Claudia Greco

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If I recall correctly, when TB made cassoulet at a cooking demo last fall, the skin lined the inside of the cassoulet dish, but did not overhang it. I have to check the LH cookbook again - the handout he circulated at that gig was right out of the cookbook, but I know I didn't hang skin over the sides of the vessel when I made it at home. The chili had me heaving. Spaghetti, chili and orange cheese? Poor Ruhlman looked like was going to toss his cookies. Ruhlman will NOT be making an appearance on Bizarre Foods or Fear Factor anytime soon, obviously . . . !

The pissy petulance of little Mr. Knowlton is discussed at great length at Ruhlman. Basically, I think he was born with his Mr. Rogers cashmere sweater in a bunch, and any self-respecting NYer would drop-kick his whiny little butt across the width of SoHo. You know he'as gotta be bad if he can get the even-tempered Ruhlman riled.

For any fans who might be interested, Tony's finalized book tour (courtesy of Beth Aretsky and insofar as I could find all the links), has been posted on the Calendar page.

Hey, I didn't comment on the reunion show last night because -I was out EATING! I'll catch it on one of the numerous re-runs . . .

I liked how they razzed each other - especially Besh - and acted like they were knocking elbows, etc. Besh is obviously the Wally Schirra of the group - he's definitely "maintaining an even strain."

All too true, too true . . . . (sighhh). But I really felt for poor Michael Symon, when he opened up the ice cream maker and slush came out. He did everything right, and yet -

Obviously, FN cared more about audio since they couldn't get all the chefs back in to do overdubs, so both the chefs' physical comfort and well-being, as well as their food, was sacrificed for what Bourdain calls "video gold". "Melting ice cream? Liquidy creme fraiche? Tough breaks, baby. Welcome to show biz." I can just see a FN producer telling the chefs that.

← From an e-mail from Chris Cosentino (Incanto) to Michael Ruhlman, on Michael's blog, and MR's added remarks to it: XXXXX CC: hey michael, be sure to tell them the reason we were sweating so much was because they shut the hoods off for audio so the kitchen temp was 132. no bullshit. there was a thermometer in there, dude it was fuckin hot. MR: I love that guy. and his tripe was amazing. my favorite of the day was kaysen's squid, he would have beaten besh had his other dessert been stronger. it was hot, as if the liquid creme fraiche and pourable honey didn't convince you. the machines weren't sabotaged. one of the chefs was hospitalized for dehydration after and it's admirable triage didn't try to make a drama out of it. xxxxxxx So, no sabotage, no heightened drama - and no negligence. It was TV! Video [nearly] killing the video stars!

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I believe you are correct. Interesting, though he is probably at least acquainted with most of the chefs in the competition. ← You should read the ruhlman.com blog. Discussed thoroughly - MR does know Symon, but it's generally agreed that Michael can be completely impartial - and why.

I thought about that, too, but decided since the floating restaurants are pretty famous, maybe he decided to avoid them. Also, I thought I heard somewhere that the two largest and most famous had been moved from Aberdeen. Do you know? ← Jaymers, I checked with a friend in HK, and, yes, the floating restaurant is still in business - in Aberdeen. It's called the Jumbo, and if you Google "aberdeen floating restaurant" you will see it come up in all its glory . . .

Bwahaha! Yes, it did look a little BBC Playhouse, didn't it? ← I expected "Leonard Pinth Garnell" or Gemma Jones or Jean Marsh at any moment!!!

What I hated most about The Next Food Network Food Star-like ending was (aside from the hokey, played-out element) was the supercrappy low rez it was telecast in. I have both regular rez and high def channels, but what I saw last night looked like it had been taped, not live, and on badly stepped-on VHS tape from 1981 - I kept cutting back to regular broadcast channels to see if I was hallucinating. Nope. The live segements looked out of focus/ lenses covered in vaseline. Hello? Was Ron Jeremy in the house?

Perfect. I think you hit the Hung enigma right on the nail. Of course, we can't taste his food - maybe it is a little soulless - but I think Hung has demonstrated both his technical ability, passion and some true creativity in past challenges. So break out the pho, folks - it's down the wire tonight and as much as I like Casey and want to see her win, I think - barring some truly out-from-left-field disaster - it will be Hung's night. And I think he deserves to win.

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And I'll miss "big ol' gay" Dale (as he described himself) - just as he was finding his footing, too.Hope he gets/has got another job outta this!

It would be so easy to want to evict Hung just for being arrogant (does he REALLY have to be so obvious when he finishes well ahead of the other chefs?), but it wouldn't be fair - Tony's right. But it IS perfectly OK to want to see Casey win. Go, Casey, go!

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I was really happy to see Dale not only make it to the final three, but win an elimination challange. And his speech not only was very touching, but rang true. Hung gave an amazing performance about soul and what food meant to him - truly Oscar-worthy. Given he got all verklempt about the subject in the side interview/soundbite BEFORE the challenge, I think Hung has been picking up on the technically perfect-but-soulless vibe he's been getting recently. Oh, how about how he LOVED to be working with elk?!Brian was destined to go, barring a massive FU from Dale. Unless Hung really screws up next week or gets snotty with the judges, he won't be going home. While I originally thought Hung would win it, I'm actually beginning to suspect Casey might take him down after all. And, yes, for a few minutes there, I actually thought it might be HUNG going home this week. Let's hear it for Dale's fabulous saucing (!)

Amen to that, FoodE. Oh, and this, courtesy DTucker: www.movable-feast.com Tony at the Emmys

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That's what I'm thinking. He said he wanted to eat the Sardinian cheese with the maggots in it, but there's all that other beautiful food, too - the "music sheet" bread, all the other cheeses, malloreddus - c'mon! And, culturally, the Sardinians aren't just Italic - what about all the other cultures that have influenced their food and language, etc.? Phoenicians! Greeks! Catalans! And it's still pretty unspoiled/untouched, except for the Costa Smeralda. But he could go INLAND. To the beating heart of Sardinian cuisine. And check out some nuraghi, too. The invaders belonged to the sea, the Sardinians to the mountains . . .If he was worried about following Jamie Oliver, he could have gone to Abruzzo or, as you said, Puglia . . . Basilicata . . . hell, even Venice, as much as that's been done. Just as long as he skips the obvious places. Oh, and can someone give me an amen to Trento-Aldige? Friuli? The Marches, for Chrissakes? (Hey, they DO have truffles, ya know!) "Fredo, I know it was you. And you broke my heart."

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The "director" is a cineaste from Sicily - if you recall, he wasn't the fixer (that was the hated Cicciu, or "Dario", as Bourdain refers to him in Nasty Bits), but rather, the filmmaker who took Tony to eat cannolis, up Etna, etc.I, too, was horrified by both the meatballs in the carbonara AND the agredolce (sweet-sour) caponata served with it - absolute wrong combination of flavors. And caponata, a Sicilian dish, served to Tuscans? And a Sicilian auteur shooting a Tuscan episode? OK, I GOT that it was a joke - Tony cooked for Florentine restuaranteur Pino Luogo back in the day in NYC, so he knows perfectly well not to do what he did (plus he had his Italian wife, Ottavia, right there - and she would never have let him commit such an atrocity and become a brutta figura in front of other Italians if it wasn't a set-up for the subsequent Inferno leitmotif). I got that he was setting the scene up a la Dante's Inferno - a man who has lost his way (in this case, foodwise) and has to travel through hell to find redemption and love out on the other side - I got it. I got that he was doing a little cinema verité by having Vincenzo shoot the chiaroscurro starkness of Tony in dark woods and with gargoyles, entering the portals of the Inferno (nice bit of Terry Gilliam meets Dante Alighieri there, BTW). I got that Tony was trying to set up the inner conflict between the warm, sunny gloriousness of Chianti and the dark, Fellinesque inclinations of his Sicilian director, between the beauty of Tuscany and Dante's dark journey through the Inferno. I GOT it. And, yes, I got that not only was he using Dante as the underlying theme for the Tuscan episode because he is to Italy what Shakespeare is to the English-speaking word (OK, poetry vs. playwrighting, but that's splitting hairs), but to tie it in with Dario, the Dante-loving and prolifically-quoting butcher - I GOT IT. But the opening scene shook me badly, and rhythmically speaking, I could not get into the rest of the episode. I loved Dario, the lardo (and yes, even the surly and uncooperative Maremma cowboys), but I think a lot more could've been done with the episode. Sorry, Tony. BTW, for those who don't know, the initial subtitled text was the first canto of Dante's Inferno. In the original 13th century Tuscan Italian, it is: Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, che la diritta via era smarrita. Ahi quanto a dir qual era è cosa dura esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte che nel pensier rinova la paura! Tant' è amara che poco è piu morte . . . And the very beautiful Robert Pinsky translation (which I think NR should've used, rather than a literal, word-for-word one, since Pinsky is not just a translator and a professor of poetry, but the freaking Poet Laureate of the United States, hello!): Midway on our life's journey, I found myself In dark woods, the right road lost. To tell About those woods is hard -- so tangled and rough And savage that thinking of it now, I feel The old fear stirring: death is hardly more bitter. Sorry - had to vent.