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I have missed very few holidays with my family -- it’s the one time of year where we all drop everything and get together and cook. It’s always a big family affair. We talk about who is going to host and what we are going to eat for months in advance. We divide up the work, and decide whose home we eat at, who’s bringing the wine and the stone crab claws.
Every holiday is a mixture of traditional American dishes, Italian dishes, and some of my kind of food -- modern Asian-ethnic inspired cuisine. I made gyoza at our last holiday gathering.
The only exception to this rule is Christmas Eve, which is always the very traditional Italian "Feast of the seven fishes" -- an all seafood marathon dinner.
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My brother has gotten into wine lately. So we’ve been spending more time and money on...]]>
While you may never have found my family throwing a Frisbee or playing a rousing game of touch football on the lawn on Thanksgiving Day, you would find a serious game of “Scopa” (an Italian card game) a lot of talking over one another, wine, oh yes, and you’d find my mother, her mother, my sister and me in the kitchen cooking around each other. We would cook two turkeys -- one for that day, and one for the next day so we had “leftovers.” We’d make butter-laden mashed potatoes, green peas, artichokes, stuffing, meatballs, and “Italian wedding soup”...]]>
Sorry it has taken me so long to get the second part of my blog up on the Web. I had written it in my head weeks ago, but then had a helluva time finding a moment to commit it to paper, or computer as it were.
Let me start by saying that I’ve had such a good time watching, participating, blogging, reading your responses, and getting to know all the Top Chef contestants. What a great experience. What an array of characters.
I assume, that like me, you had a favorite chef picked out after the first few episodes. For me, it was Tre -- he immediately stood out. As I said in one of my blog entries, “Tre is a Chef’s chef…” -- the kind of chef you want in your kitchen, someone you can trust; that is Tre.
However, lurking in the shadows was Hung. This young Vietnamese gunslinger...]]>
Top Chef is a top tease! Even though I was a guest judge along with Michelle Bernstein and Todd English, only the permanent judges and God know who won.
So if you will, I humbly submit this blog in two parts. Here, I will describe my experience as Hung's sous chef and a guest taster who was dismissed when the real analysis and decision-making took place. And after I find out who won, along with the rest of you I will write part 2 to offer my thoughts on who won and why.
After 12 grueling, cringe filled episodes, we, the audience, were finally given an episode we could really sink our teeth into... Dale, Casey and Hung got to "bring it!" While I've enjoyed the quick fire and elimination challenges throughout the series, as a way to cull the herd, I was ready to see some unadulterated cooking without smoke bombs...]]>
I’m not sure if this episode of Top Chef reminded me of the Marx Brothers film Go West, Jim Carrey’s Dumb and Dumber, or Billy Crystal’s City Slickers. Whatever, it might as well have been set in Dead Man’s Gulch. Between the bales of hay, cowboy hats, and chaps, you might have confused the Aspen scenery with the back lot of MGM studios. All that was missing was Jim Carrey riding up on his mini bike or Jack Palance to start doing push-ups, and casting would have been complete.
Tonight’s Rocky Mountain challenge was a far cry from last week’s dignified New York City competition. I have to say, that this Quickfire Challenge reminded me of a frat house hazing. There they were hunched over, ankle-high in weeds, on a slope by a river, using butane camping burners. The dichotomy of this picture is that the town of Aspen is anything but a cow...]]>
Bam! The TCCs are launched straight out of the Newark airport and into the gentle and elegant welcoming arms of the most famous restaurant owner in New York, Sirio Maccioni. This is truly a lunch none of them will soon forget.
Without as much as a single reference letter or ANY begging, they touch down in the dining room of Le Cirque with the legend himself. Sirio greeted them graciously as he has the most powerful, famous, and infamous, night after night, for 30 years. To call Le Cirque and Sirio institutions would be a gross understatement. More appropriate words might be “pioneer,” “daredevil” and “icon.” I mentioned Le Pavillon in my last blog. In the world of fine dining Le Cirque is to the '70s, '80s, '90s and '00s what Le Pavillon was to the '40s '50s and '60s. He wrote a book about his life called Sirio: The Story of My Life...]]>
I remember thinking to myself on my first day of school at The Culinary Institute of America (CIA), as I walked through the glass double doors, knife kit under my arm, “I am going to learn a lot here.” And, I did. The CIA is like an adult Disneyland for serious cooks. Much of what we learned was repetitive, repetitive, repetitive, repetitive manual tasks. But those tedious, repetitive manual tasks eventually turned into skill. Those skills, I must say, have served me well. I am all about chopping, slicing, and butchering. In fact, to this day I love doing that kind of work. Because of the muscle memory, I don’t have to think that much about it, they’re just there for me. But,...]]>
The road to New York City is not paved by incinerated broccolini, petrified salmon, or vulcanized lobster. But it can be paved with culinary gold. It’s the absolute dream of every young cook to someday make it to the Big Apple-big leagues to learn from some of the most creative, well-respected chefs on the planet. Casey said it best, once you arrive, “you don’t want to leave”, and its true. A tiny sip of the rich elixir that is the NYC culinary scene and you’ll want to stay to drink it all in.
Since the days of Le Pavillon (1941-1971), the most influential French restaurant in America in the 1940s and 50s, NYC has been considered the fine dining mecca of The United States, and maybe the world. Today, doing your time in NYC is considered a prerequisite for anyone who takes cooking and their culinary education seriously. If you’ve never tasted Lombardi...]]>
It was bewildering and painful to watch Tre being told to pack his knives and go last episode. I became a die-hard fan the day I met him and saw him work. Hung said he was shocked when Tre was sent packing and so were the rest of us. I can’t speak for the judges, nor can I try to explain their decision, but I do respect it. It really looked like he was the ONE to beat, so I can understand all the outrage I read in last week’s blog responses.
We should remember that Tre already has what every top chef desires: a successful career, great family, and now, many admiring fans and new customers for his restaurant. I am confident he will be very successful. I know he walked away from TC with a wealth of knowledge about himself (invaluable) and two round trip tickets to Italy. Believe me, he...]]>
