annabelle

It sounds as if one would have to dine nearly exclusively on horse meat that was contaminated with phenylbutazone that had been administered in massive quantities in over to show side effects caused by other NSAIDs that are used for humans. Phenylbtutazone was originally developed for use in humans in the late 40s, but is no longer prescribed. The spotlight should be on the mislabeling firstly.

I grew up in Santa Maria. Tri-tip in generally cooked over charcoal fire on an open grill. You might have better luck with finding Santa Maria style BBQ if you head to the Inland Empire. At least somewhere where there are rodeos and the like is a good bet, since BBQ is prepared and sold by different service organizations (the Elks Lodge, for instance) as a fund-raiser. I can't recall eating SM Style BBQ in a restaurant. Not ever.

The reason I am advocating for a city other than NO, is that the diversity and bounty of Southern cooking is overlooked. Unless one subscribes to Southern Living, lives in the South or has spent significant time living there no one seems to be familiar with the food or the people. New Orleans has been invaded by outsiders over the last 30 years. Even beloved Emeril is from Massachusetts. My main reason for objecting to NO as a location is the inevitable emphasis on Mardi Gras and partying. Same thing with Miami. Atlanta has an evolving food scene, but it too suffers from an influx of outsiders. This isn't a travelogue: it's a cooking contest. Just my 2¢

Wow! Those are beautiful, Rich.

If Bravo is going to hold the host city hostage (Houston, for example) I'd tell them to go film elsewhere, too.

I think so, Shelby, but I may be thinking of a finale that took place in New Orleans. We can rest assured they won't choose our fine states.

If they do go to the south, I'd like to see Chef Louis Osteen become a judge. He was in Nashville and Charleston and is quite an authority and would be a great change from Terrible Tom. Low Country cooking is fantastic and very layered and deceptively easy to screw up. If they stay out of hipsterized college towns, I'll be a happy camper.

Nope, no Whole Foods around here. Portland? Do we know which one, Maine or Oregon? Boston might be okay, but it is a right pain in the rear to navigate, let alone with a camera crew in tow. Wait a minute. The comments to that article were written in April of last year. It sounds like they are speculating on this season. I'm a little sick of the Northwest (sorry Dave) and would love it if they would go to the South. Somewhere like Savannah would be great.

This was their third child. My husband was with me when I had my kids and I didn't find him to be particularly useful, so this was a non-issue to me. I'd like to get inside the decision making process on who gets the boot and why. Generally in the past, making a broth that is too salty to eat is a ticket home. Everyone at the Governor's dinner agreed that the fish/shellfish was well-prepared, but the broth ruined the dish. Josh makes a trio (always a bad idea) of fois gras, one of which is wrongly prepared yet edible and it's adios! I don't get it. Where is the next season to be filmed? Anyone know? Thank goodness The Worst Chefs in America returns on Sunday.

Thanks. All the reports I have read have been pretty sketchy and full of OMG! style reporting. It was only today that I finally learned that there was a question about the meds given the horses and the possible effects on humans. I agree that this was a bad thing and has been handled badly.

I'm not understanding why eating horsemeat is a bad thing. Of course, it should be noted on the packaging and not sneaked into the product. I was under the impression (perhaps mistakenly) that horsemeat is sold in France.

Here's to Kristen FTW!

@ Big Joe the Pro, heh. I actually had typed dad/grandpa/uncle originally and decided I was being redundant.

See, that's a foolish notion of Tom's. Not everyone had access to a great cook of a grandmother/mother/auntie. He should treat the chefs as individuals and not stereotype them by their ethnicity. And it's probably just me, but I am sick to death of hearing about the chefs sexual preferences since I doubt this has little if anything to do with their abilities in the kitchen.

True. Top Chef Masters was a great example of that. Jonathon Waxman got sick of the whole thing around the time the crew made him a birthday cake. I believe he said "F*ck it. I'm going to cook what I like. I don't care what the challenge is about." And he did. And he got told to PYKAG.

I find them forgetable. On rewatching the rerun of last week's episode, I thought to myself "I can't even remember what they made." That's bad. Bad for the viewer. Bad for the franchise.

You're welcome, huiray. It's easy to get crossed up when we can't see each other. Re, tearing up the salmon with tongs; I was waiting for Tom to go into his patented rant about "respecting the protein" and "honoring the ingredients". I hate it when he does that. Tom, my friend, they are groceries not sacred artifacts. During the early days of the 18th century lobster was fed to hogs since it was considered a trash food. They were very plentiful and so scorned. (Fisherman today still refer to them as bugs.) My husband had a bad experience with Asian lobster at a banquet when he was stationed in Vietnam and refuses to eat lobster in Asian restaurants to this day.

I just wish the chefs could cook in a proper kitchen. We're down to the final three and the last two competitions have been in a galley kitchen, albeit on a cruise ship and this one had a quickfire at a Crab Shack and an elimination challenge in the great outdoors. Next, they'll have to forage for berries, start a campfire and bring down an elk to serve at a four course dinner. All by sundown. I think it's enough pressure to cook for elimination, without the added pressures of wind and weather and being told to make X number of portions in an hour on three hours sleep. It's not realistic and isn't going to be representative of how thoughtful they can be with the ingredients. The dishes in the last challenge, other than Lizzie's bread which I would totally pay for, didn't do anything for me. Same deal with the surf and turf on the ship. Maybe I'm just jaded.

I thought the same thing about the bread bowls, Dave. I'm with you on sockeye over Chinook, as well. (We do have a taxidermied Chinook that was caught long ago in Alaska, however.)

I'm no fan of Josh, but I am sure he knows what sourdough starter is. It's a staple in Oklahoma just as much as it is in Alaska. We were a frontier, and still are in many ways, as well. Agreed on the KitchenAid not being sufficient for the amounts of dough needed. If they had access to an industrial Hobart, that would be a different story.

huiray, I was just commenting on the declining quality of the Top Chef franchise, not on anything you said. Sorry if it came off that way. It wasn't intentional. Dave, people routinely put down canned salmon. (I happen to like it, but I was raised poor.) Sock-eye or Chum? Tough choice, not.

What are the diners going to say? They're on Top Chef!! Sheldon's salmon was not good: the judges all complained that it was bitter from the pine needle (I guess) smoke. Chum salmon is going to taste crappy anyway. His bread was spongy, soft and weird with the green tea. Several of them complained about the texture. But, he was thinking outside the box, they said. Aren't they supposed to at this stage, if not before? Lizzie: Perfect bread, well-cooked salmon, lack of seasoning. The horror! I call shenanigans. I knew she was a dead chef walking when they kept showing her talking about her Da' and tearing up, though.

I have that book, as well. It is excellent. Martha is a caterer, not a chef. Her recipes are time-consuming, fussy, call for hard to find ingredients (often used sparingly or for garnish) and aren't as good as other people's versions of the same dishes that are more straight forward and don't try to make you work harder than needed. I am not opposed to doing time-consuming or fussy cooking at all. I just find that Martha calls for way too many steps that a beginning cook would try and then realize at the end that they worked two hours to produce a frittata.

I'm not feeling the Sheldon love. He bugs me. I think it's his accent which doesn't sound Hawaiian to me, but more like Cheech Marin. Foodwise, his bread got the thumbs down and who wants to eat sled dog salmon? The quickfire dish was nice, though.

That book is great, rotuts. I've had it for almost 20 years. You really can toss away all the other vegetarian cookbooks out there and keep Deborah's.