by 80 Proof
Salman Rushdie and Padma Lakshmi (of Top chef fame and frequent semi-nude model for this blog) are splitting up!
I hope this blog wasn’t the reason…
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Padma Lakshmi
by BS
This week Top Chef went all apple pie ‘n’ mom on us and made the theme of the show “American classics.” The chefs had to work with classic American comfort foods like sloppy joes, fried chicken and tacos (I imagine Tom Tancredo will be staging a protest against TC, insisting that tacos are not all-american). The chefs had to update these classic dishes to make them both upscale and healthy. The result was a smorgasbord of disaster, with many tasteless, disappointed glares from Padma. CJ took the healthy idea way too far and made some sort of flaxseed-wheat grass-hemp oil-left coast abomination. But the challenge proved most difficult for our foreign friends, who seemed both disgusted and confused by our greasy, lard-soaked traditions. Jamaican chef Sara M. just said screw it and instead of updating Chicken a la King, she made Chicken kebabs over couscous. But it was snobby South African chef Micah who was left in tears when the judges did everything but spit her meatloaf and mashed potatoes back in her face. Maybe she should have just made bunny chow.
by BS
For those of you still unaware, Top Chef Recap is a weekly column here at ES and an excuse for us to run pictures of Bollywood porn star Padma Lakshmi.
This week’s quickfire was a vague challenge centered around citrus fruits, with most chefs opting for the luscious-looking blood oranges. The only thing of note is that Micah made some kind of nasty pudding-soup concoction, lost, and then cried for the rest of the episode. Hung won, and his shameless gloating makes him so happy it’s almost endearing.
The elimination challenge was a gourmet BBQ, won by Brian, who had the balls to make seafood sausages, which sounds like a course worthy of school lunch, but actually looked, and apparently tasted, pretty great.
Despite her Sanjaya-style haircut, Sandee just wasn’t cut out for reality TV, and the judges freaked out on her when she screwed up unscrewupable lobster by pairing it with dates (seriously) and poaching it when she was supposed to be BBQing. So Sandee gets the boot, even though Joey thought “gourmet” includes chicken drumsticks and was acting like a total a-hole.
by BS
The third season of everyone’s favorite gourmet for gonzos cooking show has hit the air, and thus the occasion for endless simmer’s first weekly column (yeah, yeah, we’ll get it up on the right days and weeks when we launch).
The chefs are in Miami, where they started out cooking in Gianni Versace’s mansion, which is kinda creepy, because, um – wasn’t he murdered there? Anyway, for the first quickfire challenge, they each had to take generic cocktail party fare and turn it into an amuse-bouche, which apparently translates as “a mouth amuser,” and basically means really fucking fancy cocktail party fare.
It was clear from the start that poor Southern hick Clay would be amusing us for only the first episode, despite the fact that he “likes to cook food that tastes good” and believed some sort of blue-state/red-state calculus meant being from Dixie had it all wrapped up for him. Also, I just learned what an amuse-bouche is, but I could have already told you a fruit salad is not one. The only other character who stood out from the crowd was Hung, a 29-year-old sous chef from Vegas and this season’s laughably unrealistic supervillain.
The main challenge was a surf-and-turf made from out-there ingredients like rattlesnake and kangaroo. The coolest-looking dishes were actually the ones made from sea urchin. Anybody ever cooked with that? My interest is piqued.
If you need more of a TC fix, or just can’t stop thinking about the cold, dissaproving stare of Mrs. Salman Rushdie, Bravo has not one, but TWELVE blogs about Top Chef. Wow, not even I’m that bored.
