And thank YOU for giving us all something to talk about.

Without you it's all Tom is SO
great..SO wonderful SO fair and has SO much integrity.


SO hot.. SO gawjus ...SO sexy..Oh no that would only be me

Lisa's food was bland...she says because she used canned beans!!! What?? When she got her kid she asked him if he liked garlic---kid said no and she tossed the garlic.

Well I'll say one thing for Tom, he's learning. It's much better to post a blog a few days after the show airs so you can form your thoughts around the arguments on the net instead of putting them up right afterwards and having them routinely used against you. No need to delete & redo a blog this week!

And then we have the guest judges blog who says the flavors were good on Stephanie's and Mark's dishes while Lisa's was the worst flavor wise and had bones in it. His biggest complaint about Mark was his "attitude sucked." Apparently I was wrong and the Guest judge didn't get the Pravda memo about the Blogs. lol.

And for those keeping score at home (keep it on the down low we know how Tom hates scorekeepers!) Unseasoned was more than enough to ignore a scaley, mushy, nasty looking piece of salmon. But Lisa's lack of seasoning is less of a crime than not enough protien?

I guess along with the rules, Tom's preferance for seasoning can change challenge to challenge.

Rady, I think the time constraints on the challenge precluded the use of dried black beans, soaking over night. And she may not have known for sure there would be a pressure cooker in that kitchen they used. My own feeling is that those Fast Cook methods for dried beans aren't better than simple canned beans. That said, I'm surprised she didn't find a way to flavor them better, she seems to have used just some citrus.

About her being so obliging to her childtestant, I did think that was odd. She may have found that kid more likeable than Dale, and hence was more willing to accomodate and compromise. In a rush of a moment, even I can be more obliging to a kid's taste than I ought to be.

Had I been Dale, I would have been signaling Lisa's childtestant when Lisa wasn't looking. "Psssst... hey kid.... c'm'ere. Come here! Look, here's 10 bucks. I want you to tell Lisa you love deviled eggs. You and your friends eat deviled eggs all the time, there have to be deviled eggs on that plate..."

Did anyone notice, did they give Antonia's childtestant a prize of any kind? Set of chefs' knives?

You a Terp, too, NiCi? Class of 1973 myself. Terrapins rule!

So, you think that maybe he's lying outright about the sausage? Well, I just don't think he would bother doing that, esepcailly for a production team that he thinks is increasingly pigeonholing him as "the gay guy". Well, I know that if they did have Polish sausage, it doesn't help all of the conspiracy theorists, who are using that as the basis of their complaints about why the SSes stayed and Jenn had to go. Because it's quite clear that their dish was superior in flavor to the rather soggy, oily mess that Jenn's team produced.

I prefer to look at the flexibility of the show's "rules" as what you need when you have two types of challenges and variations in both challenge categories. Different issues come to the forefront.

How do you see "the rules" as being strict when it came to Mark and Ryan? Both dishes were a mess to look at. Ryan's was a conceptual misfire and tasted lousy (and if you want to be technical, if they were abiding strictly by the rules, they would have tossed Nikki for not completing her dish). Mark's tasted lousy, didn't fit the challenge and was the least liked among the target audience. He wasn't canned for a "technical violation of the rules" as you keep claiming. He was canned partially because he didn't provide a nutritious meal. Had the meal tasted great (or the unlikely event that the kids might have liked it), he might not have even been on the chopping block as one of the middle dishes that didn't taste as good might have filled in for him. Or, had he provided a nutritious meal but made the lousy flavors, he might have beaten Stephanie. Who knows what the tipping point is? That's why it's good to let the judges decide what's important.

The day they have a "set" set of absolute rules that can't be argued about at JT is the day that the show kills itself.

BTW, I've hit on why Mark's curry tasted so bad, Smith and Wong notwithstanding. He only used three spices - tamarind, cumin and cinammon. The cinammon killed it. Cinammon is a common component in many curries, but not as a third of the mix. That would taste pretty horrible to my mind, especially if it were commercial cinammon powder instead of ground cinammon bark, as is usually used in curry blends. Had he substituted coriander for the cinammon, he might not have been on the chopping block, although he still had to deal with the overly sweet aspect of his curry, which wasn't counterbalanced by any heat. At least the coriander wouldn't have compounded all of that sweeteness as cinammon did. However, if it wasn't in the pantry and he was forced to buy it at Whole Foods, it would have broken the bank because coriander is pretty expensive these days (usually runs between 6 and 8 bucks for a small jar).

Simon that's a great one! Kid could take the 10 bucks and make a complete nutritious meal for his family of four.

The problem is, you're trying to force a binary choice when it's not appropriate for judging cooking. Unless you're willing to discount a factor like underseasoning completely, you'd have to decide that underseasoning is ALWAYS going to get you tossed, or it's NEVER going to get you tossed, if you are looking for consistency that is. The problem is, it's only one factor is the success or failure of a dish. You also have texture, appearance, proper cooking technique and imagination just to name a few. That's why you have to be flexible in what you consider from challenge to challenge and week to week.

And if you have a dud that is misfiring from week to week, he or she better get it far more right that someone who has been strong but has had an off day because they're damn sure going to take that into consideration. And that's how it should be, to my mind. Even a Top Chef has a bad day once in a while, but you can't be a Top Chef if you're screwing up more than you're hitting on all cylinders.

Next week Wedding Wars---preview is called Pointing Fingers----Ain't gonna be pretty. Looks like Lisa and Dale have to work together again. Dale goes off yet again!!

But it also looks like the quickfire challenge is mis en place. I love that challenge and I really hope it's not over by 10:05.

Tele, I hadn't even thought to look closely at the seasonings for his Red Curry. Granted those TC recipes are never very reliable but... well. That recipe would produce one very peculiar tasting curry, wouldn't it?

That's not even what I think of when I think of a Red Curry dish. The man's got No Ginger or Galangal. No lemongrass. No chili peppers, no lime leaves or lime zest. No shallots. No shrimp paste.

Other than the cumin and cinnamon, he has None Of The Usual Suspects for what I usually think of as Red Curry, or any curry, and the recipe shows him using equal parts cumin/cinnamon. Feedback said his curry was too sweet, I now have images of a Thai Curry Cinnabon in my mind.

That's a very soft use of the term Red Curry, don't you think?

I'm guessing that at Whole Foods, they do sell some Red Curry pastes he could have used... but at some outrageous price. No Red Curry paste in the TC pantry???

Just found this for all the bacon lovers....

Ahh, bacon! That crispy, chewy, salty and sinful cut of pork we all love.

Bacon has disciples far and wide, some of whom devote entire blogs to it. The Bacon Show, for example, posts a daily recipe featuring bacon; the site "101 Things Every Cook Should Cook" has an entire section devoted to bacon. Heather, of the site "Bacon Unwrapped", chronicles her adventures with bacon, and "Bacontarian" brings you bacon-y goodness from around the Internet, while "I Heart Bacon" conducts bacon reviews.

For those who’ve spent more time eating it than studying it, bacon is cut from the sides, belly, or back of a pig, near the ribs. It’s the fattiness of the meat that makes it so yummy. After the skin is cut away, the meat is cured, smoked, and sliced. It can be cooked in a pan on the stovetop, in the oven, or in the microwave, until it’s perfectly crisp.

You probably know bacon as the star of the BLT (bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich, in case you didn’t know), and the bacon cheeseburger. But there are so many other ways we can incorporate it into our diets and our lives! Here are 50 ways to use bacon:

1. Make a good old BLT sandwich, of course.

2. Bacon cheeseburgers will make anyone’s mouth water. Meat topped with more meat? Perfection!

3. Bacon-wrapped tater tots would go perfectly with that bacon cheeseburger!

4. Roast a bacon-wrapped turkey for Sunday dinner.

5. Make delicious bacon pastry slices.

6. Add a punch of flavor to your creamed spinach recipe.

7. Make your own hot bacon dressing to use on lettuce, cabbage, or even potato salad!

8. Entertaining? Whet your guests’ appetites with the bacon-cheese fundido appetizer.

9. Indulge in a bar of dark chocolate infused with the flavor of applewood smoked bacon as a special treat.

10. Maple bacon cupcakes will make your mouth water.

11. And if you liked those, try a bacon chocolate chip cookie with maple cinnamon glaze.

12. It’s not real, southern cornbread unless there’s bacon grease in it.

13. Visit The Plaid Mushroom’s e-shop to smother your lips with bacon lip balm made with real bacon oil, refined from bacon. (The link is to a listing that was reserved for a certain buyer, but contact theplaidmushroom to ask for your own listing.)

14. Join the bacon of the month club to have artisan bacon delivered to your door 12 times a year.

15. The beautiful city of Charleston, South Carolina gives us bacon-flavored cotton candy.

16. Enjoy a bacon martini with any meal.

17. Use bacon to dress up your leftovers for a second visit to the dinner table.

18. Whip up a tasty bacon asparagus quiche with Swiss cheese for dinner.

19. Cook bacon into the shape of cups and fill with lettuce and tomato for a breadless BLT.

20. Stay warm by wrapping a giant fleece bacon scarf around yourself.

21. Even if you’re a vegetarian and/or keep a kosher diet, you can still enjoy the taste of bacon salt, because, as the manufacturers say: “Everything should taste like bacon.”

22. If pork-covered pork appeals to you, you may also enjoy the bacon-wrapped deep-fried hot dog.

23. Trim your holiday tree with joyful ceramic bacon ornaments.

24. Use bacon instead of ground beef in stuffed peppers.

25. Get the morning off to a good start with beer cheese muffins with bacon cream cheese frosting.

26. Impress your guests with deceptively simple bacon-wrapped “crabette” appetizers.

27. A bacon-y take on an Asian favorite: bacon and bok choy potstickers.

28. Weave and bake bacon into edible placemats.

29. Then, use the woven bacon to augment your grilled cheese experience.

30. Or, use woven bacon to cook up an eggless bacon and cheese omelet.

31. Bacon and date appetizers will be the hit of your party.

32. Bacon egg salad croissants put a new spin on an old favourite.

33. Then, have a bowl of bacon ice cream for dessert.

34. Then use an actual bacon bandage to cover your own boo-boos.

35. Or wake up to cooking bacon with the bacon alarm clock, which is appropriately shaped like a pig’s face.

36. Add it to your bathroom in the form of bacon-printed toilet tissue.

37. Then, use it to wash up afterward.

38. Bacon popcorn is a deliciously salty, crunchy snack!

39. Try your hand at making your own bacon.

40. Enjoy barbecue-baked beans with bacon alongside your BLT.

41. Cook up a bacon buffet with bacon-topped potato skins, bacon-wrapped shrimp and scallops, bacon-wrapped asparagus, and eggs cooked in bacon grease.

42. Corn and bacon chowder sounds like the perfect soup to warm you up on the last chilly evenings before summer!

43. Strawberry bacon spinach salad will make you the star of any potluck.

44. Salty bacon will complement the sweet honey dressing in this imitation crab salad.

45. Try poached pears stuffed with blue cheese and baked with bacon.

46. Or try the same combo of flavors in a pear, blue cheese, bacon pizza.

47. Take a look at this bacon-filled quiche. It’ll really make your mouth water.

48. See who comes out on top with an action-figure wrestling match between Mr. Bacon and Monsieur Tofu.

49. Smooth caramel topped with crunchy bacon: Does that sound delicious or disgusting? Try it and let us know.

50. Try many other bacon dishes suggested by foodnerd, including bacon fluffernutter sandwiches, bacon cups with macaroni and cheese, bacon-pepper-cheese scones, and more!

Maybe he is lying. The more I think about it the more you might be right.
maybe they did use 2 ounces of polish sausage. If thats the case they still should have gone cause it's not much better than not using it at all.

Seriously if that was the challenge then Jen ans Steph's team should have done a Massive rare Filet with assparagus smothered in Hollandaise and said "Orange you glad we cooked Steak?" In other words, why have rules? Your only going to hamper the people that follow them.

The rules are enforced or not enforced based on who they want to keep.
Thats a problem. Dave didn't finish the challenge so he's gone. Nikki and Howie didn't finish the challange and they stay. Tom is on record stating he cut a contestant a break when her food was worse than someone he obfviously didn't like. And if they did use a minute amount of polish sausage and the producers deliberately edited it to seem like they didn't what else do the producers edit out? They certainly edited out them telling CJ he hd to serve his broccolini.

And while you can say why you think Mark's curry tasted bad the guest judge said he liked it so why was he eliminated? When there is this much deception going why believe what they say about flavor? Does anyone really believe that Frank's eggs tasted worse than Sam's or Cliff's in the beach challenge?

And people wonder why they have been keeping Lisa around lol.

Colicchio to Hung: "Do you have another canape in your repertoire that would be better than that?"

Simon to Whata: "Do you have another issue in your repertoire that would be better than that?"

Oh the other thing I discovered in my travels this morning is that Iron Chef Japan is coming back, but not on the Food Network, it's going to be on Fine Living.

Well, he had tamarind. But if you're thinking of red curry not as a generic term but a specific type of Thai curry, you're right - it isn't anything close. In fact, it's not really close to any kind of curry, as you point out. I think they were using red curry as a purely color descriptor.

Curry is really a generic dish with many different regional varieties (even Australia and New Zealand have varieties) and you can play around with flavors all you want. The closest thing that you could match this with is jerk, which can certainly be a curry when done in a stew. But you'd still need allspice and/or nutmeg to make it taste like jerk. Plus, not putting any heat in it (for obvious reasons) renders it ineffectual. If he wanted to do a child/family friendly curry, all he had to do was buy a Chinese curry mix because it's very mild and doesn't need to be used in a chili pepper-based curry. Since he probably had $80 to work with (8 dishes total), he could have probably squeezed that into the budget.

And I understand the thinking behind the cinammon. He thought that it would complement both the sweet potato and the overall sweetness of the dish. The problem is, a sweet curry needs some heat. Otherwise it's just treacle.

If you want a great book on the world of curries, get the book, curiously titled, "A World of Curries" by Dewitt/Pais. ISBN 0-316-18224-9. I hope it's still in print. I got mine for $2 at MacKay's Used Books. Best $2 I ever spent on a cookbook (original price in softback in '95 was $16.95 and it's worth every penny). Has a complete history of the evolution of curry, broken down by region and subtype, and literally has several hundred curry recipes, including some obscure ones from places like Bali and Nigeria. And they actually discuss West African cuisine but don't really touch on peamato-gate. They say that a distinctive feature of that cuisine is the large number of ingredients that they use, so I can see how you might fit peanuts and tomatoes in the same stew. Thanks for letting me know about that, BTW. I guess I was really just referring to trying to "pair" those two flavors.

In looking through the book, I couldn't find anything that had anything close to equal portions of cinnamon, cumin and tamarind. I found things like a Malawi Curry Powder that the authors say is the hottest curry powder that they found in Africa and it had more cinammon than cumin. But it also had 8 other spices including 10 whole cloves as well as 10 small hot peppers.

The book also has some Ishmail Merchant anecdotes and recipes as well.

Oh yeah, I was going to use cinnamon bun as a metaphor, so kudos to you!

PS, I'm going to start spelling cinnamon correctly from now on (hopefully)

I took the day off to get ready for the village wide garage sale and got sucked into an hour of catching up on this board. Whew.

I've stocked up on a mega pack of paper towels and filled several squirt bottles with dos equis for easy cleanup. I've put them neatly in an unused corner of Jazzie's porch. Feel free to use what you need. I myself have cleaned up several times this a.m. What, with the shrinkage and PAPA comments and CLEANSTATIONGATE.

Looking forward to next week's epi. Looks a little, no, a lot, heated. More drama than the whole season. Can't tell from the commercials who may be on the chopping block. Looks like another potential WWE between Dale and Lisa though. Maybe she'll really screw up and they'll get rid of her once and for all. Can only hope.

Curry is actually a really vague term - standardization has only come from the western interpretation of it. (Similar to herbs de provence, which doesn't actually need lavender, or anything, and is just a mixture of fresh herbs used in provencal cooking.)

In some southeastern asian countries curry just means "stew" and to other it just means "sauce". Any stewed mixed vegetable dish can be a curry, but to really make sense being labelled as such it should connect in some way with regional ingredients of India and surrounding countries.

New Zealand is pretty close to southeast asia and I've heard there is a lot of cultural influence - it seems totally reasonable that families in his home country would stew up some stuff and call it a curry.

I certainly was, Tele, when I heard and saw "red curry," I assumed Red Curry, of the Thai Red Curry type.

Even if that's not where Mark was going, I don't think he got into the ballpark with any conventional kind of curry. That aspect doesn't make his dish good or bad, just very unusual.

This was another strange episode.......

I was really quite suprised that Spike wasn't in the top on this one. (1) The kids LOVED it. . . they said, Finally . . . SPAGGITTI. . . AND (2) The judges complemented the taste (3) the amount of vegetables and (3) the way he stretched his money so well.

Mmmm, Mediocre, that's not quite accurate. "Curry" is vague in English, true. It's an English language word that means different things when used in different contexts. But one mustn't extend that to other languages and lands.

In SE Asian countries, "curry" never means a stew or a sauce. We really do have other words for those things.

In Vietnamese when you say "Cari" or "Ca Ri," that's really quite specific. Everyone knows what you mean, and you never mean stew or sauce. It means a composed one-pot stewed or braised dish that must have the seasonings and flavor profile that we Vietnamese mean when we say "Cari" or "Ca Ri." Nothing vague about it, to us, not where we live. Viets differ, one from another and one region from another, in exactly which seasonings and proportions we like best, but we all know with great specificity what a Ca Ri is to us. Although the use of "curry" ingredients is Pan-Asian, in every place people are speaking of the dishes in their own languages and speak with great specificity. In the Thai tongue, Cambodian tongue, all the South and SE Asian languages and cuisines, South Africa, the West Indies, etc.

It really is some legacy of British imperial rule in South Asia that "curry" came into the English language and still remains vague and generic.

In English, the phrase "Red Curry" would generally lead people to think a dish is a Thai Red Curry, and that's a very specific set of seasonings and proportions.

To the last point - who knows? I'm like you in one respect - I tend to judge based on how I think the dishes taste and appear to the eye. Maybe equal portions of cumin, cinnamon and tamarind would work for somebody, just as maybe a judge is willing to excuse scales in his poached fish (and doesn't find it mushy like another chef who hates poached salmon does). They seem incredulous to each of us. Maybe Smith has a cinnamon trigger that takes him back to his childhood. Each of us tastes food differently and values different flavor components or is sensitive to certain issues (mine is oversalting, even by just a little). I've made quite a few curries in my time and never would I think to have only three spices, but if I did, one of them would definitely not be cinnamon, much less an equal portion. That would be like putting a cup of brown sugar in a single serving of Boston baked beans.

As to your first point - you seem to be contradicting yourself. If there's 2 oz of Polish sausage (the exact amount of the sweet potato in Mark's dish), then the only reason for letting them go is gone, IF you're strictly following the rules of the challenge. That's why you have to have some flexibility. If their food hadn't tasted significantly better than Jenn's dish, then one of them might have been gone because both dishes tasted "the worst" (doesn't always mean "bad", you know) and Jenn's team held to the challenge better.

Your statement about enforcing the rules isn't a statement of fact, just your opinion.

So 2oz of sausage is a minute amount but 2 oz of sweet potatoes magically makes a dish nutritious? Wow, that's some super root vegetable.

Since I"m not hung up on absolute consistency, I don't have a problem with any of that stuff in the middle that you were talking about. I don't even have a problem with the idea that had Steph and Mark's dishes been exactly equal at this point in the competition, that Mark should have still been the one to be axed. Now, if Mark and Spike had been on the block, it would have been a lot harder and you would have to nitpick even further.

Does anyone else find it odd that Antonia got to call her daughter??
Usually the elves keep them pretty isolated. I guess the shot of her crying wasn't enough, they had to have one more chance to tug at our heartstrings!

Odd, only in that producers at Magical Elves are an odd bunch and don't always use good judgment.

But it seems reasonable to arrange for any cheftestants who are parents to make some regularly scheduled call to check in.

I understand the Elves purpose in maintaining the isolation, it prevents any form of cheating and stresses the bejeebers out of the chefs and causes conflicts to erupt. But isolating a parent from their child really would be way way way too much to excuse.

Rad, I thought in S2 they'd mentioned that they cut off the CT from the outside world. No TV, no papers, no internet and no phone?!?!?!
I thought it was strange too. That was the first thing I thought of when they showed her on the phone. That was a no no.

Does that make my UK stuff collectors' items?

And it's also influenced by the British love of curry. There are only two NZ recipes in the curry book that I referenced and neither of them even has cinnamon in the spice mix used. I have to think that he was thinking sweet potaoes - cinnamon. It's a natural pairing.

BTW, I think I screwed up the math in a previous post regarding the budget. It was $10 for four servings, right? That means he only had $20 for the whole shooting match. Unless you used a commercial curry mix, it would be hard to assemble the spices needed to do a reasonable curry if you had to buy them all. I'm amazed at the price of even cheap brands of spices these days.

I get your point about standardization. the ultimate idea of that is the concept of packaged curry powder itself. To me, it doesn't even really taste like a "real" curry of any stripe, but it is a distinctive flavor that's instantly recognizable to any American or Brit.

Speaking of Brit, the new Portishead album is out! I think I'll be playing the whole thing on my radio show this afternoon. It's like a very nice mild but bittersweet curry...some of it is actually "folky", which is weird but good. I love me some Portishead.

Finally, this would have been the perfect challenge to use ramen. Maybe they're afraid that it will be pooh poohed by the judges (and maybe they're right), but after you've spent a $1 on the 4 portions, that gives you $9 to make it upscale. Any number of ways you could go. And, since ramen is a familiar way to provide an extremely low cost dish for not-so-well-off people, finding a way to make it nutritious and kid friendly might have impressed the judges. You might have tossed the flavor packet with its high sodium and MSG and created your own sauce, or used the seasoning package to lightly season whatever sauce or broth you were able to bring to bear in order to keep some that savory flavor that makes ramen such a cheap and satisfying dish. Perhaps the noodles tossed in a thinned out satay-type sauce (hold the tomatoes please) with some thinly sliced Vietnamese style BBQ pork and small diced sweet potatoes and carrots. Add some green beans on the side tossed in some sesame and peanut oil and sprinkled with sesame seeds and VOILA! you have a fairly kid friendly meal. You could even give the satay a little kick for the adults without killing it for the kids.

But it's easy to think this stuff up when you're not under the gun.

I didn't have a problem with it ---just found it odd. I'm sure any and all contact with the outside world is closely monitored. Even the application to be on the show spells out some pretty hefty fines if anyone discloses too much.

I think the producers cut the chefs a break when a chef has small children or in a family emergency such as Cynthia calling home to monitor the status of her dying father.

Unless Mark was calling his dish, sweet potato curry I'm not contradicting anything. Tom also said their was squash in his dish which looks to be the element giving the sauce most of its color. Another very healthy vegetable. Poish sausage was supposed to be the main ingredient. Huge difference. Where was the "drunken" element?

My statement about enforcing the rules is a stone cold fact.
Dave had better tasting food than Shrek and did not complete the challenge: he got sent home.
Howie had better tasting food than Clay and did not complete the challenge: they sent clay home.

Cut and dry.

And there seemed to be more than two ounces of sweet potatoes in his curry along with the squash, onion, carrot, bean spouts, celery and coconut milk seems pretty nutricious to me. I am willing to bet vitamin wise it outperforms Stephaines dish.

Well, they're not going to publish my response to Ted's blog--I sent it last night, and there are two responses posted this morning there now.

PM me if you want to read it; I don't want to post it here.

Or when it further's their storyline, like Attention Neck's in Project Runway.

And I've only have Viet curry (Ca Ri?) twice (yesterday actually - my second time ever) and to me, it's fairly close in flavor profile to Red Curry (Thai). I think that it's the lemongrass that distinguishes both dishes and in looking over the list of ingredients from the several Vietnamese recipes (especially "Saigon Cari" which ironically features sweet potatoes), the spice blend seems very close to what I associate with Thai Red Curry.Another recipe, "Cari Ga", chicken curry with Taro root, actually uses a Red Curry paste from Thailand (for the purposes of this particular version). In fact, this book groups Vietnam with Thailand, Cambodia and Laos, I guess because it borders the Golden Triangle and has much in common with those countries cuisine.

It's funny how a single ingredient can distinguish one dish from another. For instance, if you generally compare Thai and Indian curries,it's very easy to tell what's what, mostly because of the lemongrass (and the lesser use of coconut milk, of course). However, I might not be able to tell the difference between what I had at my local Pho place and what I'd get at Thai Palace, except that the Vietnamese curry seemed to have a lighter touch with the coconut milk.

Again Nice try. I guess unless it's sycophantic fawning, comments aren't getting posted.

LOL!
Wonder what kind of "attention" he is getting now! No, never mind, I can just imagine!!

Oh and Tom can't even keep the contestants in the Top three straight on his own show, in his own blog.

For those of you paying attention he listed Spike in his top three at first.

Now the blog has been edited and it has Andrew in there instead.
I guess even two day's isnt enough time to get your story straight eh Tommy Boy?


LMAO what a pack of frauds

Let's be fair, WAJ--between the block party, the vanilla love, and Andrew's headgear during the tailgate, I'm having a hard time telling them apart these days.

Tele, there's a funny thing about that Golden Triangle.

In 2008, lots of Westerners imagine that they see similarities between Thai cuisines, and then the cuisines of Thailand's neighbors, and leap to the assumption that they are seeing "Thai influences." As in Viet Ca Ri dishes.

The thing is, 2008 doesn't mirror history. For the longest time, the Big Bad Power in the 'Hood was the Cambodian/Khmer Empire. There was no actual Thailand or Siam to speak of, not the way that unified nation exists today, and what was there constantly worried about the dominance and hegemony of the Khmer. Vietnam was squeezed between the ever-conquering Chinese to the north, and the big scary Khmer Empire everywhere else.

It turns out that many Viet foods were never influenced by Thai culture, but both Viet and Thai have been heavily influenced by the Khmer. Only 1/3 of contemporary Vietnamese territory is historically Viet, another 1/3 used to be Champa, and the southern 1/3 used to be Khmer. It's very likely it was the conquered Khmer residents who introduced Viet invaders to Ca Ri and Hot and Sour Fish Soups, and other distinctively "southern" dishes. Introduced those to the Thai also.

And yea, we do put white potatoes or sweet potatoes or taro roots into our CaRi dishes. Along with carrots. Taro has that texture that some people love, some not so much. If one makes the CaRi quite hot, it helps to use the sweet potatoes, their sugar content moderates things a bit.

Parsnips can't really grow well in Vietnam and so never made it there, but I've put parsnips in my CaRi. It works. "Just like a carrot... only more so."

Both reasons that they were on the chopping block instead of in the middle or even one of the winners since their dish presumably tasted darn good (but I'm a sea bass fan, except for the overfishing and potentially extinct part of it). Fortunately for them, the "worst dish" rule trumped their tepid interpretation of "drunken Polish sausage". Technically they complied with the challenge since alcohol was part of the sauce and Polish sausage was present. So, they reasonably couldn't have been sent home for "not complying with the challenge", as many people including yourself have hung their hat on. And, unless you screw up sea bass, which isn't impossible but that they didn't do, the dish is going to taste quite good, especially if you keep a light hand on the sausage (which is still a weird flavor pairing). However, Steph and Jenn's dish was pretty much a disaster by anyone's standards, even yours. You don't like soggy and I presume that you don't like oily. And they also fell short in using their main ingredient by casting into the background.



I see. They know on the first day that Howie would be a more colorful and devisive character than Clay, or that he'd offer better "drama points" than Clay, so they cut Clay loose. Did you buy some step ladders from BBB?

I don't quibble with the idea of enforcing the rules differently. In fact, I maintain that it's key to getting to the correct decision. I dispute the idea that it's the producers that are making that decision for the judges. I don't even dispute the idea that they judges occasionally consult the producers with the direction of their decision. But I'm guessing that they do that to give production some ideas about camera cues for editing purposes. And, as we have seen, occasionally it might be for legal reasons.



Seemed to me to be just about 2 oz. And 2 oz of less dense sweet potato would show up larger than 2 oz of sausage. You left out cucumbers and along with celery, neither offers much nutritional value and there's still the protein bugaboo. Coconut milk in and of itself isn't very "nutritious" in the way that whipping cream isn't very nutritious. Coconut milk is extremely fatty and not in a good way.

I have to wonder, if he indeed used naan bread, how did he make his budget? Did Lee Ann provide it in the pantry? I really doubt that he made it himself, so if he had to buy it at Whole Foods, a frozen packet of 8 would have cost at least $4 by itself.

I took a couple of friends; friends who are line cooks and damn fine one at that, to see "Ratatouille" and they all said that, when the lady chef tought Remy how to keep a station properly, they were pleased to see that she did it correctly. They were shocked that the only film to ever get that right was an animated film about a rat. I thought that was funny.

That's so funny! I thought I was the only one who made that confusion!!

Maybe I didn't make myself clear. I wasn't talking about influences, I was talking about commonality. And I was only talking about the curries and the fact that I find far more similarity with Thai and my limited exposure to Vietnamese than, say, with either Indian or Chinese curries, and I chalk that up mostly to the use of lemongrass. But when I compare the spices used in Thai and Vietnamese red curry (the only color Vietnamese that I've had), they are almost identical in both kind and proportion. That doesn't mean that Thailand influenced Vietnam (Thailand being the only country in that region not to be colonized, IIRC) but that the indigenous spices are similar. I doubt that you see a lot of lemongrass in India for instance.

If you gave me a Thai red curry and a Vietnamese curry such as I've had twice, the only thing differentiating it to my taste buds would be a lighter sauce and slightly different ingredients, whereas, if you gave me a Vietnamese red curry and something like a Vindaloo or a jerk, the flavor profile would instantly give it away, even if you added coconut milk to try and throw me off. That's all I was saying

Since tailgate every time I see Andrew I picture him with that freakin helmet on. You can just imagine the mental image when he said *culinary boner*!!! Then it got worse when I read Ted's blog and he talks about hiding the pie!!

Hey, you good lookin' thang!

I remember that well. I also remember that the day of 9/11 Robertson and Falwell got on TV and said that it happened because of our leniency towards feminists and gay people, because we all know how the general populace coddles those miscreants.

"Same as it ever was. Same as it ever was. Same as it ever was."

Hmmm, this post was edited.

I guess even cynics can have a brain fart.

When I saw Andrew make that statement I gagged and fell down. Drew was alarmed. He thought I was having another heart attack, but, no, I was just grossed out. Andrew with a boner is not an image I want stuck in my head, especially if he's wearing that football helmet. What...a...dork.

I love Tom Collichio.

I have had some hellaciously fine meals at Gramercy Tavern and Craftsteak. We also own the books, and one time we actually got to meet him, when he was in residence at Gramercy Tavern. He's even better looking in person, and he was just so nice. I was impressed.

I love Tom Collichio.

Dale opted for turkey bratwurst and Spike went puttanesca, but there was still a lot of chicken in use for this Cheap Healthy Challenge. Andrew, Antonia, Lisa, Nikki, Richard, Stephie, went to the chicken.

One can make a nice pasta dish using some braised turkey drumstick though, or thighs, the meat becomes tender, just falls off the bone, stays very moist, and has a richer flavor than white meat poultry.

Probably a bad idea, with kids involved, to go to chicken livers and make a version of Spaghetti a la Caruso? It's chicken livers and mushrooms in a red sauce.

Something using that often regrettable but inexpensive farm-raised Tilapia?

Hi Rady! How's it going?
Now I don't know if I'll be alright watching NFL, they'll look like a bunch of Andrew's playing ball!

Tele, you were clear. I wasn't misunderstanding you or thinking you were talking about influences. Just passing on a note about our histories back there. This history of what has gone on is part of what makes it all interesting.