→ July 23, 2008
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The Next Food Network Star, episode 8.

Sort of a surprise ending, with the judges deciding to keep all three contestants for the final showdown, but with Aaron spitting the bit, it would have been hard for them to justify sending Lisa home.

  • What the heck was Aaron thinking? Is his sense of humor just broken? That started bad and got worse as he went on. I’m not even sure what the underlying joke was.
  • I was impressed by Lisa’s singing – bit of a Joss Stone impression? – but unless she’s going to do a cabaret cooking show, I’m not seeing the relevance to the competition.
  • If I was the cameraman following Lisa around the grocery store, I would have stopped the tape and told her she dropped the package of fish. As much as I dislike her on-air persona, there’s no way she should have been penalized just because something fell out of her cart. The fact that the cameraman saw it and zoomed in on the lost package disgusted me.
  • It was surprising to hear Bob Tuschmann, who strikes me as painfully nice to the point where he hates to deliver any serious criticism, raise the question of whether viewers will like Lisa enough to watch 30 minutes of her. He’s right, of course, but I didn’t think he’d be the one to bring it up – and he did seem uncomfortable as he made the point.
  • Why do they all pronounce Guy Fieri’s surname like it has two t’s in it? If you can’t roll your r’s, then replacing an r with a soft “t” sounds ridiculous. Just say Fee-air-ee. It’s not that big of a deal.
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→ July 21, 2008
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Maple-Ancho Glazed Salmon.

Back in April, I hit Bobby Flay’s Mesa Grill and loved the Honey-Ancho Chile Glazed Salmon. I wanted to reproduce the dish at home while making it at least partly “my own,” so I decided to make a few enhancements.

Maple Ancho-Glazed Salmon

1/3 cup pure maple syrup (darker is better)
1 Tbsp ancho chile powder
1 Tbsp dijon mustard
1/2 tsp smoked Spanish paprika
2 lbs salmon, cut into four 8-ounce fillets

1. Preheat your grill for direct grilling. If you’re cooking indoors, preheat your oven to 350 degrees and set a heavy, oven-proof saute pan or skillet over medium-high heat.
2. Season the salmon with salt and pepper.
3. To grill: Place the salmon over the coals/flame, seasoned side down, and cook until a nut-brown crust has formed, four to five minutes depending on your heat level. Turn the fish and baste the cooked side with the maple syrup mixture. Cook with the skin side down until cooked through to your desired level, three minutes for medium, five for well done.
To cook indoors: In about 1 Tbsp of vegetable or olive oil, sear the seasoned side for two and a half minutes. Flip and cook the skin side for two minutes. Baste and place in the oven until cooked to the desired level of doneness, around three minutes for medium and around six minutes for well done.

Also, if you decide to make his side sauces, you can cheat on the black bean sauce and use canned black beans, simmering them for about fifteen minutes with the aromatics. I’ve made the jalapeño crema by placing heavy cream and the roasted, seeded pepper in a cup and whizzing them with my stick blender. The blade’s action will partially whip the cream, creating a crème fraîche-like consistency for a significantly lower price.

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→ July 19, 2008
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New York eats.

Two dinner hits from the recent trip to NYC.

First up was Avra, a Greek seafood restaurant in midtown. Their specialty is whole fish, grill-roasted over charcoal, deboned, and butterflied, dressed simply with a little olive oil, some large capers, and parsley. What it wasn’t dressed with was salt, which is criminal. You pay by the pound, so it’s not a great deal for one person since they don’t seem to sell anything under a pound, and a pound of whole fish is a lot for one person to eat. I went with the server’s suggestion, lavraki, a relatively tasteless white fish with a texture like that of branzino (sea bream). For a starter, I went with a salad of goat cheese, red onions, and arugula with a balsamic vinegar dressing, which was a little odd because I don’t associate balsamic vinegar with Greece at all. The goat cheese came spread on two small crostini and had nothing to do with the underdressed pile of arugula at the center of the plate. In fact, the only real positive of the meal was the fresh, crusty peasant bread and the thin hummus and delicious brined olives. I hate olives – one of the only foods I genuinely do not like, along with most kinds of ham, eggplant, and corned beef – but the brown olives (cultivar unknown, unfortunately) were out of this world.

The following night’s meal was better, at Sushiden, a rather hopping sushi place also in Midtown. It’s places like Sushiden that remind me of how rare it is to find fresh, high-quality sushi, because the flavor and texture of their fish demolishes anything I’ve had outside of New York and California. You pay for the quality, though – prices started at about $3.50 per piece for nigiri and went well north of $10. I stuck mostly to less expensive fish, like the incredibly tender salmon (sake), but stepped out a little for one piece of the daily special Japanese grouper ($10) and the fatty bigeye tuna ($8). The only fish that wasn’t out of this world was the freshwater eel (unagi), which was tough and fishy. I was also impressed that the meal finishes with a cup of hojicha, a green tea where the leaves are roasted, leaving an incredibly smooth beverage without the heavy grassy notes of good green teas. The only negative of Sushiden is that it’s hard to see getting out of there for under $75 a person without even including alcohol. One additional positive was that the clientele was overwhelmingly Japanese.

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→ July 15, 2008
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The Next Food Network Star, episode 7.

Less to say on this week’s episode because their decision was pretty defensible. They sent home the one contestant who went 0-2 in this week’s challenge.

One thing I don’t quite get about their criticisms of Kelsey was the bit about her mentioning culinary school. It is more or less the sum total of her culinary experience. If she’d worked at Le Cirque, she’d probably mention it often; would they ding her for that in the same way?

I loved the way Aaron’s pork dish looked and want to try to reconstruct that honey-chipotle glaze. I tend to eschew honey in cooking because its sweetness is overpowering, but with spice and smoke it might be tamed.

And I still can not imagine watching a half hour of Lisa. I feel like they’re toying with her – there’s no chance they’d give her a show. I hope.

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→ July 8, 2008
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The Next Food Network Star, episode 6.

Disappointing outcome, as I thought Shane had a lot of potential. Ultimately, he was dinged for lack of life experience – although they never explained how that specifically makes him an inferior option for a show host – and for not working well with his assigned Girl Scout, also a silly criterion. Shane did sink himself with his answer about why he is obsessed with French cuisine. Don’t say you love the French life if you’ve never set foot in France. At best, it comes across as young, and at worst, fake.

  • Good to see Adam finally nail the food. He was a complete natural on the set, more than any other contestant. Aaron’s flour on the cheek move and then play to the camera was pretty brilliant too.
  • Lisa … I can’t tell you how surprised I was that she advanced. The show’s producers wrecked her reputation by showing her in full-on B. Otch mode with Kelsey (refusing to answer a basic question from Kelsey about whether or not to remove the sausage casings), and then she froze up completely on air with RaeRay. Oh, and her dish wasn’t tailored in any way to a child’s palate. I’m not clear on what she did right this week that got her (effectively) third place. I also can’t imagine watching a half-hour of her smarm, but that’s another story.
  • Back to the part where she froze up, I’ve said this before but it bears repeating: You can’t think on camera. You have to know what you’re going to say before you start talking, and then once you begin talking, you finish your original thought and wrap. Thinking about what you’re saying – or, worse, what you just said – is a potentially fatal error. Lisa compounded this by continuing to think about her performance while the clock was ticking. What we’ve seen of her the last few weeks wouldn’t work on television, even if it’s taped.
  • Whether or not I could stand a half-hour of Kelsey’s perkiness is another question, but I thought the judges were unduly harsh on her. They told her to be more authoritative. She was bossy. They dinged her for it. Well, she did what you told her to do, guys. If that means she’s not right for the Food Network, then just tell her and move on, but stop killing her (or anyone else, for that matter) for listening to your criticisms.

—

Unrelated note/question: America’s Test Kitchen’s most recent episode included a review of safety can openers, and their winner was this $35 can opener from Rösle. I’m curious whether anyone has it or has seen it. It seems like a mint to pay for a can opener, even a good one.

And if you did see that episode, did you notice how the onion that Bridget was dicing slid all over the cutting board while she was making horizontal cuts in it? Yeah. That’s why the three-cut method is stupid and dangerous. Stick with Alton’s method: radial cuts all around the onion half (from cut end to bulb top), rotate 90 degrees, then cut straight down for a pretty even and much safer dice.

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→ July 3, 2008
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Aguas frescas.

Great article in the LA Times on aguas frescas and where in LA to find them.

I’m a huge fan of agua fresca – blended fruit that’s mixed with sugar and water and strained – and gorge on them at Phoenix Ranch Market every time I’m in Arizona. If anyone has tried any of the suggested places, let me know; I’d bet on the Vallarta Supermarkets serving the best ones of all the places on the Times‘ list, since it seems like some of the other places (like the Hungry Cat) are more interested in being trendy than being authentic.

EDIT: Eh, why not.

Watermelon agua fresca

2 cups cubed watermelon plus any juices that have seeped out
1 Tbsp simple syrup or 1 tsp agave nectar
1/4-1/2 cup water

Puree the watermelon with the juices. Strain through a medium-meshed strainer to remove the solids. Combine with the sweetener and water and pour over ice. Drink immediately. A quick squeeze of lime juice is optional.

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→ July 2, 2008
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The Next Food Network Star, week 5.

Notes on episode 5:

  • The first challenge was even more inane than usual. Asking a cook to describe someone else’s dish and then docking them for not guessing all the ingredients correctly is more than a little absurd. At the end, the judges criticized a few contestants for not “owning” the dishes, or “taking ownership.” Hey, news flash, they didn’t cook the dishes they were describing. I have more ownership of the Taj Mahal than they had of those dishes.
  • Cat Cora is a verbal train wreck – “your describing skills,” “the reason I’ve chose you” – and I’ve seen shorter roots on a hundred-year-old tree. Having her judge the candidates on presentation was not a good decision. Seriously, when Aaron said “coq de vin,” I’m sure she thought, “Yeah, that’s right.”
  • Adam’s decision-making sucked; bone-in chicken breasts can be cooked in 45 minutes in an oven, but not on a grill, and polenta takes a solid 45 just to cook, plus a few minutes to finish it.
  • The key to the second challenge was deconstruction. For the coq au vin, I would have done roasted chicken breasts wrapped in some form of cured pork (probably bacon or pancetta) with a sauce of red wine, butter, shallots, and thyme. Lisa’s idea of duck confit for the turducken was great, as was using a poultry sausage, although I would have used the sausage gambit to get credit for chicken, which has the least flavor of the three meats involved.
  • “I can’t believe that happened” … no, Jen, I can’t believe YOU did that. Who the hell bangs a glass jar on a cooktop – or ANYWHERE – to get it open? You have heat sources everywhere. Run the lid under hot water for ten seconds. It’s not that hard. If she bangs glass jars all the time, I’m surprised she has any blood left in her system.
  • The complaint about the white onions and beige pastry was the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard in my life. I cancelled my Bon Appetit subscription four or five years ago because their recipes were slipping, and this is probably why: They care more about colors clashing on the plate than, you know, how the freaking food tastes. Unbelievable. I’m not sure what world they live in; maybe a world where Andrew’s hair is actually stylish.
  • Shane and Kelsey won this in a walk; I have to give Shane credit for coming off as older than nineteen every time he’s on camera. Still not sure I could stand 22 minutes of Kelsey.
  • The judge who made the point (to Aaron, I believe) about self-editing was spot on: You can’t do that while you’re on camera. It’s not writing, where you can go back, delete, re-word, and so on. You have to just keep going, even if what you just said was wrong or stupid or boxed you into a corner. Fight your way out if you have to, but don’t stop or pause or think about what you just said. The camera is still rolling while you think.

Unrelated link: Starbucks to close 600 stores. I wonder if this location is one of them.

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→ June 29, 2008
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Skirt steak fajitas.

I have no idea if fajitas are Mexican food, Tex-Mex food, or something invented by the New York City-based marketing department of a casual-dining chain looking for a way to get rid of less-desirable cuts of beef.

I don’t care. I love ’em.

I should clarify: I love fajitas when they’re done right. They are, however, almost never done right. Gummy tortillas, overcooked and underseasoned meat, tasteless veggies, and a side platter of undefinable cheese, rotten sour cream, and limp lettuce do not qualify as “done right.”

This recipe for steak fajitas works best over a grill, but if you have a grill pan, you can fake it, and on a rainy day I have made these on a cast-iron flat-top grill that sits over two burners on my stove. I turned the fan on high and had a fair amount of cleanup to do afterwards, but the steak came out fine.

First up, make the steak rub. This is the same homemade spice mix I use as taco seasoning and just about anywhere else that a chili powder mixture is called for.

2 Tbsp ancho chili powder
2 tsp cumin (toasted & freshly ground)
2 tsp coriander
½-1 tsp cayenne pepper (depends on your heat tolerance)
½ tsp sweet paprika
½ tsp smoked Spanish paprika
1-2 tsp dried oregano

Whisk those together and set aside. There is no salt in the rub, because we’re going to salt the meat before we apply the rub.

For the fajitas, you will need:

Flour tortillas
1 lb or more of flank or skirt steak (I prefer skirt because it’s cheaper and tastes just as good)
2 red/yellow/orange bell peppers, seeded and cut into strips
1 green bell pepper, seeded and cut into strips
1 onion, sliced very thinly
1 serrano pepper, seeded and finely chopped
1 clove garlic, minced

1. Trim the meat of any fat you can cut off without destroying the steak. Much of it will pull off with a little encouragement from a knife. You might see silver skin on a flank steak. Make sure you remove it, as it’s very tough and can cause the meat to curl as it cooks. (You can render some fat from the bits you cut off the steaks and cook with it. It’s not good for you but delivers great flavor to French fries if you fry in a mixture of beef fat and vegetable oil.)
2. Salt the entire surface of the meat, then liberally apply the ancho chile rub.
3. Light your grill. If you’re using charcoal, make a narrow mound over which your steak can sit. If you’re using propane, you’ll need one burner cranked up to 11.
4. Meanwhile, put a heavy skillet over medium-high heat on your stove. When the skillet is hot, add about a tablespoon of olive oil and add the bell peppers and as much of the Serrano as you like. Season with salt. Cook about five minutes until the bell pepper strips are softened and a little browned.
5. Add the onions and more salt and stir thoroughly. The goal now is to cook the onions down and let them caramelize a little, which will take about 15 minutes. Stir this mixture from time to time to prevent anything from burning or sticking. When the veggies are nearly done, add the minced garlic clove and about a tablespoon of the chile mixture (assuming you have some left).
6. When the grill is ready, place the steak directly over the heat. This is direct heat cooking – cook for about two to three minutes per side, then flip, cook for two to two and a half minutes more, and take it off. You don’t want to cook either of these cuts of steak past medium or they will become tough. Let the steak rest for five minutes.
7. While the steak is resting, you’ll need to heat the tortillas. (Yes, the best tortillas are homemade, and I’ve done it many times. It takes almost an hour just to roll and cook them, never mind making the dough ahead of time and letting it rest. I haven’t had that kind of time since I joined ESPN and became a dad within a two-week span.) You have two options: You can heat them one at a time in a hot dry skillet, 20 seconds per side; or you can heat them in a stack wrapped in aluminum foil in a 300 degree oven for about five minutes.
8. Slice the steak thinly on the bias. Serve with the pepper/onion mixture and any side items you desire.

Suggested sides: I’m partial to a simple guacamole of mashed avocado, lime juice, salt, cumin, pressed garlic (the rare occasion when the use of a garlic press is acceptable), and chopped cilantro. Cotija cheese or queso fresco both play nice with fajitas. And if you really want to kick it up, try adding a little of this habanero crema:

1 cup crème fraîche
1 habanero, seeded, ribs removed, stemmed, minced finely. (Note: Do this with latex gloves on. If you handle a cut habanero with your bare hands and then touch your eyes … well, it hurt like a motherf—– when I did it with a jalapeño and I couldn’t see out of that eye for fifteen minutes. I believe a habanero is almost fifty times hotter than a jalapeño. So wear gloves.)
1/8 tsp white pepper
Pinch of salt

Combine all ingredients in a small bowl. Cover and refrigerate for at least one hour.

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→ June 29, 2008
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Mediocy in food.

So CNN runs these occasional articles on healthy eating, and they’re just about always inane, like today’s article on “food pairings.” To wit:

DO mix grilled steak and Brussels sprouts

“It’s always best to cook meat or fish at low temperatures until it’s done,” says Kristin E. Anderson, Ph.D., a cancer epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota’s School of Public Health and Cancer Center, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. “And if there are burned pieces, trim them off.”

So apparently “cruciferous” vegetables (members of the cabbage family, by and large) help the body eliminate potential carcinogens found on charred meat. That’s fine. But Dr. Anderson’s solution, don’t cook over high temperatures, is hilarious. You shouldn’t cook over high heat, so cook over low heat? So now what – no more Maillard reactions?

Here’s a tip: Don’t overcook your food. Two to three minutes over high heat gives you a nice crust and no char. Just make sure that if you invite Dr. Anderson over, you poach her steak to a nice soft gray instead of grilling it. Yum.

DON’T mix coffee and breakfast cereal

Most cereals sold in the United States are fortified with iron. … Problem is, if you sip coffee while eating your Wheaties, polyphenols, an antioxidant in coffee, can hamper the body’s ability to absorb the iron.

The article says black and herbal teas also have high levels of polyphenol. That’s as may be, but the article omits a pretty major problem: The calcium in the milk you put in your cereal has the same effect as the polyphenols, binding with the iron in the cereal and dragging it right out of your body. (Here’s a PDF version of a brief article from the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, saying the same thing in fancier terms.)

In other words, the tea I am drinking with my breakfast cereal now isn’t doing anything more than grabbing the sloppy-seconds of iron that the calcium in the milk left behind. And by the way, if you take a multi-vitamin with iron, it probably has all the iron than your body needs in a given day, so say nothing of the iron you might take in via red meat, legumes, or figs. Just don’t take a calcium supplement along with that multi-vitamin.

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→ June 26, 2008
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The Next Food Network Star, week 4.

Just playing a little catch-up here…

  • I said last time that this show is about humiliating the contestants, and this week was no exception. How exactly did the first challenge – do a one-minute instructional video on a topic you may or may not be familiar with and have only seconds to prepare – relate to the challenge of being a TV chef? Are the instructional videos we see on FN.com unscripted? Are they all successfully shot on the first take? Giving the contestants a few minutes to think or jot down some notes would have been perfectly reasonable and avoided a lot of the ugly things that we saw, like Aaron going totally off the rails on presentation.
  • I thought he had the easiest task, too; dismantling a pineapple is a snap. Hardest was either Kelsey’s – she totally cheated by taking the bone off, since Frenching means leaving the rack intact – or Shane’s, since you can’t dismantle a coconut in sixty seconds. Alton Brown even suggests baking them for 20 minutes.
  • Nipa needed to go, clearly, but she caught a pretty raw deal this week, since she clearly doesn’t cook much with seafood, and may not really need to if her idea is to bring Indian cooking to the masses. That said, she didn’t carry herself well, had poor presence, and like Michael Symon I was offended by the way she wasted most of the meat on that trout.
  • Symon said one of the most profound things you’re going to hear on this show when he pointed out that even if you don’t know what you’re talking about, you need to act like you do. We all know that the air of authority can cover up the stench of ignorance.
  • The frustrating part about watching Jennifer is that her problem is totally fixable: When you’re on camera, don’t think. If you start to think through what you’re saying – or worse, what you just said – you’re lost. And it goes pear-shaped very quickly after that.
  • Kelsey’s pretty clearly taken the lead, not just because she won both challenges, but because the judges are saying that they liked her new persona this week. I thought from the start that white chocolate would be my choice of the bullshit Iron Chef ingredients, since it’s full of cocoa butter, a fat with great mouth-feel. She made another good call with tilapia, which is pretty versatile.
  • Adam: Crepes plus halibut cooked two ways in sixty minutes? What are you on? A crepe takes at least 75 seconds to cook, and doing two at once in adjacent pans still means almost 20 minutes just to cook the crepes. Bad idea.
  • I distinctly remember saying “stop crying,” but no one listened.
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