chappie

I'm not disagreeing with the Top Chef format, but in baseball, they don't play the bottom of the ninth if the home team is even a single run ahead.

The seafood merchant a few blocks away from my house sells a dried product labeled "hakefish." Is this an acceptible substitute for bacalao in any applications, like cod balls?

Read the post about Colicchio defending the choice of Hosea on Amuse Biatch (http://amuse-biatch.blogspot.com/) ... Toby has the better argument there, and his logic (which he claims to have gotten from Tom) would've chosen Stefan. I did notice the anticlimax of Padma announcing Hosea was the winner. It sounded almost like an apology.

You wouldn't look right in beaver boots.

Damn. Casey is now the culinary blogging equivalent of an E! gossip ho.

Meh. Hosea's win didn't leave me as nauseous as Ilan's, but it was just a flat note on the end of an overall flat season. To his credit, he appeared to make the best meal of the three. I wanted to see Stefan win. I never bought into the "Stefan as enemy" meme. I thought he took the show appropriately lightly -- it's entertainment, after all -- and used his apparent arrogance as simply a playful toy. It's a game. When any serious or emotional moments arose, he was always compassionate to others. And I liked the fact he worked with Marcel, who I still wish had won Season 2 to spite the gang-think simians around him. But that dessert was a really poor decision. Carla -- and even her tear-choked exit interview -- was more inspiring than anyone on Top Chef in a long time. She truly did perform without negativity, without dragging others down. I was sorry to see she wasn't able to put forth her best effort and be judged on it. Sous vide -- I'll never understand why we have become obsessed with putting food in plastic baggies and simmering away its soul. Ed: Whoa ... just watched the end of Stefan's exit with Fabio. Hilarious. "And the looks of ... Jeff!"

I happen to think pineapple -- especially if it gets a bit of char -- is good on pizza, and not just with ham. I like the tang it provides. Sorry. One of my college roommates would eat those $1 "pizzas" from the freezer section, with the fake cheese particles on top. And he'd top them with French's yellow mustard. Now that's not a pizza topping. I'll try just about anything on pizzas, but I agree that overloaded toppings ruin the whole balance and overshadow the crust and sauce. Wasn't there a thread on eGullet a few years ago about marshmallows on (non-dessert) pizza?

I know many people who don't like salmon medium-rare or rare. It's a textural thing, I think. Raw but warm salmon -- including the center of a medium-rare filet or steak -- can be slimy. I love salmon sushi but that's another thing entirely. Now, if it was dry ... I think too many people mess up or overthink Eggs Benedict. I make it all the time, I find it simple, and I prefer mine (learned from Mom) exponentially to the crap most restaurants serve. The only ingredients are: butter, lemon juice, egg yolks (plus perhaps a pinch of paprika at the end); poached eggs; buttered english muffins; and country ham. That's it.

Ah, it's that time of year. The annual chowder cookoff I enter is set for Feb. 21, and I have a title to defend. I was planning on using the whelks I mentioned in another thread as a unique ingredient but I'm not sold on their flavor/texture for a competition. Last year, I took the prize with an oyster, leek and vermouth chowder, described upstream here. Instead of reprising it, I'm considering taking an hour and 45-minute drive to Chincoteague, Va. There, I can purchase local clams shucked in quarts and gallons, or even their local oysters -- which can be obtained here but not shucked. With either ingredient and some really good Amish market cream, I might just do a simple, really authentic batch this year. No one ever does a clam chowder at this Annapolis event, probably because there's little affordable access to clams in the quantities you'd want in such a dish. Maybe that's the ticket, provided I can verify that the seafood place in Chincoteague I found online does have what they say...

I won a 19-entry chili cookoff with a batch I made Saturday into Sunday. I wish I wrote everything down, but when I make chili there are a lot of tiny adjustments. It basically went like: Peel and break up five chorizos, brown, remove while reserving fat. Add five chopped onions, two cloves garlic, six chopped poblanos and a bunch of other peppers from the freezer (Dad's garden: habanero, serrano, etc.) Cut an arm roast and chuck roast (about four pounds' worth, from cousin's husband's farm in W. Va.) into large chunks, brown, and add to dutch oven with the rest. Add a bunch of paprika, Rancho Gordo ground chiles, cumin, chipotle and a mixture of toasted and ground coriander seeds with Sichuan peppercorns. Also a spoonful of cocoa powder and a small pinch of cinnamon. Salt, black pepper, and two big spoons of backstrap molasses, too. Oh yeah, four bay leaves. Pour in one bottle of Dominion Oak Barrell Stout and add two cans of plum tomatoes, hand-crushed, with juice. Add a few dashes of worcestershire, a few spoons of Vietnamese chili/garlic sauce, and a spoonful of Marmite (it needed more salt, plus this added depth). This simmered for a few hours, after which I pulled all the beef out, fork-shredded it and returned it to the pot. By now it was 4 a.m., so I turned the heat off, went to bed, awoke and turned it back on low. A few hours later, I checked seasonings, added a few spoonfuls of masa harina. I noticed it could use something contrasting, color-wise, so I added a bag of frozen sweet corn. Then I loaded it into my new Hamilton Beach Slow/Probe Cooker with handy lid clamps. Mine won "most original," of three non-ranked categories, and disappeared instantly when the table was opened to the public. Didn't see any others sell out. Oh yeah, there were a few beef bones that cooked in there, and all the marrow was added to the chili...

I thawed a vaccuum-sealed bag of minced whelk from the batch above, and made a whelk/shrimp chowder as an experiment. It's tasty, but the whelks don't really seem to add much other than chewiness. I will cook with them, but I'm not sure I'll use them in my competition chowder.

I don't like the phrase "jumped the shark" too much, but I think not only has this show performed said cliche, but so, perhaps has the era of celebrity chefs.

Mmmmm ... Banh Mi.

You're thinking of Jamie.

Did you taste the actual cherries? They're spit-out-worthy, and believe me, I'll finish anything -- even foods I'm not wild about, and especially ice cream. It was like someone was playing a cruel experiment on me. Oh well, I'll just stick to my Haagen Dazs vanilla with a sprinkling of coarse sea salt and a splash of Grade B maple syrup -- absolute bliss.

I'm more sold on Jamie as a chef than I once was, and (perhaps better editing) they've toned down her mysterious blend of apparent lethargy and arrogance accordingly. Leah = meh. I could sear a piece of meat and serve it up. I think she's the closest they've got to a hetero "hot girl" and they're stretching her a few more episodes. Carla and Fabio are great entertainment. Stefan probably the best chef. I'm ambivalent on Hosea, and I thought Radhika and Jeff were strong conteders. Overall I agree with whoever said this season is a thus far a yawn.

Good point; I've had tons of good homemade ice cream over the years -- plus made it myself a lot -- so my tastes have evolved. I still think Cherry Garcia has bombed since then. And I've only grown to appreciate plain Haagen Dazs vanilla more and more over the same timeframe.

I really wish someone else would try it. I mean, it's not just "not as good." It's horrible. These cherries taste like poison.

I also watched the episode again late-night, and that douchebag of a judge is totally mocking Fabio's accent. I don't know (or care) what kind of acclaimed wonderboy this asshat is in the culinary hobnobbing world -- he comes across as a prick. Also, sidenote, what was up with the pretentious, insider-ish "see you in Miami" assurances to Jeff? You know, for all the blathering the judging panel has done over the seasons about "standing by your dish" (as cliched a phrase as "under the bus"), they certainly don't like it if you stand by it too much, apparently. The last two eliminations were unfortunate. Radhika gets tossed for being a poor hostess, and Jeff unfortunately ends up after a crappy elimination challenge theme with two other strong contestants. Yeah, Fabio has messed up, but I enjoy watching him. I don't think he can't take criticism; I just think he calls bullsh*t when he hears it. Actually I find him more gracious than many.

Tried a pint of Ben & Jerry's Cherry Garcia for the first time in ages, and something's definitely wrong. First pint of premium ice cream I haven't wanted to finish, and I used to like the flavor. Now, the base is flavorless, the chocolate chalky and almost acrid. But by far the worst offender are the "cherries," which suddenly taste like bad chemicals. Did I get a bad batch or have they secretly changed the formula?

If you watch/listen very carefully, it seems at first this Scott Conant person is mocking Fabio's accent a little bit.

I had missed last week's episode so I just caught up before tonight's new release. Damn. I'm sorry to see Radhika go because she's more talented than a lot of the contestants remaining. Leah cannot depart this show soon enough for me. May she be gone tonight.

I live on the Eastern Shore but occasionally trek to Northern Va. -- mainly Falls Church -- for banh mi, Korean barbecue and shopping at large Asian supermarkets. What I'm looking for is a really good, cheap wok. Carbon steel, even the iron ones. When I used to spend summers in San Francisco, there was a fantastic wok shop (it might've even been called The Wok Shop) in Chinatown. I just tossed a cruddy nonstick wok someone had given me a few years ago into the trash, quite disgustedly. Do you know of a good place, either in D.C. or surrounding areas, to find good woks?

Mashed potatoes trick sounds great. But the stock ... it seems most crockpots I've seen don't have the volume necessary to make much.

Budweiser doesn't do this to me. Tonight I'm going to have a couple of Old Dominion Oak Barrell Stouts, which are in the category of beers that have murdered me before. I'll report back.