Padma Lakshmi -

by BS

Feed Us Back: Comments of the Week

Is bacon the food world equivalent of the four-letter word? Read on for details…

– Have you taken the Omnivore Hundred yet? Among ES readers, Camille appears to be in the lead with an astonishing 88 percent.

– On the herbivore front, Alex is taken with gansie’s pine nut salad: I am usually thrilled to find them lurking in my salad. This could have something to do with my not really liking salad and really liking nuts…I’m just bopping along, eating my salad like a good vegetarian, and then WHOA! THERE’S A PINE NUT! AWESOME! It’s like when you crush up a pill and put it in delicious juice for a kid to drink so they won’t know it’s there, except opposite. Maybe I should start crushing up my lettuce and hide it in my pine nuts instead of hiding my pine nuts under my lettuce.

– But Mean Today is unimpressed with Padma Lakshmi’s salad course:

by BS

Stalking Padma in the Kitchen: Salad Course

Regular ESers know that I’ve been on a crusade to prove that pretty face Padma Lakshmi actually can cook. I’ve made my way through her appetizer and soup recipes, so now it’s on to course three: salad.

Cilantro is one of the most divisive foods on earth. Many people claim there’s a genetic aspect to it: If you’ve got the cilantro gene, you can’t get enough of it; if you’re born without it, the very thought of cilantro makes you turn into an angry, hulk-esque opponent.

Grace be to god, I fall on the cilantro-loving side of this supposed genetic divide. I really think it puts all other herbs to shame. But here’s the problem for us cilantro-fiends: you only need a little bit of it to season any food, yet it inexplicably is sold exclusively in gigantic bunches, which of course go bad before even the most devoted cilantrite can finish them. For years I’ve avoided buying the stuff because I’m always afraid I won’t be able to finish it. That’s where the genius of Padma Lakshmi comes into play yet again…

by BS

Stalking Padma in the Kitchen: Soup Course

I actually made this soup in tandem with Padma Lakshmi’s first course: the mushroom and goat cheese flautas. But, as you’ll soon understand, this one took a lot more inventiveness. (Editor’s Note: This was all before we heard about Vi’s potato-and-cream fueled cucumber soup, which, for the record, makes Ms. Lakshmi’s recipe look like a little girl’s soup). So Padma’s soup is pretty simple: English cucumber, yogurt, mint and sea salt, all blended together and chilled. I’m not sure why I was so taken with it. I guess she just drew me in with lines like “It tastes of the cool, grassy notes of summer.” Who knew she was a poet too?

So I whipped this all up, chilled it a little bit, and…I mean, it was fine. It did kind of taste like the cool, grassy notes of summer, but it was also kind of bland and unexciting, like the second week of June, and you’re still in school. But of course I took some liberties and managed to spice it up a bit….

in Recipe / Veggie 2 comments

by BS

Stalking Padma in the Kitchen: The Appetizer

Gansie recently got her hands on a copy of Padma Lakshmi’s cookbook Tangy, Tart, Hot and Sweet, which of course I promptly stole. As has been mentioned countless times on ES, while this pretty face may not be a trained chef, girl really can cook. The book is a healthy 250 pages of recipes ranging from simplistic snacks (grilled cheese toastie with portobello and bacon) to complex crap I can’t even imagine making, like Moroccan b’stella. Of course, there are also ample photos of Padma salaciously chowing down on a fried chicken drumstick and the like.

While I’m not gonna do a full cookbook-through on this one for ya’ll, I am trying a few of the most enticing recipes, from appetizer through dessert course, so here’s my first attempt.

in Cheese / Recipe / TV / Veggie 7 comments

by BS

Hott Links: Top Chef Roundup

– It’s official: The next season of Top Chef will be taking place right here in New York, supposedly starting very soon. So expect some full-fledged Padma stalking around these parts! [Snack]

– Unverified rumor: The cheftestants will be bringing their suitcases full of sriracha and pork fat to one of those atrocious new condos surrounding McCarren Park in Williamsburg. [Eater]

– Spike’s much anticipated DC eatery is now open. Check it out. [Capital Spice]

Photo: Bravo

in TV 0 comments

by gansie

The BS Top 10

Happy Birthday, BS!

Here is a “Top” list just for you.

Top 10 Reasons Why ES Loves BS

10. Ability to incorporate pine nuts into anything. [Pine Nuts Tag]
9. Breaking the news that he scored a girlfriend through an ES post. [Alex, meet BS’s Mom]
8. Seriouisly, there is such a thing as Hot Dog Sushi. [Sushi?]
7. Bridging the divide between G-d’s Chosen People and Jesus Lovers. [Christmas Matzah Balls]
6. Creating the wildly popular *Top 10* Contents (see #5). [Top 10s]
5. Link-whoring us all the way to the New York Times (and USA Today and Sports Illustrated.) [American Invents Crazy Food]
4. Exposing the dirty practice of charging for chips and salsa. <gasp> [Getting a Chip Off My Shoulder]
3. Padma. Padma. Padma. [Padma]
2. Bacon. Bacon. Bacon. [Bacon]
1. Taking ES from the blogosphere to the airwaves. I hear Oprah calling. [Sports Radio]

in Lists / Personal 7 comments

by BS

Top Ten Moments in ES History: Year One

Endless Simmer is one year old today! Can you freaking believe that? It seems like only yesterday we were brainstorming pun names and telling our friends about this hypothetical “blog” thing. It’s been a pretty amazing year, and we really appreciate all our readers coming along for the ride. If you’ll allow us just this one post of self-indulgence, we’d like to take a minute to relive the Best Moments in ES History: Year One. For our long-time fans, enjoy a walk down memory lane, and for newbies, check out some of our all-time fav posts that you may have missed.

10. Gansie gets drunk; invents live blogging Top Chef

During Season 3 of Top Chef, Endless Simmer provided you with next-day recaps, as many other blogs do. But on one Wednesday night this Winter, gansie wandered home from the pub, discovered Top Chef 4 was about to premier, and decided our readers just couldn’t wait until Thursday morning for our must-read insight. Thus a new genre was born: live-blogging pre-recorded episodes of reality television shows. In the beginning, it was just gansie informing a non-existent audience that “Padma’s boots are to die” and “Spike could be hott,” but by the end of the season, we were welcoming huge groups of readers and even saw some celebrity guest lurkers (see moment #3). Stay tuned to ES and who knows what totally unnecessary innovation we’ll come up with next. I think I hear a clamor for Live Blogging Iron Chef America, Live Blogging Sunday Night Dinner Parties, and Live Blogging Repeats of Rachael Ray’s Tasty Travels at 3am

9. JoeHoya’s first comment

On July 6th, 2007, at 12:30 a.m., we were overjoyed to find we had one of our very first comments from a non-friend/family member. It was a classic: “Does it make me just a little bit more of a foodie than you if I know that it’s spelled “bulgur” wheat? And does it make me an ass that I bothered to post that?” In fairness, he concluded the comment “And, now that you hate me, can I also say that this is a great new blog that I’m looking forward to visiting frequently!” He wasn’t kidding. And so an ES star commenter was born. The next year would be filled with friends and family repeatedly asking us: “Who the hell is JoeHoya? And why does he know everything?” Thank you, JoeHoya; no other ES commenter has even come close.

8. “I am going to cut that girl”

Our first brush with stardom came a mere month into our blogging tenure, when the prettier half of our editing team was mysteriously nominated in Fishbowl D.C.’s annual hottest media types contest. Realizing the huge marketing potential of such a moment, we quickly started talking shit about gansie’s competition. In the most dramatic moment of said shit-talking, the frontrunning “hottest media type” got a little angry at our joke that she was clearly cheating, ruminating on her own blog that she was “going to cut that girl who called me a cheater.” Thankfully, no one was cut, and for the record, it turned out she actually was cheating.

7. Padma Lakshmi reads ES every day

OK fine, that might be an exaggeration. Just a little. But it’s kinda-sorta-possibly true. A few months back, a good friend of our contributor britannia ended up interning for a Manhattan publicist that does work for ES Icon Padma Lakshmi. When the publicist asked him to print out blog posts about Padma for the star to read, he of course mentioned that he knew the folks writing Endless Simmer. “Oh yeah, we’ve read them before,” replied Padma’s PR flack. So for all of you who comment not-so-nice things about this extremely talented chef, curb it, OK, because Padma is always watching.

PS – Hi Padma!

6. 80 proof gets a new camera

We were fairly proud of our first five months of blog posts, but 80p def took us to a new, semi-profess level when he started snapping pics with his new Christmas-bestowed camera. Sure we were snarky before, but now we’re artsy too. A blogosphere-world double whammy.

Next: Top 5 Moments in ES History: Year One

in Holiday / Lists / Personal 15 comments