huiray

Podcast of Emeril Lagasse discussing the TC Season 11 finale (and more) with Andy Greenwald. http://espn.go.com/espnradio/play?id=10415579

Breakfast-Brunch today: • Beef shin slices sautéed w/ garlic in peanut oil then stewed w/ shallots; yellow, red & orange carrots; water, sea salt; dried oregano. • Pickled scallions, daikon, Japanese cucumber. • White rice.

Two recent simple lunches. ----------------------- • Fried rice. Done w/ smashed chopped garlic w/ peanut oil, diced Dodge City Salami, sliced Debreziner sausages, 3 eggs scrambled in situ, chopped/chiffonaded collard greens, two-day-old Basmati rice, salt to taste. Served w/ coriander leaves garnish. • Remainder of the daikon - pork meatballs - white pepper - pork bone stock soup from a couple days ago. ------------------------ • Chicken (drumstick), garlic, cabbage & parsley soup; w/ min6 sin3 (mee sua).

Simple light dinner last night: Soup: Peanut oil, garlic, short-cut pork spare ribs, sea salt; water; simmer; snow fungus; simmer; angled loofah. Basically in that order.

Asia Mart: Canola oil; Yu Choy Sum; rice vinegar [Kong Yen]; Shangxi Superior Mature Vinegar [Donghu], Hokkaido Kelp Flavor Soy Sauce [Wei Chuan]; West Lake Dragon Well Tea [Asian Taste]; fresh thin wonton noodles; scallions; daikon; Chinese okra (Luffa acutangula); Japanese cucumbers (lots!); bitter melon; chayote; hon-shimeji; thin wonton wrappers (HK style); fresh Chinese crullers (yow char kwai); fried tofu puffs [Phoenix]; fresh duck wings; pork hock slices; fresh beef shin; fresh ground pork (right off the grinder, I watched what went into it); frozen stewing chicken; Chinese roast pork; frozen "fresh"shaved coconut. Sakura Mart: Higeta Honzen Soy Sauce; Otafuku okonomiyaki sauce; Kewpie mayonnaise; Wasabi Fumi Furikake; Hondashi Bonito soup stock granules; aburaage; Kameya izu-oroshi wasabi paste; Shin-Shu aka miso.

patrickamory, that looks good. There seems to be more than just dried shri mp in the Chinese chives dish you show though - what was it? Pork bits? The wood ears - I presume that would be wood ear fungus - are not clearly visible - I suppose you used just a bit? I hope you ate this with white rice. :-) Also, what did you do with the chopped-up Chinese long beans?

It was a soy sauce duck. Ah. Well, "Lo Sui" ("Master Stock/water") is basically a spiced soy sauce marinade/master stock/sauce...

Not always. They have been shown on numerous occasions to finish off the entire serving (entrées) from one cheftestant or another, especially with Tom Colicchio and Emeril Lagasse (when he is a judge on whatever season), and have declared they wanted another portion of whatever it was they just polished off. Gail Simmons has also done this; I'm not sure about Padma Lakshmi.

Yes there have been instances. Certainly for dishes that were "too salty". In many cases they were the result of trying to satisfy the judges' liking for higher salt levels, I seem to remember, other times not. If one includes "spiciness" within the definition of "seasoning", then yes again. Even in this just-concluded season Nina Compton was repeatedly dinged for making things that were too spicy.

Phở is not complete without tripe (also tendon) as part of the bowl of soup. It just simply isn't, to me anyway. Anna_N, you eat a lot of Vietnamese food. Have you not had a bowl of phở with tripe? Maybe a bowl of "special pho" (usually listed as phở đặc biệt) which would have "everything" in it? David Hensley, did your dish in Baton Rouge have noodles and pieces of beef in it as well --> meaning it was phở; or was it just tendon? If so could it have been gân bò kho ? (either beef + tendon or just tendon alone) I like tripe, although I haven't had it as the main ingredient in a dish OTHER than in dim-sum for a while. I grab the steamed tripe dim-sum anytime it is offered when I have dim-sum. :-) Time to whip up some tripe stir-fried w/ ginger & scallions again...or with chili bean paste... I also head for the cold selections in a good Szechuanese buffet and definitely include the beef tripe (in chili sauce or with scallions/garlic) in my choices; or have the standard cold platter which includes tripe; or have some fuqi feipian...

But that's the thing - as I alluded to before, perhaps there IS a bias towards heavy salting in restaurant food and amongst professional chefs that the general dining public may not share. See my post above. Some chefs do not seem to have a heavy hand with salt (perhaps those who said their food - from Nick - was "perfectly seasoned", as Toliver suggested? Or as I exemplified with Kelly Liken? I don't know. I *can* aver that "salting" is variable from person to person and region to region.

Which is why, as I think has been discussed at other times too, cheftestants on TC should cook for the judges - meaning Tom C. (in particular), Gail S., Padma L., Hugh A., and whoever is on that season. In the past I've talked about how the cheftestants should also cater for their general dining clientele in their dining audience, as one would think they should do - but as others had pointed out the opinions of the other diners count for very little in the "judging" and the paramount thing still remains catering to the specific, idiosyncratic tastes of the TC judges. In fact, I seem to recall that one of the TC finalists (was it Richard Blais?) said specifically that in the context of TC he needed to disregard everyone else ("screw them") and simply cook to please the judges. In Real Life the cheftestants in their restaurants or in their catering endeavors need to cater to their dining audience, drawn from the general public and NOT the TC judges - but insofar as the TC show is concerned NONE OF THAT MATTERS. I thought in the past that that was a travesty - but after I accepted that TC is a Reality Entertainment Game Show then it was clear that yes indeed the Game Show Contestants simply needed to satisfy the specific people who were going to judge them. No matter whatever blah-blah they threw out there about whatever they wanted the viewing public to believe about the Superior Intentions of said Game Show. p.s. Tom Colicchio HAS admitted that TC is a Game Show. p.p.s. It's still entertaining (Top Chef, that is) but it IS a Game Show dependent on the whims of the specific people who are judging it.

I think Tom Colicchio & Co. have established over the seasons that they all have palates that require a lot of salt. Other talented chefs have also got in trouble with them - Tom in particular - over "lack of salt". Kelly Liken (TC Season 7) springs to mind immediately. There were others. I believe they have said that their palates deem the amount of salt they add to the food they normally serve to be sufficient, and I remember Kelly Liken saying that she was simply not accustomed to using such large quantities of salt as the TC judges seemed to demand. I think Nick Elmi said something similar during this just-concluded season. Liken got into trouble when she tried to compensate for this by heavily salting her porterhouse (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Chef_%28season_7%29#Episode_7:_Power_Lunch) and went to the opposite end instead and was now faulted by Tom C for food that was TOO salty. I've said before - this show really should be "Who Wants to Cook for Tom Colicchio & Co." As for other judges who also commented "needs salt"... I suspect that their palates also demand relatively high saltiness? Grant Achatz who murmured this about Nick Elmi's fish dish in one of the earlier episodes this just-concluded season - well, what I can say is that I've eaten Achatz's food and he (and his crew, under his direction) can have a heavy hand with the salt - for my taste. On a related note, isn't it the case that in general restaurant food is heavily salted? I'm sure the professional chefs here on the board will say that the "correct amount" of salt is used but one also reads about how the "secret" of making restaurant food tasty is to salt, salt, salt it... Or fast food and some processed foods (including potato chips/crisps) being so darn tasty because they are drenched in salt (and MSG). Other than personal variations there would also seem to be (in the US, at least) regional differences, and this has been discussed in other places/boards (e.g. on a certain other food forum). For myself, when I first moved to the Mid-West from the East Coast I could barely eat anything in restaurants here in my area because I found everything so salty - but over the years my salt tolerance and preference have headed up and up...acclimatization/desensitization to salt, it would seem. Here's one interesting article about the need to salt food to promote the taste of the food, yes, but also contains this at the end: Well, one of the meals I had some time ago at a certain restaurant in Indy thought by many (including myself) to be the best or amongst the best in Indy, run by a certain very highly regarded chef with the initials G.H., had a couple of dishes that were SO SALTY I could not finish them. I know who made them that night, and when I left I exchanged a few pleasantries with said (sous)-chef [at that time] sitting on the pavement outside, who was smoking. :-D Just stirring the pot. :-) p.s. Some of the commentators on this article report that they did not find Nick Elmi's food at Laurel (his new restaurant) to be underseasoned at all. :-)

Grubstreet recap of TC NOLA-->Hawaii Finale (episode 17): http://www.grubstreet.com/2014/02/top-chef-season-11-episode-17-finale-recap.html

I have never heard of asian egg noodles. I was under the impression that the did not use eggs in their noodle / pasta dough. I still would really appreciate a comment about my milk idea. Regarding "asian egg noodles" - also, what do you mean by "asian"? (Liuzhou has specified Chinese / SE Asian egg noodles) Keep in mind that Asia is a large place. There are also egg noodles used in the varied Indian subcontinent cuisines; there are Turkish egg noodles (e.g. erişte) (see also: kesme); Japanese egg noodles; etc etc...and all these cuisines are in Asia. :-) p.s. Perhaps you may have eaten a bowl of Wonton Noodle Soup (with the wontons plus the noodles plus fixings)? If you have you then would have eaten egg noodles. (Wonton noodles are a form of Chinese egg noodles) Additional edit: I forgot to mention that milk is used in making erişte. See this recipe, for example. Perhaps that would answer your 'milk question' at least in part. In the Western/European tradition milk has been used in making noodles and pasta for a while, too. E.g. see: here, here, here, and here. On eGullet have a look too at this topic/thread: http://forums.egullet.org/topic/39614-the-fresh-pasta-topic/ where several of the posts mention the common use of milk in making pasta. (Do a search for "milk" within the topic)

Lunch a few days ago: Leftover daikon-pork balls-pepper soup (see here), w/ min6 sin3 (麵線) (mee sua) and pickled scallions & Japanese cucumbers. -------------------------- Lunch yesterday: Linguine & fresh fettucine w/ butter, walnuts, cream, gorgonzola. Leftovers for lunch today.

Antonia Lofaso won the EC in episode 12 of TC Season 8, though, with a dish comprising fava bean risotto: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Chef_(season_8)#Episode_12:_Give_Me_Your_Huddled_Masses Sarah Grueneberg (TC Season 9) also made several risotto or risotto-based dishes (e.g.: http://www.bravotv.com/foodies/recipes/search?st=risotto+sarah&cost=&skl=&total_time=) and did well with them, while Lindsay Autry won the first of the three sequential challenges in episode 15 that season with a quinoa "risotto" dish (made in those moving, swaying gondolas!): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Chef_(season_9)#Episode_15:_Culinary_Games. Still, there has always been the concept of the "risotto curse" on the show, yes, and has got quite a number of cheftestants over the seasons dismissed because of it. Including the chef who was "Jimmy Sears" in Bourdain's "Kitchen Confidential" and who was the "popular" villain on that season: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Chef_(season_10)#Episode_9:_Past_Suppers (I didn't mind him; I thought the worst person there was that person with the ridiculous mustache ;-) ) There was a recent exception to the "no extra courses" thing also - Richard Blais won in Season 8 where he made that extra oyster amuse-bouche course: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Chef_(season_8)#Episode_16:_Finale I think the worse "curse" on Top Chef is the "car curse", actually, whereby the people who win a car do not go on to win TC. The only one who has broken that curse, I think, was Michael Voltaggio.

Heh. Nice Duck Grab, Anna N. Sounds like a nice stock you made, too! It does look more like a "lo sui ngap" (滷水鴨) you got, was that what it was? (rather than roast duck)

Especially as he is in his late 50's? And therefore possibly already set in his ways even if he may say he wants to learn?

I am happy enough that Nick Elmi won. Nina Compton did not lose, she gained in stature and experience and will be regarded well in terms of how she is a definitely capable chef. Nevertheless, I was pulling for Nick in a sense as a sort of "arc of redemption". It was fulfilled. He can cook, and so can Jason Cichonski. And as for that yelling - heh, hasn't it been mentioned here that he worked for Perrier at LBF? ;-) ETA: In WWHL after the show, Nina mentioned that she wasn't surprised that Nick won, that she "knew" she had not nailed it. Nick, on his part, also said that he was not confident about his win and actually thought the worst about what it meant when Padma Lakshmi started calling out his name.

Then it might be better to say "East Asian". Asia is a very large place, stretching from Turkey to Japan and swinging through India and the SE Asian nations & etc and Indonesia and Papua New Guinea etc etc. I believe Anthony Bourdain made some comments about the issue too. ;-)

Another early breakfast. • Cod fillet steamed w/ (Teochew) "Fermented Soybean" (潮州豆瓣; chiu4 jau1 dau2 faan6) [Dragonfly] (this one), "Soybean Paste" (陳年豆瓣醬) [Ming Teh] (this one), sliced fresh ginger, some peanut oil, and sliced scallions towards the end. • Yau Mak Choy. Romaine hearts "stir-fried" w/ garlic & peanut oil & a mixture of oyster sauce [LKK], "Luscious Soy Paste" (甘醇油膏) [Kim Lan] (this one), Shaohsing wine [Asian Taste] plus a bit of water. • White rice.

Nice write-up, Liuzhou.

Some ammo for you, then... http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/green-light-for-bluefish/2011/05/05/AFsGBJiG_story.html

Regarding fish sauce that OliverB mentioned - I don't find it repulsive. Do many folks here do? Not after it has been incorporated into a dish, but the stuff straight from the bottle. I tend to think of this as somewhat along the lines of the salted fish aversion I mentioned - perhaps another "smell appreciation" that is an acquired "taste", so to speak? Or is it deeper? What about anchovies? Or ikan bilis? Oh, I almost forgot - BELACAN! I find all of them appetizing in smell and taste - except perhaps too much belacan being toasted all at once when the smell becomes overpowering. (Olfactory overload) Considering that many posters here on eG also adore Thai food - the "more genuine" the better - I suspect that many folks here find these things pleasant?