Grub

Well now that we've covered stopetops -- how about, "Do you use your oven as extra counter space? for storing empty pizza boxes? Friend of mine did this, and I actually came into the kitchen TWICE, asking what was burning, but was told to piss off -- you know how it can be harder for a cook to notice things like that if they're actually right in the kitchen the whole time, and the smell creeps up slowly, right? Well the third time I wasn't taking no for an answer -- something was definitely burning; paper. He still didn't believe me, but luckily, at that point the smoke started rolling... Roasted cardboard -- yumm-o. It'll be lovely with enough blue cheese dressing -- I'm sure I saw it on Semi-homemade cooking once.

I have recordings of the first F Word series, and there's definitely some bleeping going on (and also a "blooming heck" which I thought sounded hillariously out of character, coming from Ramsay). I cannot recall if there is non-bleeped swearing in the first series, but there certainly is, in the second one. I'm not sure if this is because the first series aired earlier in the evening than the second? I _thought_ I came across some bleeped words in the second series, and that this might have been recorded from an earlier, pre-watershed airing. Edit: Okay, I just checked the copy of the last episode in the first series, and there is unbleeped swearing there. At least two other episodes in the first series features bleeping... (And as I said, I think that's the case with the second series also -- ie., there's a mixture of bleeped and unbleeped, which I guess just depends on what time in the evening they were broadcast.)

Yes, they do.

I've been watching just about everything of Ramsay's recently, and I think the two seasons of The F Word have been very good. The format seems like a good idea -- splitting up the main kitchen events with smaller bits about unusual foods, cooking challenges, turkey and pig farming and all that. As far as the naughty words goes -- hey, savour it. Failing that, you could always hop across the pond and savor the freedoms enjoyed by your colonial cousins, and have your ass fined tens of thousands of dollars for saying the fuck word on TV...

He's the man... He really is the man: "...The fucktards at Whole Food, however, have done us a real service by providing the most ludicrous example of "animal welfare" concerns with their public hand wringing over the fate of shellfish. ...that there is no more burning issue on the minds of educated, well-fed, financially comfortable citizens than whether or not a clam feels pain--or whether a duck can handle what any respectable adult film ingenue considers routine...."

Never. When I say 'never,' of course I mean -- like canibalism in the Royal Navy -- almost never. There are just too many pitfalls and traps in a kitchen, for me to allow this potential to exist -- if I'm just putting down groceries, and I absolutely, utterly, positively KNOW the stove hasn't been touched all day, I have a huge aversion to putting things on the stove. If I do so, it's purely the absolutely last resort, and I never put anything onto the burners themselves -- also, I move things off asap. Always handle a gun as if it is loaded, a knife as if it is razor sharp, and a stovetop like it's hot.

This is a misconception, if not an outright urban legend. British beer is not served warm, nor at room temperature (although the term "cellar temperature" is sometimes used) -- British beer is served chilled, just not as much as US beer.

Alton reaches into the spice cabinet and pulls out a bottle of The Essense of Emeril. "Emeril?!" He looks into the camera, astonished "That guy is EVERYWHERE!" Alton turns to the host, "I don't know... I've been in close proximity to Emeril, and I know what he smells like..." He opens the container and takes a whiff. "Nah, that's not the essense of Emeril! Emeril smells -- muskier." What a goof! Poor little Ewok; even the nerds are picking on him now!

While I certainly agree that low-fat beef isn't the way to go, I've found that the best way to ensure that a burger stays moist, even if cooked beyond medium rare, is findely chopped, caramelized onions... Raw, grated onions works too, but cooking the onions adds lots of flavor to it also...

I've got this lovely bit of blue cheese that I've had for uh -- well, a long time (I shudder to think how long -- it seems I've been coming across this thread for eons now, always thinking, "Ah great, I've got a really stupid question!" but I could never remember what it was...). Can blue cheese go moldy? If so, will it look -- or be -- the same as the blue bits in the cheese (ie., will I even be able to see if it has happened?) And would it be harmful to eat?

One of the staples in Gordon Ramsay's Hell's Kitchen was a Lamb Wellington. It used a duxelles, but no pâté. He also made a more traditional Beef Wellington on "The F Word," but again no pâté -- just duxelles. His restaurants serve Beef Wellington as well, but I don't know if they follow the same recipe. I've never had a traditional Beef Wellington, but the combination of pâté and beef tenderloin (or any other meat) just doesn't sound too appetizing to me; too overwhelming. And you know -- spank me and call me Karl Marx -- like some over the top, bourgeois yuppie surf 'n turf extravaganza. Whether you agree with Ramsay's approach on that count or not, there is a really cool part of his recipe that I've not seen elsewhere, that handles the same thing Louisa Chu addressed ("... layer a crepe between the puff pastry and the beef/duxelles/foie gras. This keeps the moisture contained and the puff pastry from getting soggy.") Ramsay's recipe smears the tenderloin with mustard and the duxelles, but then wraps it in parma ham before chilling it, and finally wrapping it in the pastry. I can testify to that method's efficiency... I made a Pork Wellington, and instead of the duxelles, I used a prune mixture and wrapped it all in Prosciutto, and the pastry never got soggy. Good luck with it -- please do report back on it! Here's Gordon Ramsay's Beef Wellington recipe from "The F Word."

I missed a few of the latest episodes, but from the episodes I did see, it seemed sort of obvious that Heather would, but maybe Virginia came on stronger towards the end... At any rate, that the winner can just go on to manage a serious, high-end restaurant from winning this show sounds weird to me. Favorite moment of the whole thing must be when Virginia sat down with her team to discuss strategy, and one of the guys (I think the big ass-crack "I wear my shorts high and my pants low becauce that's how I rock 'em!!"-eejut) -- started demanding things if Virginia should win. Like hey, what in it for me -- I want money, and I want it in writing! I swear, I could read from her facial expression that it just dawned on her that she just might be a really poor judge of character -- she just picked the worst fuckup losers for her team.

My initial, knee-jerk suggestion might be a little predictable, you being British, but Indian food should be a great help with this... Most of what we see of vegetarianism in the West tends to be the result of a relatively new trend that relies on ill-adviced nonsense like faux meat and whatnot. You just don't feel as if anything is missing from an Indian vegetarian meal -- you don't need to feel compelled to pretend that your yumm-o vegetarian hamburger is just as good as the real thing. Interesting project -- good luck with it.

Anyone catch the Puff Pastry episode? The judging was hysterical... Cora vs. Michael Psilakis. I liked the show just on account of my love of puff pastry, but man oh man -- Steingarten was in rare form! It was magnificent. Not only did he get into repeated squabbles with both of the other judges, he even started tangling with Chef Cora. First off, he made some comment about how it might be a good idea to say a few words about whether the food actually tasted good or not, rather than vexing on about composition and presentation and balances and contrast etc... Ted Allen -- the Queer Eye food guy -- shot back with sarcasm: something about how good he thought the dish tasted, and that such a great word-smith as Steingarten would find his response adequate, or something to that effect. Steingarten's facial expressions were priceless. The editing was just perfect, too. Allen continued harping on the point, with every dish served after that point too. There was much eye-rolling... Really funny stuff. Then, the third judge (I forget her name) asked about the sauce, and when the chef explained that it was just Béchamel, she ooh'ed and aah'ed about how great it was. Steingarten just cut her off at the knees... I guess she wasn't too knowledgeable, and perhaps shouldn't have been a judge, but man, Steingarten just burned her: "Praising the Béchamel sauce is like applauding the chef for using a knife and fork!" Allen tried coming to her rescue, and said they were there to judge the food and not judge the other judges, but Steingarten wouldn't have none of it. Of course he was there to judge the other judges; he was there to judge everything. He was like a drunk soccer hooligan: "Errr, ya foookers -- I'll take the lot of youse!" The poor woman didn't dare say much for while after that one, except how nice things tasted. Then she made the mistake of complaining that while this dish was very nice, it was too rich... This was the second time she had made such a comment, and that was enough for Steingarten, who laid into her that if it was too rich, why didn't she just eat part of it, instead eating the whole thing? Yikes. I think Cora must have observed this, and taken exception to it. When her dishes were presented, Steingarten said that the rather oddly shaped bowl she had used for one of her dishes made it difficult to get at the food, and she shot back with this really snarky comment about how hard could it have been, since he had somehow managed to eat the entire thing? Then, when he didn't like her pistachio icecream, Cora just hissed, "WELL JUST PRETEND IT ISN'T THERE, JEFFREY!"

It's fucking close to water. I'd dearly like to know where this originated. I've heard it/seen/read it lots of places, but the earliest source I can find is from Monty Python's appearance at the Hollywood Bowl where they did the "Bruce" skit and tossed cans of Fosters (gag) into the audience, and explained why they'd brought their own beer, with that joke.

Certainly, good service is important. But you can get used to, and even become comfortable with bad service, too... While I was in college, living near Manchester's infamous Curry Mile, we'd get pretty awful service, but we didn't care -- I mean, a bunch of drunk students going for a curry after an evening in the pub. Didn't tip much, didn't behave particularly well, so didn't really expect anything... After having become accustomed to that uh, "level" of service, as a student, in Indian restaurants in Manchester, England, I went to one in California that had great service... Now, I'd gotten used to good service in restaurants in general at this point, but I still felt as if poor service was the norm in Indian restaurants -- even if I didn't consciously think of it. So when this really friendly waiter came over to pour our glasses for us and generally doing a great job, I felt really weirded out by it. I couldn't put my finger on it, but I felt as if something was really amiss...

While I'm not sure how this is uniquely pertinent to food writing -- and I'd hate getting caught going off topic -- it's just the English language. One should be allowed to use all the words in its vocabulary. Even the naughy ones. Mind you, there's been some grand moments in censorship -- who can identify these ones: "This city, it's like a big chicken waiting to get plucked!" or "where did you get that scar tough guy? eating pineapple?" And of course: "This is what happens Larry, when you find a stranger in the Alps!" and to end on a culinary note, "This is what happens Larry, when you fix a stranger scrambled eggs!"

That, I've gotta agree with. Personally, I've always preferred to enjoy my cigars and drinks separately, to truly appreciate their flavors -- it gets kinda confusing or distracting otherwise; one overpowers the other. But yeah, port is a really good match for a cigar -- and it certainly doesn't have to a particularly fancy port either.

Johnny Walker Blue is wildly overrated (especially considering the astronomical price), so maybe that's a good choice for a snob. But for a really top-notch Scotch, Lagavulin is an excellent choice.

This one's just a close call, but it woulda been real bad -- involving a blender... Can't quite remember what I was making, but I had just boiled something and poured it into the blender. Hadn't put the lid on yet, but decided that I should plug it in first. In order to reach the socket, I leaned over the blender, so that my face was just over the steaming liquid. Then a little voice in the back of my head said "Oi, dumbass!" and I realized maybe I should check if the blender was in the off position. Sure enough, it was turned to "High" -- I woulda had the whole thing just exploding straight into my face. Just goes to show how dangerous it is, to not pay attention and just run on auto-pilot in a kitchen... Another incident involved no dangers at all, but I thought it was pretty funny. I was trying to place this plastic container onto a stack of other containers in a cupboard -- I'd normally use both hands to do this, but I was in a hurry and happened to hold a kitchen towel in my left hand, so I tried to finagle this thing in with just one hand. It didn't work -- I disturbed the precarious balance amongst the plastic containers and all of a sudden they decided to make a break for it! But I realized what was happening in time, and expertly tossed the kitchen towel I held in my left hand, over my right shoulder -- just like the pros do on the tee vee. And then I had both hands free to stop the containers from avalanching out of the cupboard. Except the tossing of the kitchen towel over my shoulder didn't quite pan out -- I ended up placing the towel over my head. So now I was standing there on my tippie toes, holding back a gazillion containers on the brink of falling out, with a damn towel over my head and of course I couldn't see a thing... I ended up just standing there for a minute or two, contemplating the absurdness of it all. Like something out Some Mothers Do Have 'Em.

Duh, of course -- I guess I just assumed fennel bulb since I had a fennel (bulb) based dish recently... In that case, I guess I don't know what the Jewish part of the dish is, then. I don't have a particular interest in Jewish-Indian food as such; I've just got a nerdy interest in how cultures influence each others through food -- like the Spanish siege of Leiden giving the Dutch their Hutspot, or Portugese missionaries to Goa creating Vindaloo...

Stumbled across this article in the New York Times, on Indian food, that briefly mentions a Jewish-Indian dish: "There is even a Calcutta Jewish dish, chicken makmura (ground chicken balls in a seductive sauce with raisins, almonds, fennel and cardamom)." Not that I'm an authority, but that sounds like a really intriguing combination -- raisins, almonds and cardamom are common enough in Indian food, but I don't think I've come across fennel before. Would that be the Jewish influence? I'm fascinated by such cultural influences -- if you dig deep enough, all food is fusion.

Yeah, the last time I saw anything as honest as that was Keith Floyd. A breath of fresh air, this show. Not only that, but I also really enjoyed his follow-up comments about how such "acquired taste"-foods can be an important link to your cultural inheritance -- the fact that most people don't like it can actually be a good thing. Methinks this is absolutely true, and also damn important. The word "mosaic" is supposed to describe this culturally diverse land, not the older phrase "melting pot." Because your culture -- culinary or otherwise -- shouldn't be melted down and blended into a giant, boring, homogenous stew. Hence my dislike of the pro-McDonalds argument, that it is a good thing to know that you can "enjoy" the same BigMac in San Antonio, New York and Pensacola -- and Tokyo and Stockholm, for that matter. It's like the next step is the scenario from Demolition Man -- all restaurants are Taco Bell. ::Curses, and falls off his soap box::

I doubt it, but I couldn't be sure of it until I have a chance to make a comparison. What I really wanted were metal skewers, but I just couldn't find any. The bamboo ones are a little too narrow for my taste, but they were all I could find -- mind you, I've been pleasantly surprised by how well they've stood up to the heat.

I'm not really good, but I've done it quite a few times now, and have learned a few things that helps -- had a looot of failures. First off, as Chrisamirault says, it's more likely to fall off if the meat is warm. So after forming them, I always put the kebabs on a tray and leave them in the freezer for a while before grilling them -- (I let the kebabs touch the grid, so I put a paper towel over them while in the freezer, to soak up any moisture that forms and brush them with oil before grilling, to prevent them from sticking to the grid -- as well as heating the grid well, and oiling it too). But the main "trick" trick is to work the meat a little; I mean, really squeeze it -- especially at the ends, since that's where they tend to fall off the skewer. Using an egg or breadcrumbs as a binder obviously is somewhat un-authentic, but roasted cashews -- well, maybe it's unauthentic, but it works well and adds flavor too...