Dignan

Please let us know how it went!

As I have what the contestants don't have, access to the internet and recipes, it seems that both chorizo and polish sausage can be made and served fresh. If I was making italian sausage, I'd shoot from the hip with pork, fennel seeds, and sweet/mild/hot spice. But with a chorizo or a kielbasa, I'd know what they should look like but without references I wouldn't have any idea how to make them taste right. As for casings, I would expect that the fresh sausages in one of these high end groceries are made in house, so perhaps you could score some from the butcher. Also, it remains a mystery to me what sort of things are provided to them in the pantry or what they can request, so that may also have been an option. And of course, if casings aren't available, the sausage could still be made and served loose or as a patty or shaped in some way. Anyway, it seems wrong that Nikki got a rasher of shit for her sausage choice and these chefs didn't, and that it didn't occur to them after the previous challenge that it could be an issue.

Okay, so last week we had a sausage incident, and the first question was "Did you make the sausage?" (Actually, the first question I think was what kind of sausage was it, but that wasn't nearly as important as the second one turned out to be.) Nikki, constantly about a foot under the breathable part of the deep end of the swimming pool, got dinged because, among other reasons, she bought the sausage instead of making it from scratch. Was there any discussion of the provenance of the chorizo used in the polish sausage dish? Chorizo is a sort of cured sausage, isn't it, as opposed to a sort of forcemeat sausage? In other words, they probably couldn't have whipped it together in time for the challenge, could they? So they probably bought it. A polish sausage, I'm thinking, could have been put together from fresh. But I have no hard clue as to what goes into a polish sausage, so maybe not. What am I trying to say? I don't really know. It seems to me we have two weeks of store bought sausages here, though, and last week it was a real boner.

I can get 80/20 locally (just made a batch tonight, coincidently), but I don't think I've ever seen 73/27.

I just watched parts of it again. Spike and Antonia are doing their arguing about the soup (and Antonia is correct, she did technically say that she would do the soup, and at the time Spike said something along the lines of "Now you got me scared that it's not enough.") The faux hawk girlfriend left behind says to Spike "You just put your bleep team mate in the ground." Spike replies "So bleep what?" FHGLB says, in a brilliant bit of repartee, "Yeah, so, so bleep what." She's now officially overwrought at the loss of Zoi. She apparently believes that what Padma actually says to the losers is "Please pack your knives and die." At this point Dale says "That's weak bleep something." It's not entirely clear that he's talking to FHGLB, who anyway needs to do a little MYOB at this point IMHO. Lisa says to Dale "Something something something you're just making it worse." Spike continues to practice his Dale Carnegie. Back to Dale who says, I'm pretty sure to Lisa, "That was not the person that something something something." The end is drowned out by the "bleep" in FHGLB's "Bullbleep!" Then his crotchgrabbin'.

Tookies in Houston grinds bacon in with the beef for a burger that apparently remains juicy in the well done stage. Robb Walsh's Review in the Houston Press

As I recall, Antonia was definately against the soup... but she dropped in at least one "I'll do it if that's what you guys want to do, but..." during the planning discussions. So I think she's right that she said she'd do it, but she was pretty set against it. And right before Dale goes of, as it was edited, he said something-that-I-couldn't-catch to someone-I-couldn't-tell-who-but-it-was-probably-either-Spike-or-Antonia, and Lisa told him something along the lines of "You're not helping." I'd like to imagine that it was more like "Shut up, you're not helping," because that would be more suitable to fuse a crotch grabbing rant like we saw. Shortly before that she was doing a thing that I see some of these shlubs do when they manage to win a challenge and it annoys the hell out of me. The folks with the chopping block POVs are arguing over events, and the challenge winner decides that, by dint of their win, they are now sage and proven chefs and may dispense their wisdom to those less fortunate shortorder cooks in the room. With Dale already weary of her in general, and specifically pissed about her winning a trip to Italy for makin' bacon (and what, the pickled chilis were just shouting, "Trip to Italy"?), I bet he was really grinding his teeth before he blew up.

Awesome! I do remember. It was a great tour, and since I lived in TX at the time it was great to have some one prospect for me. Eat some meat!

I envy you for your freezer space. That's a (Happy Birthday!) lot of meat, what with the whole goat and a half bison, to keep on ice. A cut of brisket from the bison might be interesting.

Maybe he's thinking of cashews.

I'm going to a potluck event, and I'm bringing a little bit of southern football tradition to Wyoming -- I've got a big pot of boiled peanuts on the stove ready to go. I don't know what all else will be there, except I do know there will be rocky mountain oysters. South meets west on that table.

I'd agree that boring would be a fair assessment based on the one I saw. I don't think I ever got a good enough sense of what was going on during the cooking segment, especially compared to an actual episode of Iron Chef with the bird's eye camera shot and constant commentary. Instead it was simply watching people move around in a kitchen. The whole show has a feeling of distance for me, distance between me, the viewer, and the goings on in the competition.

So, no comments about Sunday's edition? I myself didn't watch it, in part because I wasn't too primed to do so by the first episode and in part because I was tired and went to sleep and in part because I figured I'd just read your reactions and learn what I needed to know. Little help?

A good read. I kinda wonder, though, is this article about diet, or anthropogenic global warming? Edited to clarify: I see parallels between the atmosphere and factors he describes that cascaded to the point that we all "knew" that fat in our diets was going to kill us, and the anthropogenic global warming crusade: the politician champion, media support, the opinions of dissenters discounted because of the source of their funding, and fact determined by consensus. The similarities seem so obvious to me that the fact he doesn't outright compare the two makes me wonder if there isn't a message intended. Or maybe not.

I saw this, and I'm sure it was "Emergency!" I never watched Adam-12. It actually made me try bread dough once, since apparently it was tasty. I didn't enjoy it.

The abstract indicates that it is alligator snapping turtles that are prohibited, because the concern is that alligator snapping turtles might be sold but labled as other, legal, species. "...[W]e purchased 36 putative turtle meat products in Louisiana and Florida." I think that's what they're saying.

Do you have a cite for this notion that Louisiana was the only state in which one could buy turtle meat?

It was clear that Howie was on his way out. From the portentious commercials featuring his request to address the panel to the first act failure to produce something, anything, in the quickfire at this late stage in the game. He seemed pretty subdued throughout, and Brian holding his hand as he shopped just piled on the impression that the man was out of it. It was just a matter of how spectacular his exit would be. And it wasn't very, with his little fit at the end when he knew he was going to get the cleaver anyway. While it has been weeks since we saw them in action, the production schedule has to be much more condensed, so for Howie this stage was probably only a few days removed from his Restaurant episode hammerings, his bad cuban sandwhiches, and the Rocco episode with the frozen food disaster. I never thought he had a chance in this thing, but it was clear he was done.

A shot of redi whip right in the mouth.

Your nostalgia for the good old days contains some truth, but I see it as much a watered down noblesse oblige as anything. As you note, the relationship is a two way street. Once the peasants lived on the land and farmed it for the Lord. The Lord needed them and looked after them, which was good because the peasants had nowhere else to go. A version of that continued in industry and extraction based on the same mutual need, with the worker realizing along the way that he had more power to exert. I know all property is theft and all that, but our employment reality is much different these days and certainly is in this context. We have a highly mobile workforce that is not shy to exercise that freedom of mobility in pursuit of a better position. The other side of all this is that the busboys owe Rocco pretty damn little. I'd be willing to wager that anyone of them offered a dollar more an hour next door for the same work wouldn't pause to make high falutin' arguments about duties owed to Rocco when faced with that decision. To compare this to Enron overstates the case to the point of silliness. Chodorow might make an argument somewhere along those lines, 'cause he fronted the money based on Rocco's best efforts and didn't get them. I'm not defending Rocco. I've already called him chickenshit once. But because we think he's an asshole shouldn't mean he's subject to unreal standards that we wouldn't hold non-assholes to. I'm not saying that an employer doesn't bear obligation to his employees. But there's an enormous difference between the obligation to not take advantage of employees, to not waste investors resources, to not commit massive fraud, to provide safe work environments, etc. That he failed some ethical obligation to the staff of the restaurant because they had to stop working there when it closed is something I'm willing to disagree with you on, that's all.

If you call "hopes & dreams" paying the rent and buying groceries, then the answer is yes, we can saddle him with those responsibilities. ← Ridiculous. Rocco has no obligation, nor does Chodorow, nor do you, nor does any other employer, to continue to operate a business on the grounds that if it doesn't continue its employees will be out of a job and therefore not able to meet the rent and pay for groceries. If all the drama hadn't occurred, how long would Rocco and Chod have had to keep the business going before you freed them of this supposed responsibility?

I think we're pushing it a little to saddle Rocco with the responsibility for the hopes and dreams of the itinerate busboys of NYC.

Yes, I'm tearing up my ticket because the horse I bet on had a real bad race. I guess at this point I'll jinx Hung by calling for him to win now that Tre is gone. He has seriously minimized the tool-ness that has been so excessive before, so if he can keep his head in the game, I think he'll get it. If anybody has his finger hovering over a flashing self-destruct button, though, it's Hung. I did not give the episode an intense viewing, because it was on opposite the Sopranos, and even the A&E heavily censored version is still the best TV since the first season of Miami Vice. So I was popping in and out, and I popped out with Casey sawing away at an onion, and then popped back in after being a material witness to at least six mafia felonies, and there she was, still sawing away. I love her invective, which she apparently reserves for knife related incidents, and I blasphemed in the same way as I watched: Jesus Christ! I agree with one thing: No More Madonna's Brother. Ever. Dale should have rouchambeaud him right in his monkey nuts the first night he was on. Then he wouldn't have come back. The guy has a constant look on his face that says: "I smell something bad, and, you know what? It's you." I hope Bravo realizes that people don't really even like Madonna all that much anymore. The time to introduce us to her family members is now closed up in a dusty closet with the english long bow, saying "23 skiddoo!", and John Kerry. What else? I'm sure I have more after I watch the episode a few dozen times, since Bravo will give it a couple hundred reairings before now and next Wednesday.

You're not missing much. As someone said above, it's like watching a spoiled brat, and worse, I feel that he talks down to the viewer (and sometimes his hosts). Something about the man just rubs me the wrong way, I can't stand watching his show for more than a few minutes before I need to turn away. Even my wife can't stomach him (pun intended). Cheers! ← I'm not a big fan of the show. I did have a bit of a revelation once though as I watched him and asked myself, why is he talking like we are all children? It occurred to me that he was talking so that he could be understood by the folks around him for whom english was not a first language.

In his blog exchange with Tony, Rocco asked Tony how the two of them are so different. He said, to paraphrase, we both used to cook, now we do TV and sell things. You call Rocco a media whore. Would you call Tony a media whore? Is it all because of the 15 minutes of "the Restaurant", where he left such a virtual bad taste in so many TV devouring mouths?