Meet friendly Amy Finley, winner of the Next Food Network Star, season 3.
So, no, this is not about The Next Iron Chef. Okay? No girl contestants left there. No winner (at least, no publicized winner) yet. So this is about another show. Yes. Okay.
You may wonder why I bring Ms. Finley up right now, on a Sunday afternoon when most of the foodie world (anyway, most people who'd be interested in this blog) are sitting around waiting for TNIC. (Judge Ruhlman left a tempting morsel of tease on his blog, here, just to get us all excited.)
The point is this: I watched Amy's show today. It's called The Gourmet Next Door and it's her prize for winning last year's Next Food Network Star competition. Unlike the Iron Chef, TNFNS pits caterers, food writers and other non-restaurant cooks against each other. The winner has to shill for the Food Network for the rest of their career becomes the next "star" of the food network.
The whole competition is played on a different, non-Iron-Chef level. There are tears, contestants talking about how much they miss their families, exhaustion, and everyone has to live together, provoking orgies in the shower interpersonal friction.
This is not to say that Amy Finley and her cohort are less important than the Next Iron Chef gang. Actually, I'd look to Amy for the kind of recipes I can use every day in my own kitchen. And that's why I'm so disappointed.
First of all, she's just rattling along, really too fast. On today's show, Amy was presenting a brunch menu: apple tart made with fresh Granny Smith apples, a dish of cooked endives wrapped in ham and baked in a Bechamel sauce with cheese, and a salad of fresh mushrooms with a parsley vinaigrette.
It took you three times as long to read that as it took for her to say it.
Amy, the judges warned you about this.
Secondly, why is this a fall brunch and not a winter lunch or a light end-of-summer dinner? Granny Smiths are good from late August until March, at least. Endive really has no season, and neither do mushrooms.
And if you're living next door to my house, Amy, we really don't consider it brunch unless there are eggs involved. Custard, at least. Quiche maybe? (In other neighborhoods, it's only brunch if alcohol is served in a cute, pitcher-friendly way. Didn't see any of that, either.)
Thirdly, Amy's tart did look nice and fairly easy (layer of apples cooked with butter and sugar, layer of fresh apples, store-made crust), but why didn't she mention the words "Tarte Tatin"? That's a big ole apple tart as made in France, where Amy went to culinary school. Do the Tatin sisters still hold a copyright on this name? (I doubt it; they both died several years before World War I).
Last, the endive and ham preparation. In my experience, endive is a lot more difficult to cook than it might seem. It's a sort of a long, compact head of leaves, like lettuce or radicchio except smaller and smoother. Once water gets into those layers, as it will during the steaming part of this preparation, you need to be a really skillful chef to get it out again. I would bet that this dish ends up a muddy mess once in every three times, because the endive choose to release their sogginess after you've napped them with the sauce. It's not an impossible challenge--just maybe not the best choice for a home cook.
And another thing: Amy specifies only that the ham be "low-sodium". On the show it looked like she was using just square, thickish slices from the deli department of your local supermarket.
This just doesn't make sense to me.
That kind of ham is processed with so much water that exposing it to heat, baking it as called for in this recipe, is just plain cruel. You'll get shriveled, tasteless meat in a puddle of salt water. (Add that to what's already coming out of the endive, and your poor bechamel doesn't stand a chance.)
Also, I suppose there are places in this world where this is the only kind of ham available, but--no, actually, I DON'T suppose that. For crying out tears, they've got a better ham selection in Jerusalem!
Hormel's makes all kinds of different ham products. So does Oscar Meyer. I don't know exactly what kind of ham would be best for this preparation--salty shreds of country-style ham? A thin blanket of prosciutto? A ham cured in the traditions of Spanish jambon? Pizzeria-style pepperoni? Hey, I'm not Armando Batali here. I just know there had to have been a better ham choice than this one.
Oh, and one more thing. Amy's whole personality is kind of feminine and even girly. That's nice, but during the Food Network Star competition she was told that she had to "toughen up" so that she could appeal to both male and female cooks. Very good; I think she did that, with a no-nonsense approach which took the edge off the sweetness. But this show, from its frou-frou recipes to its frilly kitchen, puts her right back in the female ghetto.
Well, that's my rant on Amy. And now, let's all pull up our cuber-chairs and watch ep 4 of "The Next Iron Chef".
