The latest and greatest news about celebrity chefs, served up buffet style.
– It may be great, it may be terrible. I don’t care. I’m having geek overload: Star Wars-themed beer.
– Nah, I don’t care that Tiger Woods is apparently a serial philanderer. Wait…he eats at Perkins? Take him for all he’s worth, Elin!
After the jump… grilled meat beats MREs any day of the week, a celeb who won’t capitalize on her fame and I don’t think that’s kosher.
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Like it or not, MTV’s new reality train wreck Jersey Shore has vaulted that curious species, the self-identified “Guido” into the public consciousness, much to the dismay of New Jerseyans, Italian-Americans and anyone with an IQ above 78. I know…you thought these Guidos and “Guidettes” were just another figment of the New Jersey imagination like the Jersey Devil and affordable real estate. As much as I would like to pretend idiots like this don’t exist, I’m afraid that anyone who has spent significant time in the Garden State — including natives like gansie and myself — has some across an example of the species, typically traveling in a pack. And now they are beamed right to your home by the magic of television. Consider it payback for the state providing you with a setting for the best show of the past ten years, The Sopranos. Gotta pay the piper sooner or later.
This joyous television experience got us thinking, though: Man does not live on soy protein, Axe Body Spray and Miller Lite alone. The Jersey shore offers a cornucopia of wonderful, horrible and wonderfully-horrible food products that will hopefully all make cameos during the season. Let this handy list of the Top 10 Jersey Shore Foods be your guide to understanding the culinary choices available to the cast.
Pizza is a staple of Jersey boardwalk fare, and Ocean City’s Mack & Manco is the best on the promenade. This is a decidedly NYC-style pie — the big floppy kind that you can fold in half and chow down on while you walk. Unlike the trash that drifts down to Jersey to participate on the show, this is one NYC import we can all enjoy. (Photo: Infinite Jeff)
The future of ice cream! Or so they’ve been telling us for the past twenty five years. At what point will the future actually get here so I can throw out my Ben & Jerry’s? These ice-cold globules used to be a “special occasion” item that you would see for sale at the shore. These days, I can buy them from a machine at the mall. Kinda takes the charm out of it. (Photo: newwavegurly)
All the nutritional value of a conversation with Mike “The Situation,” these chewy treats are the bane of brace-wearing children everywhere. Each box always includes some bullshit story about how the taffy was invented when candy fell into seawater, but you’re mostly just interested in getting the good flavors and shafting your siblings with the banana and licorice. Corn syrup + artificial flavoring = awesome. (Photo: Live?Laugh?Love)
These things are so good that they made a mediocre fast food franchise out of them! The signs that say the fries are cooked in “100% peanut oil” were tantalizingly exotic to a third grader in the 1980s (yeah, my horizons have expanded since then), and the fact that they sliced the potatoes on premises made it even more fun. The medium-cut sticks are great for the most part — the fries that you get from the center of the potatoes are long and perfectly cooked — but the unfortunate slices that are nicked off the edges invariably lead to a pile of deep-fried potato skins in the bottom of your paper cup. Bummer. (Photo: roboppy)
Sure, it’s not technically a food item, but it does account for approximately 56% of the total calories consumed at the Jersey shore. In fact, I think that national Beer Pong Championships are held in Wildwood Crest. (Photo: C o l i n)
– A Mario Batali gift that doesn’t involve copious amounts of red wine and Florentine steaks the size of your head? Where’s the fun in that?
– “Padma Would Rather Be Naked.” Click away, perverts!
After the jump…we reach the food reality show saturation point, we find out who drew the short straws at Food Network this Thanksgiving and fun with food/music puns.
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The latest and greatest news about celebrity chefs, served up buffet style.
– Yep, I’m happy because my boy Jose Garces took home the crown. You’re happy because now I’ll stop going on and on about this. Also, be sure to check out our interview with Garces and the other finalist, Jehangir Mehta.
After the jump…sorry fellas — no Martha v. Rachael Cat Fight, Art Smith tries to bring the cuddly chef thing to the tube and a lesson for all fast food marketers: don’t mess with Fiddy.
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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.
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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.
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The latest and greatest news about celebrity chefs, served up buffet style.
– Liz Hurley’s farm may be producing jerky, but that dress ain’t no Green Acres get-up. ROWR!
– Last week, while at work in my office in Philly, I had an eerie feeling overcome me…chilling me to the bone. Yep, that explains it.
After the jump…picking on Ray-Ray gets a little bit harder, Jessie the Cowgirl from Toy Story 2 tries her hand at baking and all of your craptastic adventures in the kitchen could pay off in a TV appearance.
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