The latest and greatest news about celebrity chefs, served up buffet style.
– Sweet News: Smörg fave Gail Simmons will be the host of Top Chef: Just Desserts.
– And she’ll also be a regular judge on the second season of Top Chef: Masters beginning April 14th.
After the jump…taking shots as Alice Waters, the Jersey Shore crew contributes to our knowledge of the mixology and Food Network gets muy caliente!
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Editor’s Note: Food enthusiast Matthew Wexler, an NYC-based freelance writer and private chef at Good Commons, a boutique retreat center located in Plymouth, VT, joins us this week with this special report on a very unique holiday cocktail.
I am a seasonal drinker. If it’s 90 degrees and stifling outside, there is nothing more satisfying than a Hendrick’s gin and tonic. When the whether chills and the leaves crisp to burnt oranges and reds, that’s how I like to see my cocktail — in the form of a Manhattan on the rocks. So when Daisy Martinez tipped me off about the annual coquito competition and tasting at El Museo del Barrio this past weekend, I had my jingle bells on in a heartbeat. Never mind that this Puerto Rican holiday favorite was completely new to my drinking repertoire, I had a good feeling that both cocktail and culture would welcome me with open arms. For those unfamiliar with said cocktail, International Coquito Federation Founder and President, Debbie Quiñones, gave me the low-down:
“I was introduced to the drink by a family friend, and when she passed I was desperate for coquito. I started inviting family and friends over for Coquito parties, and with this inspiration and enthusiasm, we decided to form the International Coquito Federation and take it to another level.”
The Coquito competition blew up last year, when more than 700 thirsty tasters showed up at Museo del Barrio, and reportedly, attendees were so coo-coo for coquito that the police were called to keep things under control. So what is in this magical ambrosia that elicits such heartfelt madness?
According to Quiñones, a traditional coquito consists of condensed milk, evaporated milk, cinnamon, nutmeg, coconut cream and/or milk; eggs are optional. Oh, and “as much rum as you can possibly put into it without knocking somebody out.”
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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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Social’s savory spin on the traditional Louisiana pastry, the Beignet.
Brace yourselves people… I’m about to gush. Last Saturday I went to Social – a new D.C. restaurant located at the north end of Columbia Heights. Social is the first lounge-y, Dupontish-style joint to venture north of Columbia Road, but it thankfully forgoes the snooty downtown attitude in favor of warmly welcoming waitstaff and hosts, and a design that encourages you to stay and hang out all night (and get Social – get it?).
The service was superlative, the lounge-y setup is comfortable (think low lights, candles, comfy black couches and chairs, softly stuccoed walls, and plenty of cherry wood tables to rest your drinks and food upon), the drinks were fun and dangerously delicious, and the food … the food was incredible. Period.
The food is Creole/Cajun and Asian fusion inspired. This is a serious claim to make in my estimation – as much of my mother’s family hails from Louisiana. I get pissed when restaurants purport to be Creole or Creole-inspired and then fail to come through with the requisite creativity and spicy zestiness that typifies Creole cooking. But Social delivers creative menu items ranging from meatball pomodoro sliders (a large portion of which our group scarfed down in less than five minutes) to “Mud Bug” Beignets (the crawfish fritters, pictured above. Sometime ES blogger Edubs described these fritters as shredded and deliciously spiced crawfish goodness, surrounded by a lightly fried batter). Edubs also fully enjoyed snagging bites of her husband‘s Sonoran Mahi Mahi Tacos — corn tortillas filled with an unexpectedly intricate blend of southwestern, Mexican, and south pacific flavors – the crisp citrus tones of the grilled and marinated white fish were accented by jalapeño cabbage and mango salsa and were topped with tomato and garlic sauce.
The menu is organized in a really interesting fashion. It’s built to handle parties of varying sizes. You can order 3 different portion sizes, which was perfect for our birthday group, as we waxed and waned in size throughout the night.
More stories about gorging on cheftastic kitchen creations and dodging skeezey dudes after the jump…
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Editors Note: It’s back to school time, all y’all! (I picked that up in Texas)
In the spirit of learning and sharing and eating lunch out of some sort of overpriced sustainable tote bag, here’s a lesson on how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, in Spanish. An ES first!
Enjoy some 101 Español by ES friend, Juanito.
Para aquellas personas que siempre han querido probar ese plato tan
emblemático de Gringolandía, aquí les enseño paso a paso a preparar el
famoso sándwich de mantequilla de maní y mermelada.
1) Se saca una barra de pan de molde. El sándwich tradicional se
prepara con pan blanco, pero se puede usar pan integral para un
sándwich más saludable.
2) Se saca la mantequilla de maní (cremosa o crujiente).
3) Se saca la mermelada, de preferencia a base de uva. También se
puede usar mermelada de fresa.
4) Se saca dos rebanadas de pan.
5) Se abre los envases de mantequilla de maní y mermelada.
6) Usando un cuchillo, se unta de mermelada una rebanada de pan.
7) Usando un cuchillo, se unta la mantequilla de maní sobre la segunda
rebanada de pan.
8 ) Se coloca la rebanada untada de mantequilla de maní encima de la
rebanada untada de mermelada.
9) El sándwich de mantequilla de maní debe tomarse con un vaso de leche fría.
¡Buen provecho!
So, I went to Mexico City. And I survived. And it all happened in Denver. Allow me to explain:
Mexico City is a Mexican restaurant in downtown Denver. They’re famous for their……FRIED TACOS. Don’t believe me? Check out their aptly named website.
The tacos are fried with the cheese embedded in the fried taco shell. In the taco: steak, lettuce, tomato and avocado (a nice touch). The issue with melting the cheese to the fried taco shell is that the distribution of the cheese is somewhat uneven.
Some bites provide cheesy, delicious explosions, while others are dominated by the steak and other toppings. This is why one member of our group exclaimed, “That’s why I order four—to maximize the amount of opportunities for a fried taco/cheese explosion party in my mouth.”
Touche.
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Americans don’t want spicy food. Oh, they think they do, but they really don’t. The want medium — “zesty” — but not really, truly hot.
That’s always been the conventional wisdom. It’s said that, while there are always the daredevil diners who will pour the habanero sauce on anything, middle-America isn’t interested in being challenged with real heat. In other words, most of us are wimps.
But could the conventional wisdom be going by the wayside? Might the American palate be shifting in a way that opens up menus at national restaurant chains to items that deliver the goods in terms of a truly spicy meal? That’s what the folks at Taco Bell are counting on with the recent expansion of the Volcano Menu. Proven sales performance and an overall belief in changing culinary trends have them convinced they have a product that can sell well around the country with a genuinely spicy dish.
But could the heat be enough to impress me, the undisputed Endless Simmer king of chicken wings?
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