoming threats of various nature. From inebriated friends staggering through the yard and just not realizing what they were standing in (hey man, watch out!), to the daily assaults coming from the games of the kids who live on my block.
Read More›
Long-time readers know the ES crew won’t be satisfied until we control the entire food media world, and on that note, today’s a big day in the annals of Endless Simmer history, as this post officially goes where no ES post has gone before: the world of sound. That’s right — in addition to learning what we eat every night through our words and photos, you can now get all up in our heads and actually hear what’s going on inside these hungry, hungry minds.
On Talking With Our Mouths Full: The Endless Simmer Podcast, we’ll bring you food stories from around the globe, interview some of your favorite food personalities, and share our every edible thought, all via the magical medium of Internet radio. Given the time of year, today’s debut episode is all about — what else? — turkey! Those of you looking to mix it up a bit this Thanksgiving are in luck, as four of our favorite food personalities have graciously taken the time to tell us about a few alternative ways you can cook that big bird this year. Hit the play button above and take a listen!
Featured Guests in this Episode:
Fabio Viviani, the fan favorite from season five of Top Chef, is also the star of the upcoming Food Network series Fabio: A Catered Affair, the chef at brand new LA eatery Firenze Osteria, and a roving ambassador for Santa Margherita wines. Somehow, he found the time to talk to us about turkey.
Elizabeth Karmel is widely recognized as one of America’s foremost BBQ and grilling experts. The executive chef at New York’s Hill Country Barbecue and Market (an Al Roker favorite!), Elizabeth is also the founder of GirlsAtTheGrill.com, where, among other goodies, you’ll find a mean recipe for grilled turkey.
Mike Bober (a.k.a. JoeHoya) along with his wife Elizabeth, writes the Washington, D.C. food blog Capital Spice. When he’s not busy smoking out his entire neighborhood, he drops enough knowledge around ES to earn himself a place in the Endless Eater Hall of Fame.
Clint Cantwell is a member of award-winning competition barbecue and grilling team Smoke In Da Eye. If you’re gonna try frying up your bird this year, please, please read Clint’s Ten Tips to a Perfect (and Safe) Deep-Fried Turkey.
After you’ve listened to the turkey talk podcast above, be sure to share your own turkey cooking tips in the comments below, and cast your vote:
[poll=38]
Talking With Our Mouths Full is produced by Adam Pogoff of Boutique Radio. For all your podcasting and audio production needs, visit Boutique Radio on the web.
We’re in the home stretch in the competition to select The Next Iron Chef, and the finals will feature two East Coast chefs with backgrounds quite different from much of the people you typically see on Food Network. There is New York-based Jehangir Mehta, a native of Mumbai, India and Philadelphia’s Jose Garces, Ecuadorian by birth and a practitioner of a variety of Latin cuisines. He’s also the proud recipient of the official TVFF foodie man-crush, even if he doesn’t know it. You can get caught up with the competition on the Food Network site and be sure to tune in this Sunday at 9 p.m. Eastern to see who brings home the title.
Endless Simmer had a chance to chat with Chefs Mehta and Garces about the Next Iron Chef experience:
ES: During the first season of Next Iron Chef, the contestants got tripped up a little bit with the fundamentals. Did you do any brushing up in preparation for this competition?
Mehta: I unfortunately have not seen a single episode, so I don’t know. I didn’t see anything of the first season, but even when I was there, I had asked a couple of people, “Does anyone have any tapes, or anything for me,” and I don’t think anyone did, so I never watched a single episode.
Garces: You know, I can answer at this point, there’s really not much you can do to prepare once you start the show or even beforehand. You really have to rely on years of experience, years of cooking, and hope that that’s enough to get you through. So, there was no preparation on my part.
ES: After the first couple of challenges was there any sense you could get from the judges of what they liked and what they didn’t like, and did you adjust your style or your output in any way?
Mehta: I did try to make things less sweet but somehow it didn’t work as much as I tried. I think you must always listen to the negativity that they might give you, but you must also look at the point of what they are saying they didn’t like about others, because you learn a lot from other people’s mistakes. I was just keeping my ears open to what is happening even when others were going down in terms of what they were told, what the judges liked, what they didn’t like. And it could be what they didn’t like of that dish – that doesn’t mean they didn’t like the whole idea of it. You have to just view things and take the best of what you need to do.
Garces: I found the judges to each have their own style and as Chef Mehta said, some may like things a certain way where others may not like things a certain way. I know that Jeffrey Steingarten was really particular about texture and doneness, so after a few battles you knew that he was going to look for both of those things. But overall, with so many different palates and so many different points of view, you really can’t change your style to fit all three, so I found that just going with my gut and what I do best served me well.
After the jump, find out how they think they compare with the current Iron Chefs and why – no matter who wins – this could be an offally good addition to the current roster.
Read More›
Earlier this month, I found myself navigating an incredibly packed room of hungry foodies at New York magazine’s New York Taste event, where hundreds of us alternately pushed in front of each other for a chance to taste the dozens of appetizer-size samples from New York’s trendiest eateries. Most of the dishes on hand were your usual suspects: Kobe beef sliders, high-end BBQ brisket, amped-up oysters, creative panna cottas and the like. But then I walked by the station for chef Ed Brown’s Eighty One and found something I hadn’t tried before.
“Crispy trotter with slow cooked egg?” offered one of the sous chefs, as she slid a tantalizingly yolk-topped plate my way.
I didn’t quite know what she was talking about, but her dish sure followed the ES mantra that anything fried and topped with an egg can’t be bad. I eagerly snatched the offering from her and quickly zeroed in with my spoon, asking almost as an afterthought, “so what is trotter?”
Read More›
I don’t give a shit. I fucking love chips. I could not live without potato chips. When I lived in Barcelona for a month I ate Ruffle brand chips and gelato for breakfast everyday on my way to Barceloneta, the closest beach. Everyday. I was in Spain. I could have eaten anything and I carried around a bag of Ruffles with me everywhere I went.
I still can’t eat a sandwich without a side of chips. Slices of apple won’t help. Maybe a pickle, but I’d rather eat a pickle and chips. Actually, I don’t even like sandwiches that much, but we can talk about that later.
When I’m hungover there’s no cure like chips and a Coke. I can only sub chips’ grease with fries, but if I’m at home without a fryer, chips are the only thing that truly makes me feel better. Yes, even over eggs.
My only problem — the chip addiction not being the problem — is I only like plain chips. I love ruffled/ridged chips, but that’s the only texture I can handle. I hate kettle. I hate pretty much all flavors. I hate BBQ and any other chip that would leave weird orangeness on my fingertips (and I hated this as a kid too). At parties I can snack on some other flavors, but only out of desperation. Salt and pepper is okay, as is sour cream and onion and shockingly, salt and vinegar. But that’s about it. It’s weird that I love chips so much, love so very much, but only in a very limited way.
Read More›