→ November 4, 2011
→ By

Top Chef, S9E1.

Buyer’s guide to first basemen is now posted for Insiders. I’ll have one of these up every day next week, Monday through Saturday.

Spoilers abound, so hold off if you haven’t seen it…

* In general I approve of this format – 29 chefs who must cook once (or twice) to qualify for the final sixteen. I think it could really open things up to a dark horse or two whose abilities won’t play so well through an audition process but will play up when s/he is actually putting food in front of the judges. It also had the benefit of weeding out the colossal douchebag right off the bat (although, if his abilities matched his own opinion of them, we’d be stuck with him for a few more weeks … and really, how do you get on this show without an ounce of butchering skills?). I do worry that we’re headed for a 14-person battle for a single chef’s jacket, which seems a little unbalanced; they could have just gone with yes/no, and if they ended up with more than 16 in the yes group had a cook-off to determine the final spots.

* I hate seeing it spread over two episodes across two weeks. Make it two hours on one night. I’m not burning up with suspense here; I’m just mildly annoyed that it was cut off so abruptly.

* Back to the douchebag – I don’t remember his name – but 1) He can’t be real, can he? Could he be so lacking in self-awareness to think that this act would play with chefs five to twenty years his senior? And 2) Slightly weak to let Grayson’s dish get blown up by another chef’s mistake. Tom’s point, that she was wrong to assume Chef DB could handle it for her, makes it a slap-on-the-wrist infraction, not a “you’re more than 50% likely to go home now” type of error. Get her another tenderloin. Let her incorporate a little meat from another cut so there’s at least more food on the plate. I’d much rather see a competitor go home due to her own mistake than due to a competitor’s.

* Fear the Beard. I’m just sayin’.

* “I’m a culinary artist.” Kind of like “I’m a groundball pitcher.” Just shut up and generate some groundballs already.

* That said, the first chef to use that phrase, Chris Crary, did deliver on the claim that his style is like Richard Blais’. I don’t know if he’s got Richard’s technical skills, but he put out one of the most elaborate dishes we saw and the judges approved.

* Knew Sarah Grueneberg was a lock when she chose the pig skin as long as she didn’t seriously screw it up – the judges generally seem to reward risky choices if the execution is even adequate – but it seems like her repertoire is mostly Italian cuisine. Does that mean she’ll be limited in later challenges that require knowledge of, say, east or south Asian styles?

* Chris Jones reminds me of someone – a musician? an actor? – and it is driving me insane because I can’t figure out who it is.

* Very excited to see Hugh Acheson, who was the best part of Top Chef: Masters S3 because he’s hilarious, as one of the judges. Anyone have his cookbook (A New Turn in the South: Southern Flavors Reinvented for Your Kitchen)?

* Hey Richie – is this the hairstyle you wanted? That is a good look on exactly … no one. And, more to the point, a palate that’s well off the median (he said a ‘salty’ palate – does that mean things taste salty to him even when they’re not?) is a serious handicap in this kind of competition.

Your thoughts?

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→ March 31, 2011
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Top Chef All-Stars finale.

So I’m happy with the result, both because I think Blais showed that he was the best chef there over the course of the regular season (not just the playoffs), but because I like a good redemption story, and I didn’t want to see him implode after another last-second loss. I thought the sous-chefs gave him a pretty good advantage – for all the talk about Spike as a Marcel-esque anchor, he seems to be great on a team and more Machiavellian when it’s an individual challenge – and he showed more leadership than Mike, who listened to what his team proposed and then did what he wanted anyway. (It’s the fake-listening that bugs me; either you’re listening, or you’re not. If you want to be a dictator, that’s fine. Dictators who insist they’re not dictators are in the news enough these days without another one on Top Chef.)

Ultimately, though, it seemed like the better food won out. Both chefs slipped slightly on their desserts, but Richard (with big help from Spike) made the adjustment between serving one and serving two. The editing at Judges’ Table seemed to downplay the problems with Mike’s custard, but the shot of Marcel and Stephen eating it (mostly conveying their dislike through facial expressions) spoke volumes to me, since neither one of them is going to hold back. And Richard’s food seemed much more inventive across the board; even the short rib dish that was “conventional” had a purpose, showing he can do more straightforward cuisine but do it better than anyone else there.

* Loved seeing more Restaurant Wars. And I love how all the chefs involved seem to get so into it, even last night when the sous-chefs had nothing riding on it for themselves but pride. It proved an ideal way to end a great season.

* Carla, who won fan favorite, has to get her own show at this point, right? The villainous Marcel may have technical skills, but likability and accessibility matter as well, and Carla has both to spare, while her style of cooking – kicked-up comfort food – is extremely trendy and yet taps into a fundamental aspect of the American food experience. Blais offers the food I’d most want to travel and pay to eat, but Carla’s food is the kind I’d want to eat night-in and night-out.

* I appreciate knowing that the way to Gail Simmons’ heart is via pepperoni sauce … even though I have to say that it doesn’t sound appealing to me at all. I associate the flavor of pepperoni with how I ate when I was younger and didn’t really know food or the vast array of alternatives available; I’d reach for chorizo or andouille or linguica or about a dozen cured Italian meat products before I’d ever ask for a slice of pepperoni. But I’ll take Gail’s word for it that Mike’s “crazy business” was the real deal.

* How about Padma showing so much emotion in these last few episodes? First she tears up when they send Antonia packing. Then she gets choked up when Hubert Keller points out how hard it’s going to be to choose between Blais and Mike. And the hug she gave Blais at the end had a real “thank God you won” look to it. I’m not complaining, but I’m surprised after seeing her seem so much colder in the last two seasons. New Padma is much better to watch – these are real people competing, after all, and it’s perfectly fair to be emotional as long as your decisions remain objective. I’ve seen the fembot act from Heidi Klum on Project Runway, and it’s tired.

* And credit due to Tom for giving props to Mike after the loss – and the editors for including it. But I could have done without the shot of Mike’s wife looking so downcast after Blais won. It seemed mildly exploitative. Show the contestants; the family never asked be in that position.

* I’ve got an upcoming trip to Atlanta, so if anyone there scouts out Blais’ Flip burger place, I’d love an advance report – including whether the line is a mile long after his big win.

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→ December 13, 2010
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Cookbook recommendations (plus Top Chef thoughts).

Before I get to the books (and magazine), a thought or two on last week’s Top Chef: All-Stars.

First, I found it interesting that no chef stood up for Jamie and even indicated that they understood, let alone approved of, her decision to leave for stitches on her thumb. If that’s the ethic of the kitchen, I feel like I should defer to that. And Tony Bourdain had no sympathy either. (Hat tip to Dave Cameron for pointing me to Bourdain’s blog.) Plus the stakes are even higher in this competition than they are in a restaurant kitchen.

But more importantly, how did no one ding her on bad cutting technique? Where the hell was her thumb that she ran her knife directly into it? I hate the parallel-to-the-board cut anyway because it’s dangerous, but when I must do it, my main priority is ensuring that if the knife moves forward faster than I expect, it will do nothing but slice the food I’m cutting. Fingers up. Thumbs up. Wrist angled up and sharply away from the food. If you don’t want to send Jamie home for malingering, send her home for poor knife skills.

Also, I tweeted a link earlier to the Chicago Tribune‘s interview with week 1’s unconditionally-released chef, Elia, in which she completely loses her mind and goes after Tom Colicchio. Tom’s response, while clearly dripping with disrespect, stays on point in an impressive manner – he answers the charges while keeping the deprecation subtle. It’s a model of angry writing. And as he and Bourdain and others have said, raw fish is raw fish. If it’s not meant to be raw, and it’s raw, you can’t pin that on the judges.

–

I was asked on Twitter today to suggest some cookbooks or magazines, and I haven’t updated my old list of recommendations in a while so I figured I’d throw a new post together. I tend toward more specialized cookbooks now because I’m more interested in ideas than in techniques, but I’ll start with the staples to which I keep returning even though I’ve owned some of them for years.

Joy of Cooking. The gray lady of the kitchen – still reliable if somewhat staid, with a level of completeness that few rivals can approach. If you need a recipe for a basic or common dish, it’s probably here, with clear instructions and lots of information on ingredients. I learned to cook from two sources above all others: Alton Brown and Joy. I’m partial to the 1997 edition myself, as I understand the last revision (for the book’s 75th anniversary) introduced some best-forgotten sections on semi-homemade meals while removing some of the professionally-written material that makes the ’97 version so indispensable. The new revision does include cocktail recipes, but I have The Official Harvard Student Agencies Bartending Course for that.

Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking. You cook, and you don’t own Ratio? I don’t think I’ve added any cookbook to my collection that changed my thinking on food as much as Michael Ruhlman did in his concise, almost engineering-like book that reduces recipes to their master formulas. From biscuits to pâte à choux to stocks to custards, Ruhlman gives you the framework and lets you build up from there. If you’re like me and cook better when you understand what’s happening in the bowl or pot, you must own Ratio. And it’s just $10 on amazon.

Baking Illustrated. The one book that I can say has truly supplanted Joy, at least in its niche; if you can get past the cloying prose and descriptions of the strange substitutions they tried (“then we replaced the sour cream with motor oil … but that killed four of the testers”), the recipes are extremely reliable, and the lengthy prose does give you the insight you’ll need to know where you can tweak. Their pumpkin pie recipe remains the best pumpkin pie I’ve ever tried, and it worked perfectly the first time I made it.

Peter Reinhart’s The Bread Baker’s Apprentice, Whole Grain Breads, and Artisan Breads Every Day. I love bread, real bread, just baked, best eaten in a day or two after which you bake some more. Reinhart helped me crack the code of good bread, and his books are tremendous references that cover many of the directions in which you might go as a baker. Artisan Breads Everyday is the beginner’s book of the collection, if you’re just getting started with the joys of autolysis and the overnight soak, while the other two books are still accessible but presume a little more skill – and they include the best pizza dough recipe I’ve ever used.

How To Cook Everything. I do not own this book, but the reviews from those of you who do have been uniformly positive, and it seems like a good companion to or – perish the thought – substitute for Joy. The author, Mark Bittman, is a longtime food writer for the New York Times who is often credited with bringing no-knead bread to the attention of the masses. (I still knead my bread, though. Even a minute of kneading makes a huge difference.)

Good Eats: The Early Years. The first of three books – I do not own the second one yet – has Alton going back through every episode of his seminal TV series and reworking recipes to address problems or user concerns, all while providing a lot of background information on each episode or the food it covers.

Julia’s Kitchen Wisdom. I do own a copy of the first part of Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking … but it feels dated to me, and I’m never likely to do much classical French cooking at home. That’s just not how we eat on a day to day basis. Julia’s Kitchen Wisdom distills the core techniques and ideas from her experience in the kitchen into a slim, bright volume that I have always found far more relevant to what I might cook on a Wednesday evening. The book contains many recipes, but as with Brown, Reinhart, and Ruhlman, Child is pushing comprehension, not repetition. This was the book that pushed me to make more vinaigrettes.

For magazines, I’m partial to Fine Cooking, which takes that scientific approach of Good Eats and packs every issue full of recipes, with reference information on ingredients and tools, a card with nutrition data for every dish in that issue, and an emphasis on extensibility (such as the “nine cookies from three doughs” article from several years ago that was a staple of my Christmas cookie regimen). Of course, my subscription keeps lapsing because I’m disorganized, but this is the only cooking magazine to which I’ve subscribed since my daughter was born; I gave up on Bon Appetit because they repeated recipes and ideas, and I can’t deal with the writing in Cook’s Illustrated, which is even sillier than the writing in Baking Illustrated.

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→ October 26, 2010
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Top Chef: Just Desserts midpoint review.

Top Chef: Just Desserts has reached its halfway point, and so far, I’m sorry to say I’m underwhelmed. I had pretty high hopes for the show, primarily because as both a cook and an eater I love desserts of all sorts – classic and modern, simple and complex, pastries and custards, you name it. Even though I understand the chemistry behind the transformations, there’s something thrilling about watching a handful of basic ingredients turn into a finished product that delivers flavors and textures unimaginable from the initial list of components, just because of a little know-how and the skill that comes from repetition.

But the emphasis of TC:JD hasn’t been the food so much, but the contestants, who seem to have been selected for their capacity to generate drama rather than their culinary know-how. As a result, the show seems to have more in common with Project Runway than with the original Top Chef, and while I watch Runway*, it’s primarily my wife’s show – our deal is I watch that with her and she watches the Top Chef series with me.

*I had to leave the room after the elimination on last week’s episode of Project Runway because I couldn’t watch the eliminated designer’s reaction, which seemed to me to reveal a lot of pain beyond the end of his time in the competition. I can’t imagine a life where something as fundamental to your identity as your sexual orientation leads to a gulf between you and your parents, and it’s clear that his parents’ treatment of him has had lasting, negative effects on his emotional state and even his self-esteem. It was brutal on its own, and to see that in light of the recent spate of news stories about suicides by gay teenagers … I couldn’t watch it. Just love your children, people.

The initial drama was high-strung (but apparently talented) chef Seth, who won the first quick-fire of the season and by the end of the second episode seemed to be suffering from some sort of mental illness or breakdown – I’ve theorized something along the lines of Asperger’s, although I am not a professional and recognize that you can’t diagnose someone through a television set. But his reactions to setbacks and inability to communicate with other contestants had to be evident to the producers during the interviewing process, and I can only conclude that they chose him for the show because they thought he’d be good television, rather than seeing him as an unstable person who, at best, would make other denizens of the house uncomfortable with his antics. His exit, after an unseen anxiety attack, was more than welcome if only because of the amount of time in each episode devoted to his weirdness and others’ (valid) complaints about it, although I find it odd that they didn’t show whatever meltdown he had right before the attack. (You put him on the show, and he does something crazy yet utterly predictable, and you don’t show it? Exactly how bad was it?)

No sooner was Seth out the door, however, than Heather H. loses her mind over some slight, real or perceived, from Morgan, although the edited version we saw made it appear that she volunteered to do the one group piece for her team by herself and then was annoyed that Morgan didn’t help her with it and won the overall challenge himself. Again, we’re seeing edited footage, but the complaint that he degrades women by calling them “darlin” doesn’t hold much water with me – it’s not an insult by itself, and he’s pretty clearly a charmer by nature, with that language just part of his overall act. Last week, there’s a pea-puree-style controversy when one of Heather H.’s items disappeared, and she’s blaming Morgan despite a total lack of evidence that he did anything, making her look like the paranoid nut job brought in to create drama after Seth left. That’s a lot of unnecessary, uninteresting drama for six episodes, and I haven’t even mentioned the apparently-depressed Heather C., the definitely-depressed Malika (with good reason – she was going through a divorce after her restaurant failed), or the angry Tania (thankfully ousted in episode 1). Was this really the optimal set of contestants, or merely the mix most likely to deliver water-cooler fodder for the show?

As for the competition itself, I thought after week 4 that three of the eight chefs remaining had separated themselves from the group – Morgan, Zac, and Yigit. I’m pulling for Yigit primarily because I’m most interested in his food; Morgan seems extremely skilled and I do like his ideas, but Yigit offers the best combination of pushing the envelope and technical ability, although I’d like to see him able to use his reported background in molecular gastronomy more, perhaps as we approach the finale. Zac appears to be very talented and might have the strongest sense of flavor of anyone on the show, although his personality is about as grating as a rusty Microplane, and the whole obsession with Gail’s shoes fell somewhere between creepy and stalker-ish.

Other thoughts…

  • I’m glad to see that Eric, the lone baker among a group of pastry chefs, is faring better in the various challenges, but if you’re going to invite a baker to compete on the show, at some point don’t you have to have a baking challenge? Some of the early competitions made him look sloppy and talentless, but the issue is that his talents are geared toward a different sphere of desserts.
  • Gail’s been a little better in her role as head judge after the first week or two, when her attempts to seem severe (a la Tom Colicchio) made her seem unlikeable, but her main issue now seems to be excessive awareness of the camera. She needs to just forget the camera’s there, because what she says is usually informative, but she’s coming off as stiff when I would wager good money that she’s nothing like that off air.
  • My wife and I both feel like Johnny Iuzzini keeps falling on the wrong side of the snark fence. There’s funny snark, and there’s vicious snark, and I think Iuzzini too often comes across as nasty, or at least cutting. If a contestant’s dish sucks, it sucks, but there’s a way to express that without conveying the sentiment that the contestant is simply incompetent and should stay out of the kitchen – especially when said contestant is standing right in front of you, already humiliated at his/her place in the bottom three (and often with the knowledge before judges’ table that his/her dish failed).
  • Erica’s soapy ice cream is a real mystery to me, and I wish they’d spent more time on that – or, in general, on why certain dishes failed. Soapy taste or texture is usually a case of too much baking soda or an otherwise basic (as opposed to acidic) product, but that wouldn’t apply here. Was there actually soap in the ice cream, perhaps from the last time the ice cream machine was cleaned? (That would be ironic, since the whole show is sponsored by a soap company. I imagine Dial executives hitting the ceiling when they saw the judges talking about “soap” like it was a dirty word.)
  • Was it just us, or were the judges awfully lenient about the “black” part of the black-and-white desserts challenge in the last episode? There was an awful lot of brown on those plates, as well as some purple. (My wife thought red should have been acceptable, since newspapers are black and white and “red” all over.)

At this point, I’d rank the remaining six contestants, best to worst, like so: Yigit, Morgan, Zac, Heather, Eric, Danielle. I think any of the first three could win, and I expect Danielle to be next out the door. The biggest gap in those rankings is between Zac and Heather, with another between Heather and Eric, but I think Yigit has the potential to blow away the field if the challenges give him more opportunity to show off his technical skills.

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→ September 21, 2010
→ By

Top Chef, season 7.

Sorry for the long delay between posts, but the move, which went reasonably smoothly*, has still been a colossal ass-kicking. Not only are we unpacking, but we have all our stuff in one place for the first time in … well, maybe ever, since we had a fairly full basement back in Massachusetts and a storage space with some boxes that had been there for five years. Since we started the unpacking process, we’ve donated at least six bankers’ boxes full of books, a lot of clothes and fabric, and an old laser printer to Savers, and we’re not done yet – so clearly, we had way too much stuff.

*I define “smoothly” as “the pizza stone, espresso machine, and rum collection all made it intact.” My wife may view it differently. Anyway having DirecTV come the day of the move to get us set up turned out great, since by that night we had the HD-DVR already recording shows.

I did catch the Top Chef finale last week as well as the first episode of Top Chef: Desserts. I’ve seen a fair amount of hand-wringing over Kevin’s upset win in Top Chef, and on some level I can sympathize – in effect, the team with the third-best record (of the three finalists) won the World Series. But as I argued loudly in 2006, the best team doesn’t always win the World Series, and winning the World Series does not make that team the best. Kevin may or may not have been the best chef of the final three, but he clearly finished ahead of Ed and had a good case to finish ahead of Angelo, and under the rules of the competition, that makes him Top Chef.

Ed’s final offerings were extremely disappointing. I’m unclear whether he completely farmed out dessert or had some input into what his sous (Ilan) was making, but that was as complete a whiff as you should ever see in a final challenge – he served sticky toffee pudding, an outstanding dessert that (for me) transcends ordinary cake, but there’s a recipe for the thing in the back of Baking Illustrated, and most Whole Foods sell a very solid microwavable version from the Sticky Toffee Pudding Company. I know he used fleur de sel, but salt and caramel isn’t exactly an inventive combination. I didn’t really see a chilled corn soup as the sort of cutting-edge cooking I’d want to see in a Top Chef finale, and I just have to take the judges’ word for it that his fish dish was too complicated and that he overcooked his duck. I will say that duck can move from perfectly cooked to inedible in a short period of time.

Angelo getting sick provided the drama the producers seemed desperate to inject into this season (coughpeapureecough), but also raised a question for me of whether he completed enough of the work to win the title. It was a lose/lose situation – if he’d won, there would be legitimate complaints that he skipped a day of work the other chefs put in, and if he lost, there’s the question of whether he lost because he got sick. The tart cherry “palate cleanser” was incredibly bizarre – palate cleansers usually aren’t sweet, and certainly not sweet and acidic – but the way he flubbed the first dish shocked me, since a pork belly char siu bao should be right in his wheelhouse. The meringue was also just weird; it was as if Angelo couldn’t taste how sweet some of these items were, so he wasn’t bothered by the high sugar content.

From episode one, Angelo came off poorly on camera between the steady arrogance (doesn’t bother me if the man can really cook) and the increasingly emotional, even erratic, behavior, but he was the closest thing this season had to a high-quality chef who pushed the envelope with many of his dishes. He’s no Voltaggio brother, but in a thinner pool, he stood out to me all season.

Whatever the reason for Angelo’s mediocre performance in the finale, it does seem like Kevin out-cooked him, and his quartet of dishes had its weakest link up front (the vegetable terrine … seriously? A terrine? What’s next, Kevin – a fondue pot? You can take that terrine and shove it up your aspic) and finished very strongly, with a dessert that the judges treated as revolutionary but looked to me like it was slightly clever but just well-executed. He didn’t botch anything major and left the judges with strong impressions of the dishes they had most recently from him, which doesn’t match our general impressions of what should make a Top Chef … but it’s not like we tasted the food, either, so I’m really hesitant to call them out the way I’m going to call the voters out when Felix Hernandez finishes 4th in the AL Cy Young voting.

Overall, a disappointing season, one where I felt like I didn’t learn as much about food as I did the previous year. Great cooking shows should either teach you fundamentals or get you to think about ingredients differently, and both Voltaggio brothers did that, while no one this season did. Kenny was our best hope, as he went for crazy flavor combinations, but when the judges told him repeatedly to edit his dishes and he didn’t do it, he was destined for an early exit.* I thought the judges had really fallen for Tiffany’s cooking, and she seemed to execute at a very high level until her last episode, but did she ever push the envelope with anything she produced? In hindsight, I think the answer is “no.”

*Also worth noting: The stronger teams on paper in this year’s Top Chef Restaurant Wars episode and the two-team episode of the current season of Project Runway both got smoked by the underdogs.

As for Top Chef: Desserts, as someone who likes cooking desserts even more than I like cooking savory foods, I’m glad to see the sequestering of desserts into their own show, and we already have seen some Voltaggio-like offerings from Seth, who works with a complex, full flavor palate and is pretty clearly unafraid to use it.

Gail Simmons gets her chance to look more beautiful without Padma Laskhmi next to her, and so far they haven’t sabotaged her with ridiculous clothing. Her delivery as a host didn’t work for me in the first episode, though; when she walked in to announce the twist to the quickfire, her “did you really think it would be that easy” came off as obnoxious, even taunting, when they were throwing a pretty nasty wrench into the works for the chefs. Picture Tom Colicchio delivering the same line as a throwaway – “Come on, did you think it would that easy?” – making it seem like a joke that the chefs are in on, a sort of, “Yeah, you know, it’s Top Chef, we like screwing with you” way. I don’t think Gail was trying to taunt anyone, but her delivery was that of a host who’s focused on seeming host-like instead of being charismatic.

I commented on Twitter that the preview of the rest of the season made it look like the show would be a cross between Top Chef and Project Runway, which wasn’t meant as a comment on how, er, fabulous the cast is but on how much more inter-chef drama they showed in the previews. Not to steal a line from Alton, but I’m just here for the food, and I hope they don’t edit in too much of the personality stuff at a cost of showing and talking about the dishes and the techniques at work.

Obligatory ESPN note: I’ll resume regular writing this week, with one piece scheduled for Tuesday and blog items probably five of the next six days, after which I’ll start some instructional league coverage. I will be doing playoff preview pieces for the eight teams that qualify, but they’ll be a little shorter this year so I don’t have to miss instructs while I’m living in the area. I’m also scheduled for a chat on Thursday.

As for the dish, I finished John Le Carre’s The Constant Gardener last week – short review to come in a day or two, I hope – and just started Night Train to Lisbon by Pascal Mercier.

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→ December 7, 2009
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Bryan V’s short ribs, take one.

I mentioned on Twitter the other day that I took a shot at Bryan Voltaggio’s short rib dish from the Top Chef semifinal, where he braised them with figs and then used the figs in the finishing “glaze” (which may have been more of a sauce). Several of you asked for the recipe for it, but I wouldn’t say what I did was quite ready for the dish – I need to alter it and preferably make it twice successfully before posting it. However, since you asked, here’s a rundown of what I intend to do the next time.

The actual cooking of the ribs themselves went pretty well. I started with just over two pounds but probably could have gone up to three without too much alteration. I deboned them (but froze the bones to make a little stock later on) and trimmed the excess fat; seasoned them with salt, pepper, and crumbled dried rosemary (my own – fresh rosemary in a dry kitchen for a week is dry enough to use here); then browned them on all sides in a Dutch oven over medium-high heat.

After that, I drained all but about 2 tablespoons of the fat and sweated one diced yellow onion, two diced carrots, three diced celery stalks, a smashed and chopped clove of garlic, salt, pepper, and another pinch of rosemary, scraping the pan bottom as they cooked. So far, I haven’t deviated from my basic short rib technique.

Next, I returned to the ribs to the pan and added ten dried figs that I’d halved, a cup of red wine, about ¾ of a cup of chicken stock, and two bay leaves. I brought it to a boil, covered it, and stuck it in a 350 degree oven for two hours.

At about 90 minutes, I had to add more braising liquid to the pot as the pan was starting to get dry. Alcohol, of course, boils at a much lower temperature than water, and I managed to cook too much of it off too soon. Next time around, I’m going to drop the temperature to at least 300 degrees and start with three cups of a half-and-half mixture of red wine and stock. (For the wine, I went with a very cheap Italian merlot and it worked just fine, although it met my desire for a wine without too much character so well that drinking it was a somber experience.)

Even with the loss of the liquid, the ribs reached the desired fall-apart texture and they acquired a faint tangy-sweet taste from the figs and wine. I took the pot from the oven, cranked it up to 450 degrees, threw the ribs into a roasting pan, and browned them for ten minutes.

The lost braising liquid also meant that I didn’t have much of a sauce at the end of the braising process, and pureeing what was in the pot produced a paste that had exactly the flavor I was looking for – strong, hint of sweet, more than a hint of acidity, a little earthy, very savory – but the wrong texture, even after I thinned it out with some added boiled stock. Next time, I’ll strain what’s in the pot, pressing the solids, and then thicken what comes out with some of the pureed solids until I reach the thick but pourable consistency I want.

This method sits on an extensible foundation that looks like this:

  • Trim, season with salt/pepper/herb, and brown
  • Add aromatics with more of the same herb
  • Braise in stock, wine, beer, or some combination of liquids
  • Re-brown at a higher temperature

You can use just about any dried herb; I’ve done it many times with thyme and always had success. Too much alcohol in the braise will result in too little liquid before the process is through, so if you want to use wine (or spirits) cut them with stock or broth or even water if you must. (I admit to wondering whether ginger beer has too much sugar for this task, as Dark-and-Stormy Short Ribs sound, in theory, quite appealing. The resulting glaze would probably be to die for.)

Removing the bones before braising is the key to making successful short ribs in my experience. They cook more quickly without the bones, and removing the bones means there’s a lot less fat in the pan at the end of the braise – you don’t that fat in your sauce, and you don’t want the ribs to braise in that fat unless you’re trying to make a short rib confit. If you debone them, brown them, and don’t overheat them during the braise, your finished product should be very good even if you flub the details as I did.

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→ December 3, 2009
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Pops Restaurant & the Top Chef semifinal.

Klawchat today at 1 pm. I’m on Rumor Central today talking Donavan Tate’s broken jaw and Polanco to the Phils. Top Chef spoilers at the bottom of this piece.

I had dinner with a friend last night at Pops Restaurant in Boston’s South End, a small place that serves fine-dining-caliber food with prices one level down from what fine-dining places in the South End or Back Bay would charge. I’d recommend it, as the meal was well above-average despite some small issues.

Once I saw the crispy confit duck on the menu, there was no shot I’d order anything else, as duck confit is probably my favorite meat dish and it’s not something I’ve made at home. The duck was close to perfect, with crispy skin with a little bit of spice (I think five-spice, but there was too little for me to say for sure) and outstanding texture; duck skin needs very little seasoning since it has so much flavor of its own. The meat inside was perfect, tender and moist, falling apart like a braised pork shank. The duck comes with a mixture of asparagus, wild rice gnocchi, and a ‘red wine chocolate sauce’ that was astringent and overly salty and that didn’t do much to complement the duck; duck and rice do go well together, but something like a risotto with asparagus would have worked better. The side also contained lardons that were excruciatingly salty – and really, when have you ever known me to say a bad word about any form of bacon? – and weren’t listed on the menu, which, given how many people don’t eat pork for religious reasons, is a little customer-unfriendly. We also ordered a side of French fries at my friend’s suggestion – they’re lightly seasoned with herbs (thyme and rosemary?) and perfectly fried with virtually no grease, reminiscent of the fries at the defunct Back Bay restaurant Excelsior, which made probably the best fries I’ve ever had and served them with a rosemary aioli.

We started with the truffled butternut squash ravioli with sage brown butter and fried egg; the egg was more of a garnish but the ravioli were excellent, just a little too soft, with the squash allowed to come through as the star of the dish. The arugula around the dish seemed like an afterthought but, softened slightly in the brown butter (which was mixed with a little pasta water), it was worth fishing out.

Service was good, not great; the waitress brought me the wrong beer, and it took over an hour from seating to the arrival of the entrees, although I imagine that would have been shorter without the appetizer. On the plus side, I had started at the bar and ordered sparkling water, and forgot about it when my friend arrived, but the bartender brought it back to the table for me after realizing I’d disappeared. The restaurant has two sections; we sat in the back, which is quieter but dimmer and lacks the visual appeal of the tables in the front near the bar and kitchen. The limes from the bar were dried-out, which isn’t a big deal for me but raises a small question about quality control in the back of the house.

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Quick thoughts on last night’s Top Chef semifinal:

* Is Padma trying to be condescending, or is it just that her natural way of speaking comes off that way? My wife said last night, “I can’t picture her as a mother.” Growing up with a mother who is hot, famous, and sounds incredibly disappointed at the most minor of things is a recipe for a lifetime of therapy, no?

* We need to get Gail Simmons on “What Not to Wear.” It was like someone decided to add melons to the crush party menu. I feel bad for her – it’s not like she’s unattractive, but that dress – and it’s not the first – was not working in her favor.

* Have to try Bryan’s idea of cooking figs with short ribs and then pureeing them with the braising liquid to make a sauce. I’m thinking a dry red wine with good body but not too much fruitiness, but since I know jack about wine, I’m open to suggestions from the oenophiles in the audience.

* Jennifer undercut herself by, in effect, apologizing for making duck confit instead of grilling it. Play it up, talk about how you improvised, you love how it came out, spin it positively. Telling the judges you wish you’d done it another way isn’t going to make them like your food more. Of course, there’s a limit, since Kevin’s line about the undercooked didn’t go over well.

* This elimination was predictable, although I wonder (again) if the decisions are based on the dishes in that specific challenge or on the broader body of work. The weakest remaining chef was sent home; the three best from when I picked up the show about six episodes ago are going to the finals. I’m still sticking with my pick – Bryan.

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