huiray

Too bad Joshua Valentine is still on the show. Sad about Lizzie Binder leaving. Brooke Williamson should stop saying Sheldon Simeon's "cooking Asian again/using Asian ingredients again" and curb her snideness about it. Why, doesn't she cook almost wholly European herself and use European ingredients almost exclusively? (and Sheldon S should be proud of what he does) Beautiful looking salmon - on the docks - and such fresh red flesh! I wonder (again) about the outcome of LCK...

I was stunned that Joshua Valentine DIDN'T put bacon in his bread.

Lunch today: • Spaghetti carbonara - using cured pork jowl (not quite guanciale), two egg yolks + 1 egg, Pecorino Romano, generous ground black pepper. That's it. No cream, etc etc. I did stray by using chopped parsley as a dressing. • Plus a clear seasoned broth w/ just chopped Lacinato kale, simmered for a short while. (not pictured)

Thanks, Paul B, rotuts, naguere. Very kind of you all. Nice save, Kerry Beal. Looks good, CindyMarshall, Steve Irby.

"Shui Gow Ngap Tong Meen". Skinny wonton noodles w/ the rest of the Chinese roast duck (store bought) from the other day; w/ pork-cabbage-XO sauce dumplings ("Shui Gow") [Prime Food] and fried soybean curd [the type which is "puffy" inside, sort-of "flat" pieces; a Korean brand, pretty good, as good as my usual Japanese brand and much cheaper too]. All served in chicken stock simmered w/ a little sautéed garlic. Accompanied w/ "Gai Lan" blanched in oiled hot/boiling water.

SobaAddict, you've certainly been doing vegetarian fairly extensively of late, :-) Lovely dishes, nice presentation and photography as usual. Great dishes from all.

Yum. What did you use for the meatballs?

Well, that is gorgeous (as many of these photos are). Is that Four Seasons as in the old Four Seasons cookbook from the classic NYC restaurant? I have that book but don't remember this duck. Thanks janeer... and it is the very one (they still serve it btw): ( http://forums.egulle...-1360034222.jpg ) (I hope it's okay to post a photo of just the first page of this recipe... it goes on for quite a ways) I looked up the full recipe - http://www.melindale...ons-crisp-duck/ It looks very much like a Chinese-type roast duck, including the air-drying for days (traditionally). :-) Maybe a cross between a Cantonese-style and a Peking duck or something like that? (and except that Cantonese-style tends to use some sort of bean paste as part of the marinade for the cavity) It looks very nice.

Marcel Vigneron last appeared on TV on The Next Iron Chef: Redemption, when he made it to the final four. I think he is currently still developing/working on his own consulting/cooking company?

Sorry, but Padma does nothing for me. Nada. Zip. Some greatest good moments (I'm going to include sequences etc) right off the top of my head? • "I'm not your bitch, bitch". • Michael Voltaggio explaining why he wanted to be Top Chef in S6's finale before JT. • The Voltaggio brothers' dust-off with Robin Leventhal in the kitchen during Restaurant Wars. "Relax. Relax. Reeeeelax." • Mike Isabella brushing up before the final stretch of Season 8 and cooking the pants off everyone else except for The Perpetual Doubter (Richard Blais) in the finale and even then only by a hair. That finale meal was also one of the most memorable, including that (heh) Pepperoni Sauce. • Hung Huynh going through those chickens in no time flat. Awesome. • The meal presented for Charlize Theron in that "Evil Queen" episode. Special mention for Grayson Schmitz's and Paul Qui's dishes. There are lots more, but that's enough for now... Some greatest low points/sequences for me: • Almost anything where Josie Smith-Malave said or did anything, especially on the current season. • The attempted "Marcel Vigneron Head Shaving" incident. • Dale Talde smashing those lockers with his fists in anger. • Colicchio accusing Hung Huynh of not cooking with soul whenever he did something French-like (in which he was trained) and expecting him to cook Vietnamese because he was Vietnamese. • Colicchio & José Andrés so misunderstanding Chinese cuisine and making pronouncements on how bad Ed Cotton's Chinese-style duck was when even the Chinese guy from the Chinese embassy had said it was very good, very authentic (and Cotton had been taught the dish by his Chinese girlfriends at the time). • Kelly Liken (and the other cheftestants) being so squeamish and scared about sampling the "Pak Cham Kai"/Hainanese Chicken in that shop KF Seetoh took them to in Singapore because it was "cold" (actually, at room temperature) and had been at that temperature for a while. • Angelo Sosa being dissed constantly for "cooking only Asian" especially by Timoty Dean, Kevin Sbraga and even Kenny Gilbert; whereas in truth he did NOT. What, just waving soy sauce over a dish would make it "Asian", whatever that means? (Also, if you want to say "Chinese" or "Japanese" or even "East Asian", why not say so?) • The whole Heather Terhune show. (I still won't go to her place anymore to eat. I might have a cocktail); followed closely by the Sarah Grueneberg show. • Special mention to the Heather Terhune oleaginously leeching over Chris Crary show in the piano lounge. OK, enough for now, too, in this category... I'm sure I'll add more... p.s. On a related note and in a related show - Top Chef Just Desserts - that jaw-dropping sequence of Seth Caro having his meltdown... Oh, I particularly remember Morgan Wilson's chocolate dress.

Tuesday's lunch: • "Chow Mei Fun". Prawns & chopped de-boned chicken thigh meat stir-fried w/ julienned ginger, chopped Napa cabbage ("Wong Nga Pak"), 1-2 inch chopped scallions, chopped semi-ripe long hot chile, a few chopped red Thai chiles; then the precooked/softened "Mei Fun" (skinny rice noodles) and chopped plai egg omelet** folded in and tossed in the hot pan on the fire. • Winter melon & beef short ribs soup, w/ rehydrated dried thick-cap shiitake mushrooms ("Far Koo"/"Tung Koo"). About 1 1/2 heads of garlic (smashed, sautéed) also went into the soup; short ribs browned in the garlic oil,before simmering/braising. ** Eggs beaten w/ a little veggie oil, a little water, a dash of salt; poured into a pretty hot well-oiled pan; the omelet is allowed to form and "bubble", browing slightly, then flipped/turned over for a few seconds and transferred to a plate. Cooking process takes about 2 minutes or less.

Late night supper after the Super Bowl: A riff on a dish patterned after Pancit Palabok/Pancit Luglug… :-) Head-on shrimp, deshelled & deheaded (w/ plentiful head cream), deveined; sautéed in peanut oil till just cooked, removed from pan & reserved. Pan w/ frying residues – shrimp shells & heads and one smashed cut-up garlic clove added in, the mix tossed, water & a little sea salt added and the mix simmered for a little while. The shrimp stock is poured/filtered off and reserved. Skinny “mei fun” (rice noodles) was softened & rehydrated by soaking in hot water, drained & reserved. Two hard boiled eggs were prepared, quartered & reserved. Ground pork was sautéed w/ good fish sauce (Red Boat), generous ground black pepper & sliced fried "hard"/firm tofu; the reserved shrimp stock poured in and the mix simmered to blend and also reduce a bit, then some flour (sufficient) slurried w/ a little water poured in while stirring to thicken. Assembly: mei fun, then sauce, then cooked shrimp, then quartered eggs, lime slices (sliced SE Asian style), topping with chopped scallions. Lime juice liberally squeezed over the ensemble. Eat. Notes: I didn’t have annato on hand so I left it out. Also no chicharon (pork cracklings) or tinapa (dried smoked fish). I added more fish sauce. p.s. Yes, the sauce is there on the noodles and under the toppings. I should have taken a picture after I mixed it a bit.

Hmm, Chinese BBQ pork (char siu) can be found in the died-red and non-died-red versions in different groceries, it depends on which store and who the supplier is and even the milieu. (and location in the world) :-) What I can get from my local Chinese grocery looks a lot like yours, except the internal flesh is considerably whiter. Sometimes it might be a little redder rather than "brown-red", but not the red-red that I think you are referring to. Yours looks nice. Assuming the sauce you poured over it darkened the color of the internal flesh, yours also looks not unlike what one would frequently get in places like Malaysia & Singapore, amongst other places. (You also get red-died & boiled "char siu" there all over the place in various other restaurants and other contexts)

I agree, related, but not the same. Crispy is thin and brittle and shatters easily - potato chips, tuile cookies. Crunchy is thicker, denser, and takes more work to eat - peanut brittle, carrot sticks. I suppose that could be a valid delineation between the two. FWIW Colicchio did go on about "crispiness" and "crispy pork" and how Richter's was not, to him. Ditto in his blog where he described HIS preferred way of making it. Acheson also made comments about the too-hard-for-him nature of the pork skin, of course. However, Stefan Richter also described his pork as "crispy", saying at Judges' Table that he likes his pork "very crispy" but obviously his notion of "crispy" differed from that of the (US) judges. Certainly it seemed to come out the way he expected it to and wanted it to, and both he and Josh Valentine were enjoying it in the kitchen, as annabelle pointed out above in this thread. The extra CRUNCHINESS (per your delineation) of the pork skin was no surprise to Curtis Stone, as has been mentioned several times here, and (again) he said he loved it this way which reminded him of what he would get in Australia and GB (Great Britain) and pointed out the "cultural aspect" of it, even though he did say later at JT that Richter's was pushing the "crispiness" level. I looked again at the pictures of Stefan Richter's pork belly and the pieces of pork on the presented dish - the skin layer was clearly finely crossed-cut into small squares, so that it wasn't a "continuous sheet" (such as "regular" crackling on roast pork belly might be) and the layer of skin did not seem thick at all, at least from what I could make out from the pictures of it. Even if it was *really* hard per what Colicchio and Acheson said (yes, we all heard the loud crunching sounds they made), it did not seem like it would be that armor plating that it was made out to be. But then again, I did not actually taste it. It's also possible that the delay between the pork belly coming out of the oven and its being served to the judges might have hardened the skin very appreciably as it cooled all the way down? Yet again Curtis Stone liked it as described above so it couldn't have hardened that much if it did at all. I for one would think Curtis Stone knows a thing or two about cuisine in Australia and GB, more than Colicchio and Acheson. (Would eGulleteers based in GB or Australia have different experiences?) I still raise my eyebrows a bit at Hugh Acheson's snark about Curtis Stone and his perfect teeth. Heh, in a way this also reminds me why this game show really should be called "Who Wants To Cook For Tom Colicchio & Co." (Win Money!!! Win Prizes!!!) rather than "Top Chef".

True. It would be nice if that was commonplace in the US. (Well, daily menus written on the chalkboard or the daily printed menu at high-end places sort-of resemble these hand-written menus but it somehow doesn't resonate the same way... )

Yes. http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/June07/orangeCauliflower.kr.html http://www.specialtyproduce.com/produce/Orange_Cauliflower_4966.php

Handwritten in pencil, no less. Every thing in it. I'd love to hold this in my hands. Rather than one of those new-fangled electronic whizbang tablets or iPads or whatever is fashionable in some places nowadays. http://www.washingto...rite-in-pencil/

Sort-of Cantonese-style steamed big-mouth bass.** Soup of fresh bunapi-shimeji (white beech) & oyster mushrooms w/ Chinese celery in chicken stock. White rice (Hitomebore). ** Cleaned gutted fish briefly marinated w/ sesame oil, Shaohsing wine, some light soy sauce, scallions, ginger, a bit of ground white pepper. Steamed till just done. Fish only retrieved from steaming dish (discarding liquids and other stuff), replated, fresh julienned scallions, ginger & cilantro scattered over it and the ensemble dressed w/ a sauce of [veggie oil sautéed julienned ginger & a little chopped garlic; quenched w/ light soy sauce (Pearl River Superior), MRT ryori-shu & Honteri mirin]

Heh. Nevertheless, we did not actually get to taste/sample that "crispy pork". If it was truly HARD HARD, versus just "hard" in the European manner, I suppose it would be a factor. I must think that it wasn't that bad, since Curtis Stone liked it.

@patrickamory & ChrisTaylor - I can't take any credit for the duck, except for how I used it and how I combined it with those ingredients. It was store-bought, from my local Chinese grocery. Nevertheless, it would have been done in the "classical" Chinese way, I'm sure the www would provide some info.

Late night supper. Chinese roast duck, broad wonton noodles dressed with sauce from the roast duck, blanched Taiwan A-choy. Chopped scallions on top.

"Crunchy yet soft?" Yes, I believe I've fallen down the rabbit hole. You haven't fallen nor have I. When you bite through the "crunchy/crisp" top of the fatty layer of pork belly it gives way to the "soft" fat below. It seems that Tom couldn't get through the cement layer on top of Stefan's pork belly to experience the other textures. Pork fat would always be a nice surprise under any sort of barrier - including the shoe leather that many BBQ enthusiasts would describe as a highly desirable 'bark'. But I'd rather go through crispy pork fat than crunchy pork skin. Here's what a commentator (AugustaGa) on Hugh Acheson's blog about this episode said in his/her lead-off sentence: "I have spoken to my boss, who is from Germany, and my girlfriend, who was stationed in Germany, and they indicate that the pork was cooked correctly for the areas they were from. This is backed up by what Curtis said as well."

Some recent soups: Lotus root soup w/ snow fungus, cloud ear fungus, peanuts, etc. Full post w/ picture: http://egullet.org/p1906659 Wontons in chicken soup (simmered w/ anchovies & shiitakes as well). Full post w/ picture: http://egullet.org/p1906828 Pork ribs - vegetable soup, w/ soba noodles. Full post w/ picture: http://egullet.org/p1907459 Pickled sour mustard ("Harm Choy") soup, w/ chicken, tomatoes, tofu. Full post w/ picture: http://egullet.org/p1907660

Why? It's not that Curtis Stone cannot be correct or that he doesn't have something right to say from time to time. As for that crispy pork skin &etc, I can't help wondering if Curtis Stone's liking of the crispiness ("hardness"?) and comments do reflect reality. I didn't taste the stuff from Richter but I think pork crackling/"crispy pork" in some places outside of the US can be pretty hard, no?

Lunch today: • Thinly-sliced beef sirloin slices** stir-fried w/ chopped smashed garlic and trimmed & opened brussels sprouts. Served over fresh "rat tail noodles" [老鼠粉] a.k.a. "silver needle noodles" [銀針粉] . • Pickled sour mustard soup - with chopped chicken legs, quartered tomatoes, sliced fresh ginger, some sea salt, some rice vinegar, and sliced soft tofu at the end. **Premarinated w/ sesame oil, Red Boat fish sauce, light soy sauce, generous ground white pepper, Shaohsing wine, and some cornflour.