Top Chef 10 Preview: Wolfgang Puck on Going Back to Basics

What a week. Election yesterday, and the premiere of Top Chef: Seattle tonight! As someone who lived in Seattle for the past six years, I’m especially excited to see what beautiful Northwest sights and tasty Seattle restaurants they decide to feature this season. (It doesn’t seem fair; when they did Top Chef in Austin I was in Seattle, then I moved to Austin and they went to Seattle! I just want to befriend Padma!) Anyway, what I’m saying is: I’m psyched for tonight, so obviously I was also psyched when I got the chance to jump on a call with Wolfgang Puck, one of the judges this season, to get a sneak peek at what we can expect from Top Chef 10.

On thing Wolfie (can I call him Wolfie? I feel like we’re BFF at this point, so it’s probably cool) is particularly vehement about is the whole “back to basics” thing that Top Chef is touting this season. He explained: “To me… I judge these chefs on how they can cook an egg… I say, okay, make me an omelet. All these people say they cook in fancy restaurants, but you need to know the basics. Cooking an egg is like cooking a steak or something. Oil, butter, some cream, cook them fast enough so they’re cook on the outside and soft in the center. And it’s amazing how few professional cooks can actually do that.”

Amen, my Austrian brother.

Wolfie says it was interesting to see the new contestants and the choices they make. Some he assumed would be good ended up being very spotty, and a lot of them “tried too hard.” He described the judging experience as, “some terrific dishes where I said ‘wow, I would hire them!’ Then the next show, ‘wow, is that the same person?'”

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Friday Food Porn: Time for the Money Shot

Without a doubt we all have our guilty pleasures when it comes to food TV. For today’s Food Porn, we thought we would share some of the guiltiest pleasures of all….the overdone “money shots” at the end of every Food Network recipe prep. Enjoy!

*Warning- You may want to watch on an empty stomach*

Video:Slate.com

Analyzing the Culinary Offerings of Our Former Colonial Overlords (with the Aid of My Comrade in Arms, Celebrity Chef Jamie Oliver)

Jamie Oliver lets me snap his pick while thinking up his next culinary masterpiece

Brit, you might not want to read this…..

When I was gallivanting about last month, one of my main priorities (apart from saving humanity and all that) was to understand the cuisine of an obscure little country located on the island of Great Britain—a nation that once struck fear in the hearts of even the most stalwart champions of freedom: England.

This tiny little swath of land, located in the Northern Atlantic, shares land borders with better known Scotland and Wales.   Apparently, the citizens of this country “England” were some of the first immigrants to our great nation.  Yeah, who knew! Having sampled some of the traditional English fare, I understand why these Englishmen put off  the massacre of the indigenous Americans until after they learned some culinary skills from America’s first people.

I found all of this out over a gruesomely disgusting meal of black and white pudding with famous English celebrity chef Jamie Oliver. That’s a picture of him  pondering the quirks of the English palate above. More on that and some complimentary analysis of the cuisine of our former colonial overlords after the jump.

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