Annie's New York Eats

Aspirational Thymus

One of our favorite blogs is French Laundry at Home, a classy and well-illustrated series of essays on the pleasures and pitfalls of cooking from Thomas Keller's The French Laundry Cookbook.

This cookbook, one of the most popular $50 books of all time, is lovely to look at and a foodie's joy to read. The dishes are unutterably fancy, and they generally are comprised of three or four recipes combined to compliment each other and turn up on one plate. The photographs are lush and somewhat beyond reality, but not to the point where it seems completely impossible to produce something like that from one's own kitchen.

The book is aspirational in nature. Like, you can aspire to this level of expertise. Maybe you won't really be able to do this, but maybe, just maybe, you might.

That the recipes, written and tested by Chef Keller, Susie Heller and the excellent writer Michael Ruhlman, are reasonably easy to follow, is pretty much a miracle. Haute cuisine is not generally created for home use, and why should it be? Practically by definition, Chef Keller's food is the type you eat in a restaurant maybe once a year or once in a lifetime. Working Moms and Dads are not serving up Tapioca and Pearls (poached oysters served on a bed of tapioca with...no, forget it, I can't even describe it right) as a quotidian dinner before soccer practice.

And, thank God, outside of certain enclaves in college towns, hosts and hostesses no longer commit warfare on each other's stomachs and status levels by evilly preparing ever-haute-ier dinner parties for each other. It's a kinder, gentler foodie world, and Olympic-level food prep is the right of any citizen who likes that kind of thing.

Carol Blymire of FLAH likes it, and she'll make you like it too. With a good batterie de cuisine, some food prep training, and access to the rich markets and butcher shops of the Washington, DC area, Carol fearlessly prepares everything from offal to oysters in the manner of The Greatest Restaurant in America (the French Laundry, of course, unless it's splitting the title with chef Keller's Per Se this year).

'Breads. Go ahead and gag.

So where does the thymus kick in? Well, it's the kind of thing Carol would prepare on FLAH. Me, I roll a little differently...I am, as Adam Roberts would put it, a hunter rather than a gatherer. I go to the market without a shopping list, prepared to be imaginative with whatever is best and freshest and within my budget. So, when I found a small frozen plastic container labelled "sweetbreads", I didn't hesitate for a minute...and, once I had brought it home and looked up Chef Keller's recipes for this popular gland, I didn't hesitate either, but slammed that search shut (I know when I'm licked) and went to Food TV and found a recipe for "grilled sweetbreads" which was labelled "simple."

It was, kind of. It involved rinsing the sweetbreads, which turned out to be a bagful of membrane and bletch and occasional little curds of meat which, I reminded myself, were no more disgusting than foie gras (not that I've ever prepared foie gras, outside of opening those little cans from Strasbourg). After prepping and pressing and boiling in a gallon of water with a cup of vinegar (which, honestly, is a hell of a way to treat anything you bring into your house; what next, beating with a carpet wand on the front porch?) I bathed the 'breads in olive oil and aromatics and turned them over to my cast-iron grill pan, there to get all golden-brown. But, my friends...dinner turned out to be pretzels that night. Because the thymus was terrible. It tasted like it had absorbed twelve different diseases of young calfs during its working days, plus a certain amount of iron (in its mineral form) so I did what Carol Blymire never does, and I trashed the lot.

I'm not as brave or strong as Carol, so her wonderful blog is more "imaginary" than "aspirational" to me. I'm just not in the Keller class. But, hey...anything this guy does, I can at least attempt.

The kindly and attainable Alton Brown

Robert Irvine and Dinner: Embarassing

Chef Robert, a little blurry

Hot off the turgid foodie presses comes the moral story of Chef Robert Irvine, a muscle-bound Brit who seems to have embellished his resume with such attractive but fictional accomplishments as designing a wedding cake for Prince Charles, accepting a knighthood (wouldn't you think they'd keep records of things like that?), and carrying Prince William to classes at University on his massive, ox-like back. Okay, maybe I'm making up that last one.

When the Food Network was taken in by all this, they gave Mr. Irvine his own show called "Dinner: Impossible" (the riotous Bourdain calls it "Dinner: Inconvenient"). The point of the show was to challenge Irvine and his two assistants by having them cater a big meal with limited ingredients.

In other words, it was yet another set-up for disaster, like Iron Chef and Throwdown and so many others: what will happen when the chef fails, as it seems he must?

It might be more interesting to involve Bourdain in one of these shows, because you know his eventual breakdown scene would be more fun than a season of wife-switching. But the actual players of these games--frequently Bobby Flay, whose red hair masks one of the most placid temperaments ever discovered in a chef; Masuhara Morimoto, who would rather fall on his own chef's knife than show any emotion except polite interest, and Mario Batali, as cool as cucumber gelato--rarely lose either the competition or their composure.

Chef Irvine was like that. He might run around and look comically angry, but mostly he did just fine, including proper awe and respect at A. working in a kitchen constructed entirely of ice; B. catering the second inaugural of Pennsylvania Governor Ed "Fast Eddie" Rendell, or C. creating an eighteenth-century dinner for the town elders of Colonial Williamsburg. (I'm just a fool for Colonial Williamsburg).

I can't remember anything particularly yummy about his food, but the local color and the energy of the chef made for a pleasant half-hour or so.

Irvine was also a useful part of the Food TV "family" they keep trying to foist off on us. (You know--beautiful-but-rivalrous Giada and Rachel, corny and horny Aunt Paula, classy Aunt Ina, favorite nephew Guy Fieri, who I really can't stand, and I'm-the-only-normal-one-around-here cousin Alton. Call him Uncle Bob, the relative most likely to lift Aunt Paula over his head and carry her out to the backyard as a show of strength.

So he lied. He's a television personality, not a school bus driver. Exactly what does he have to be?

Yes, it is a good idea for foodie celebrities to be upfront about their actual qualifications, but after you know that Alton has studied video production, food preparation and public speaking, what more do you need srom him--two stages with the Troisgros brothers and a Food Safety Certificate? That wouldn't make him a better Alton. For that matter, does Ed Levine need some kind of documentation to prove that he's the Dean of New York Eats? And why are you reading this blog? I'm going to be a licensed social worker and I am legally allowed to drive in the State of New York, but that doesn't have anything to do with food knowledge, does it?

I say, leave Chef Robert alone. He shouldn't have lied. But he certainly has the PERSONALITY to be on TELEVISION, and what else does he need?

Bourdain Cooks at Les Halles: An Annie's New York Eats Exclusive

Hello, friends, and welcome to Annie's New York Eats' Christmas Edition. Through wonderful luck we have persuaded Claudia Greco, that well-known food writer and woman-about-town, to tell us all about her recent dinner at Les Halles.

LH is one of the most popular restaurants in NYC for foodies and normal folk alike; the grub's great, the prices right, the atmosphere smokily senational and the founding chef was Anthony Bourdain.

Last week Bourdain came back to work the line for one night only, and Claudia was there with friends and camera.

Take it away!

Friends don’t let friends drive drunk, but even better friends don’t let friends go to Les Halles alone. So my good friend Susan, after a careful analysis of this New York magazine article, had really only one injunction: “FIND OUT WHEN!!”

When, indeed, might Monsieur Bourdain once more be taking up his mighty sauteuse and cooking at Les Halles - with Eric Ripert, the world-famous chef of Le Bernardin, best seafood restaurant in New York? For an episode of No Reservations? And a full dinner service, no less? Zut alors! What was he thinking? That, yes, despite - oh, about five years away from the stove - you CAN go home again? That you can survive a full, hard-on rush hour without collapsing into the cassoulet? That, even with your knees popping like rice cakes on a fandango dance floor, you CAN crank out a respectable 250 or slamming 350 covers a night, like you used to? Well . . . yeah. Why not? But I guess we’ll just have to watch the show to be sure.

What I was sure about, however, was that Team Tony was in the house. Scoring a table right at the back with a partial view through the glass partition enclosing the kitchen, the first famous face the unsuspecting diners saw was none other than Eric Ripert, manfully working the grill station at the very front, with {No Rez cameraman} Todd Liebler and his camera hanging over his shoulder, and what appeared to be a black knit cap mashing Ripert’s hair . . . and towards the back, on sauté, was Tony. With a black knit cap mashing his hair. Mon Dieu!, I am thinking - what ees zees? Ze Creeps and ze Bloods are wearing zere coleurs? Apparently so.

 

Ahhh, now this set-up required some Strategic Eating. Clearly, one of our party of three would be ordering steak, and the other two something off the saute station, in the hope of improving the odds of getting something actually cooked by either Ripert or Bourdain. Hmmmmmm. Au revoir to Les Assiettes. Adieu to La Rôtissoire. A bien tot to Am - no, wait! Do I detect foie gras on the Amuse-Gueles menu? Foie gras that gets . . . sautéed?

Let's consult the menu.

Obviously, this would demand the cunning of a Borgia pope so, savagely disregarding anything involving garde mange, we laid siege to saute with three orders of Foie Gras Poele aux Pommes:

with a stealth attack on the Boudin aux Pommes:

before - gasp! - a strategic error! The cassoulet Toulousain, not the Hamburger Rossini! (Mais non, non, non - not a two-day dish! A la minute! From sauté!) Oh, well. There were sentimental reasons involved here. (NONE of them mine.)

Recovering quickly, our third Musketeer sized up the grill station carefully and scored a bull’s eye with a stunning Paleron (flat iron steak) with Béarnaise, prepared to order. Yes, by Chef Ripert:

Up to this point, the dining room pretended to ignore the sight of Todd, this time out among us, pointing a very large camera lens into their dinners, while the wait staff pretended to ignore a very large teal box on the empty seat at our table - both with minimal success. Understanding that I was (despite my clear grasp of the situation and usually much better judgment), about to enter the world of dorkdom, I put the wait staff out of their misery and dispatched the Bûche de Noël in a Big Blue Box back to the kitchen, and hoped the diversion would last long enough for me to squeeze off some shots of Ripert through the glass without either the whole floor or Ripert noticing. Now, THAT part worked.

It began with a Bûche de Noel:

that became a Bûche in a Box:

that became a Bûche in a Big Blue Box (well, teal, actually, but it ruins my alliteration):

Okay, so it’s out there, now. The fact that I had stupefying stunads to present two professional chefs - one half-French, the other full French, yet - with a Bûche at the height of dinner service, and - incroyable!- I did so after schlepping the damn thing on the subway. During rush hour. In both directions. But this is New York. Only the strong survive. (On Valium.)

(Charmingly, Todd tried to use this darling little boy as a tripod, except his mom is one of the producers. And, by now, the camera phones were going off.)

Fortunately, before Todd could get busted for child abuse or violating child labor laws, the mâitre d’, Frederic Larrieu, came by with a waiter, Tim, in tow, and gladly started accepting bets as to how long the self-styled Mr. Softy Palms would last before he found himself in the weeds:

And the answer was - he didn’t. Food arrived swiftly and steadily, all throughout, with Ripert so serene he took time to mug at the foodies shooting him with camera phones (and playfully sticking his tongue out at one slim blonde who forgot to turn off her flash), and Bourdain, while intense, never missing a beat; pivoting left and then right, in a controlled blur, fast enough to escape a shutter, but not so fast he wasted any movement, from station to lowboy to the tickets. Was he expediting? I cannot say. He was reading tickets. And, yes, he was cooking. Just for the camera? Again, I cannot say. But long after Todd shot the A roll (main shots) and a second cameraman (Zac?) shot B roll from the corridor leading into the kitchen, Bourdain was working the station.

Several Cosmos later, we were greeted by the sudden appearance of not only Larrieu coming to set my dessert on fire, but Todd - back with a vengeance! And back - for my crêpes Suzette! Ahhh, je comprends! My lovely crêpe has been selected as a stunt crêpe, and it is ready for it’s close-up, Mr. DeMille!

So, naturellement, M’sieur Larrieu is talking up the process and adding big gobs of butter to the crepe pan (because you can never have too much butter, mes enfants), and Mitchell’s silky bananes flambées also drew Todd’s wandering eye, and there was much soft snuffling of happy wee diners all around. But, of course, could we be smart enough, once, to leave well enough alone? To waft away, replete with the unctuous goodness of flaming desserts and smelling vaguely of gently cooked sugar, and just GO HOME? Of course not. Worried that the Ripert-through-the-glass shots were out of focus (well, so was I), we made a final foray to the glass partition, now mobbed by camera phone-carrying yuppies flash-bombing Ripert, only to come face-to-face with the ubiquitous Todd, gesticulating at us. Was he saying, “Get out of the shot”? No. “I am shooting”? No . . . not quite. “I am shooting you shooting Ripert. Is that OK?” Well . . . sure. You didn’t ask my dessert for a release, but I guess it gave you one:

Great. Now we look like dorks, suckerfishing up like remoras on Ripert’s breath-fogged partition. Shit. Could it get any worse? Yes. Lydia Tenaglia, bounding out of the kitchen, politely asks, “Could we shoot you?” (Yes, I’m sure Ripert and Bourdain are ready to just that, by now.) “Shoot, as in being a dork shooting you guys through the glass?” “Yes.” “Sure. I’ve already spiraled down to the eleventh circle of dorkdom.” Consider this a release, Lydia.

By now, about as comfortable as lepers in the club Med jacuzzi, the three of us flee and pray for some judicious snipping in the editing room at ZeroPointZero (except for the crepe, of course. It deserves its air time), just to catch this, posted up on the glass:

Final stats for last night? With a seating capacity of 146 at Les Halles, Team Tony did 315 covers. Stupéfiant? Non. Formidable? Perhaps not. But a good, solid performance, with each bite - whether Ripert’s or Bourdain’s -or NOT - a true delight. It might have been shot for No Reservations, but thanks, Eric. Thanks, Tony. And Joyeux Noël.

The Cost of Food

Today, the revered Ed Levine posted this in his blog:

The values of the people making or growing my food inform my perception of the value of their end product. And that's my bottom line.

He made this statement as part of a larger discussion about the appropriate cost of food. Is $350 before tax, beverage and tip a reasonable amount to pay for dinner at the legendary sushi bar Masa? Is it okay to pay outsize prices for mediocre food at a restaurant like Cipriani's where you're really going there to be seen and not to enjoy very special food?

I interpret Ed's statement to mean that deliciously fresh (or rare--not in the steak sense) raw materials, combined with the skill and imagination of a gifted chef (and possibly the salubrious intent of the restauranteur and the waitstaff) should earn top dollar.

I wish I could agree with him, but I don't. To me, the values worth paying for in a restaurant meal or food for my own kitchen are:

Does it (or will it, when prepared) taste good? And can I be sure of that? (At this moment in my career as an eater, I don't know if I could actually identify bad Curry Goat. Someday, perhaps.)

Is it going to fill my tummy, give me energy, and delight my tastebuds? (Honestly, I'm pretty broke, so I won't spend money on food that only does one of these).

Will it please my senses? (Like the yellow of an heirloom tomato against the green of a well-made pesto. Or the lightly-browned crust of a perfectly toasted Pop Tart.)

(You heard me. Strawberry for choice.)

Is it, on the whole, good for me? I don't mean it has to be wheat bran. Only that it won't make me sick, thus ruining whatever plan I had for the evening, the rest of the day, or however long it takes me to get over salmonella poisoning.

I am not one of the world's fugu eaters; I do not like my meal spiced with risk. And by the way, this means that sometimes I pay more for my food, because I'm paying for it to be professionally cleaned or served from a relatively clean kitchen.

Tony Bourdain, please leave me in pathologically hygienic Singapore on your next trip to the Far East.

And one more very important value: will I be able to blog about it? Is it photogenic? Will it make good food porn? this blog is a business to me. I try to write about things which will attract readers. Sometimes a good foodie adventure is worth the money, when it brings eyeballs to this page and clicks to my Google ads.

Of course, I also have my indulgences.

Every few weeks I buy 8 ounces or so of salmon roe, also known as the big orange caviar which are served in sushi. I eat it with sushi rice, yes, but I also mix it into salad and top cold soup with it. When I'm very tired and rushed I spoon two tablespoons of the roe over one tablespoon of Greek yogurt, eat in in tiny bites, and rise sated.  I actually have a miniature cafe au lait bowl which holds about a quarter of a cup and a tiny mother-of-pearl spoon--the latter not for show, but because a metal spoon makes caviar taste awful.

True, salmon caviar costs about $2 per ounce and that's expensive for anything. But to me the expense is worth it.

When duck eggs are season--which is nowhere near often enough, since, for reasons I don't understand, ducks actually have to be in the mood, whilst chicken hardly even knew they're doing anything--I buy a half dozen of them every week, usually at 50 cents per egg, from Quattro Farms, which I am proud to tell you is also Mario Batali's egg supplier of choice. 

A duck egg tastes much richer and more flavorful than any hen's egg, even Quattro's. There is  greater proportion of yolk to white in a duck egg, and the yolk cooks up firmer and rounder, if you're making a whole-yolk preparation.

It's also more difficult to overcook the yolk of a duck egg, although the white seems to get done much more quickly than a hen's egg white.

For all of these reasons, duck eggs are well worth their expense to me.

Sometimes half-a-pound of fresh tuna is worth the six dollars it costs at my local reliable fishmonger's, because I need a quick, clean protein hit of a tuna tartare over a bowl of sushi rice more than I need to do laundry. My strength and health are important, because I need to be strong in my classes, with my daughter, in my internship, all the time. I need to sleep more peacefully and rise more refreshed, and good (if expensive) nutrition can do that for you.

Good food very frequently costs more, when it suits my values. So no, I don't actually appreciate (or even care about) the values of the person who harvests or prepares it for me.

Then again, Ed eats in restaurants much more than I do. I'll have to look at this question again when I can do things like that.

Kosher? Oy Vay!!

Ed Levine, dean of all New york foodies, just posted an account of his family's pre-Hanukkah party in which he asks himself (and, by extension, us) if next year he might go so far as to serve latkes with marscapone cheese and prosciutto.

For the uninitiated, allow me to explain that this is both a great and a terrible idea.

Great, because it involves crisp fried potato, salty rich ham and creamy sweet cheese.

Terrible, because latkes--fried pancakes of grated potato and onion--are a traditional Jewish food, and traditional Jewish food never mixes dairy with meat.

Latkes themselves are neutral, neither milk nor meat, except if they've been fried in, or made with, chicken fat, as they traditionally are; also, latkes are traditionally a side dish to a beef course, generally brisket.

On the other hand, you could fix up a batch of brunch latkes to devour with apple sauce and sour cream. That's not the point. The point is--and I'm sure you knew of this--prosciutto is PORK.

And pork...no matter what anyone may have ever told you...is NOT Kosher. NOT. NOT. NOT.

"No. Really. I mean this."

By the way, our cute Jewish word for "not kosher" is TRAYF.

What confuses a lot of people, gentile and Jew alike, is that even if a person has never kept kosher and wouldn't even think of keeping kosher, the latke-and-prosciutto idea would be highly offensive to them.

It's like eating a sausage pizza on Yom Kippur (a day when we're all supposed to fast and think about our sins); just a generally offensive thing, which God is not going to be really happy about.

Of course, people who keep strictly to the Kosher laws--and there are many of them who live a fairly secular life and do still keep to the Kashruth--would probably not be offended by these things. They just wouldn't eat them. Some people who have been kosher all of their lives, and have lived in strictly kosher communities (there are fewer of these than previously, I think) would be disgusted by the idea, and wouldn't want to eat trayf in any form. But it wouldn't be a matter for discussion.

So I don't think that true believers would get offended and lecture their co-religionists for serving something that isn't kosher. (These people are more offended if they don't have a kosher meal option available to them, and you can't blame them for that. It can be a form of discrimination). It's more the secular crowd who would be both serving this and getting all upset about it, and that goes right to the heart of who American Jews are and think they are.

Some of us...the secular bunch; the ones to whom Judaism is not a faith but an ethnic identifier...are uncomfortable when the traditions are set aside. We're probably going to eat that delicious latke with marscapone and prosciutto, but what will it mean to the future of our people? We might remember kosher grandparents, but out children won't. Likely they won't even know why their parents flinch at the sight of trayf, and make uncomfortable jokes about it. And is this the way a people dies? We certainly don't want that.

On the other hand, I've never kept kosher and I don't see any real value in it. The kosher laws were created to regulate the storage and processing of food five thousand years before refrigeration, so the Children of Israel would not succumb to belly rot on the way to Jerusalem. (Probably the reason why there are so few Ancient Babylonians about is because they didn't keep kosher.) This is all well and good, but I do live in an era when food safety is taken seriously, and I don't think that refusing to mix meat and milk is going to keep me alive any longer than otherwise.

Besides, Jewish people have compromised and amended our ancient traditions throughout those 5000 years, generally for our own health and happiness, sometimes for the aid of our non-Jewish friends, sometimes because someone has a bright idea about better and more modern ways to serve God. I think a lot of what keeps Judaism a going concern is our ability to adapt, not our ability to cling--some writers would say "cling slavishly" but we refused our delivery from Cliches R Us this morning--to the old ways.

So anyway, I will probably not serve latkes with marscapone and prosciutto at any family gathering. My sometimes-kosher brother would kill me. (See how that works?) But topping a baked potato with sour cream and bacon? Baby, you know what I like.

So completely not a kosher dog. 

Paula Deen's Apple Strudel: A Rebuttal

When my brother emailed that he and his lady, not to mention the two lads (aged 2 and 3) and various outliers from Long Island requested that I contribute an apple pie and a few quarts of ice cream to Thanksgiving, I immediately started to edit the request in my mind.

Pie is, to my mind, risky. Commercial pies can be great, but the better they are the more money they cost, and I didn't have a lot to spend. As to home-made pies, the fact is that I'm not a baker. It takes a special talent and, while I may develop it some day, I haven't yet.

Then there are the two variables in any fruit pie: the filling and the crust. The filling hits or misses on the sweet/tart/firm/watery properties of the fruit, and fresh fruit are not predictable. The crust, on the other hand, can be controlled--if you are a good baker and you have either an infallible pie crust sense, or an infallible recipe.

Maybe it all comes down to the fact that, if my braised beef shank is sticking to the casserole or my lamb ribs are getting grey instead of golden brown, I know what to do about it; knowledge, experience and sense tell me to take it off the fire, or turn up the flame, or add more liquid, or start all over again if I need to. But I've got no senses like that for baking, and that's why, wisely I think, I stay away from the stuff.

Still. My brother asked me specially for a dessert. The rest of the meal would be taken care of by my sister-in-law, her sister and their mother, welterweight cooks all. What to do?

Relief came in the form of this recipe by Paula Deen from the Food Network website.

Apple Strudel:
1/4 cup bourbon or apple juice
1/2 cup golden raisins
2 to 3 Granny Smith apples (about 1 pound), peeled, cored, halved, and thinly sliced
1/2 lemon, juiced
1 tablespoon lemon zest, finely chopped
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon, plus more for sprinkling
1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
1/2 cup crushed shortbread cookies
1/4 cup chopped pecans
2 tablespoons butter, cut into pieces
5 sheets phyllo dough from 1 pound package of frozen dough
2 tablespoons butter, melted, for brushing phyllo sheets, plus more if needed
1 tablespoon granulated sugar
Confectioner's sugar
Caramel sauce, purchased

Glaze:
2 cups confectioner's sugar
3 1/2 tablespoons milk 

For the Strudel:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

In a small bowl, pour the bourbon or apple juice over the raisins and microwave on high for 45 seconds. Let sit for 15 minutes.

Combine the raisins, apples, lemon juice, lemon zest, cinnamon, brown sugar, cookie crumbs, pecans, and butter in a large bowl.

Remove the phyllo dough from the box, unfold, and cover with a damp towel. Place 1 sheet of phyllo on the work surface and brush lightly with melted butter. Repeat with the remaining sheets, brushing each with melted butter, stacking when done, being sure to keep the unbuttered phyllo covered.

Place the apple mixture on the nearest third of the phyllo stack, being sure to leave a 2-inch border. Gently lift the bottom edge of the phyllo stack to cover the filling and fold the side edges over. Continue to roll the stack away from you until the filling is completely sealed in and the seam is on the bottom. Transfer to the prepared baking sheet. Brush the top with melted butter and sprinkle with granulated sugar.

Bake for 30 minutes, until golden brown. Pour over the glaze and sprinkle with cinnamon and confectioners' sugar. Pass warm caramel sauce, to drizzle over the strudel.

For the Glaze:
Mix ingredients thoroughly.

*Cook's Note: If too thick add a little bit of milk. If too thin add a little bit of confectioners' sugar.

This is  Annie again. the fact is, the filling turned out marvelously--rich, buttery, sweet but not insipid. It helps if you cut the applies into thin chunks, not thin slices, and mix all the dry ingredients first, then add the apples and finally the butter. Inexpressibly delicious, with the firm, tart Granny Smiths a perfect counterpoint to the fancy richness of the trimmings.

But that phylllo dough...brother, beware. It's a thin, damp membrane which shatters when you look at it (I mean when it's still unbaked). If it actually does come through the bakig process, it's as appetizing as a brown paper bag.

So now I've got tons of this filling and nothing to fill. The good news is I also have three days until T-give, and enough money left to buy one of those little boxes of Pepperidge Farm puff pastry.

I can still do good things. Tune in later and we'll find out what, exactly.

Next Iron Chef: "Achieve Greatness"

Oh, you go achieve greatness. I'm tired.

I shouldn't be ungrateful. The Next Iron Chef has placed me very, very slightly on the map (there I am, over to the left of Saugerties) and I ought to appreciate that.

But the fact is that, having seen Messrs Besh and Symon and all the other contestants run around like idiots, shop, grill, sweat, run around a little more, and end each and every hour with a plateful of gourmet treats for Judges Ruhlman, Donatella and Knowlton to scream over, I had forgotten that they were competing for a spot on an existing TV show with an existing format. And the fact is that that format has a hard time living up to what they've been through already.

I mean, here the boys were in comfortable Kitchen Stadium, where, if you can avoid the existential questions like Where is that dry ice smoke coming from and What are those weird choral grunts and moans we keep hearing, you can have yourself a pretty nice time--if you are a professional chef who, presumably, likes to cook with great ingredients and expensive tools for a small but appreciative audience.

It was indoors. No one forced you to grill. Your ingredients weren't hand-selected by your dearest enemy. You didn't even have to explain your wants and needs to French shopkeepers. The meals were to be eaten by three judges at ground level and you didn't have to use the ice cream maker if you didn't want to...honestly, it was pretty much a walk in the park for these guys.

Plus, in keeping with Iron Chef tradition, the "secret ingredient" was something for which recipes exist, classic cooking techniques have been created, and accompaniments have been prescribed. It was swordfish. Not even LIVE swordfish. Not even swordfish, and you had to use the sword.

True, it was given to the chefs head-on and it looked oddly like the characters from Spy v. Spy (big eyes, pointed face) but any chef could handle a swordfish. So I just didn't find it all that exciting.

And then the preparations...steamed swordfish this, swordfish mousse that...they just didn't seem exciting.

Of course, my disappointment was as nothing to the wrath of the three Iron Chefs (Flay, Cora, Morimoto) who, in a surprise move, acted as judges tonight. (I seriously wondered what they did with Ruhlman, Donatella and Knowlton, all of whom were dressed spiffily and waiting to be fed. Were they given any part of the meal? Were box lunches provided? or did they have to go out to the bodega across the street and get two over-ripe bananas and an individual serving of Corn Pops, and huddle together until they were called back in? It seemed a refinement of cruelty which Donatella did not deserve, although Ruhlman and Knowlton should have had this as a disciplinary measure long since. )

Yes, the present Iron Chefs were pretty damn nasty, although all of Morimoto's criticism, positive and negative, was so intelligent that all the contestants could do was thank him and bow awkwardly. That Morimoto is some kind of guy; perhaps I've mentioned to you the time that JC and I went to his restaurant in New York and the great man signed two copies of his menu for us.

Cat Cora, on the other hand, was as captious and carping as our High School Creative Writing teacher, Mrs. G., who practically got her tea poisoned for the way she corrected the grammar on our innermost feelings as expressed in blank verse. Once, JC tried to throw a desk at her, and even though he was about 6'5" and brawny and she was about 4'11" and wrinkled, no one thought it was an unfair match.

Bobby Flay was blandly pleasant throughout, but he shook his head about as often as he nodded it, which is a pretty harsh critique by Iron Chef standards.

And then the Iron Chefs sat down with the Judges, who had been pulled in from the corner of 9th Avenue and given some old blankets to huddle up in, and Alton joined them, and a conclusion was reached. Chef Michael Symon was to be the next Iron Chef...and everyone was happy. Including Chef Besh, I think, who is, after all, a remarkable man, and the most persuasive argument I've yet heard for the comeback of New Orleans.

And so to bed, leaving only one question unanswered: is Mario Batali really off Iron Chef? And, if so, how do they ever expect me to watch the show again?

The Rat's in the Kitchen Again

We didn't exactly dislike the foodie cartoon Ratatouille when it first came out last summer.

After all, it was the most accurate depiction of a restaurant kitchen, and a fine restaurant, and what chefs do, than anything that had come along.

The main character, a rat named Remy who was born to be a great chef, was lovable. down to his last twitching whisker. The backgrounds and set pieces (Paris at night, a dank sewer flooded with rats, a busy and glamorous French restaurant) were lovely. as was the Django Reinhard-influenced music.

(Favorite scene: Remy's "welcome home" party, at which the rats dance to jazzy music with acoustic guitar, and have their own odd little rat-step which seems to be about snuggling shoulders while you do jitterbug things with your feet. It's incredibly cute.)

But...today's DVD showing (for daughter Tracy and her roommate Miss V.) pointed up a few problems which I noticed when I first saw the movie.

Ze accents. Why does Collette, a French chef in a Paris kitchen, speak with a heavy accent? Why does Skinner do the same? And Gusteau? When Remy and Linguine speak like Americans? Remy is a rat from the French countryside, as French as D'Artagnon. Linguine is at least supposed to be Italian. So what gives?

Who is Linguine, anyway? We understand that he is supposed to be Remy's human "other half", that, as Linguine explains, Remy is the one who can cook and he, Linguine, is the one who can appear human. Together, they ought to equal one Disney hero...but they don't. Remy himself is a very complete hero, and at this late date no one is going to object to the fact that he isn't human. (Disney heroes have, to date, included wooden toys, animals of almost every type, pirates, English schoolchildren, and did we miss one where a microbe played the lead? No, but of course there was that insect).

Remy is cute, charming, imaginative, conflicted and well-spoken, with a rich back-story and an ingenious mind. Linguine, on the other hand, is pretty much of a frantic nothing. (He can't even seem to grieve his mother properly). And what's with the Italian name? Of course, he's a freckled redhead with, as we said, a Kansas City accent, so...was anyone thinking about this character? The, you know, lead?

The plot really just goes flabby from time to time. It goes in a great many different directions, thereby diluting the dramatic suspense. Will Remy go with his rat family, or the humans? Will Linguine be included by the kitchen brigade? Will Collette spit in the creme brulee? Will cartoon versions of Michael Ruhlman and Thomas Keller stroll in and give an impromptu lesson on slicing technique? It's just too diffuse. Not to mention that Brian Dennehy's portrayal of the rat Dad is so much more compelling than any of the humans, you really might wonder why Remy has any doubt in his mind.

But. There's Remy's Paris flat, a window niche with a small brass bed, a selection of fruit and a view of Le Tour Eiffel. There are the content of the restaurant's food safe, shelf upon shelf of delicacies realistically--and mouth-wateringly--drawn. There is Collette's crisp lesson on how to stand, cook and act like a chef. There are the realistic burns and cuts on the hands of the kitchen brigade, and the suspicious chef characters like the Teutonic Bruno who once killed a man "with this very thumb".

It's a fascinating movie, but I don't think it deserves all the good reviews it got. On the other hand, if Disney had managed to work this food into "Beauty and the Beast"--another French-accented flick--you might have something like the greatest movie of all time.

I even liked the little squiggles and scribbles which illustrated Remy's love for flavor and tastes. And when the rat and his brother Emile toasted thatb it of cheese in the chanterelle mushroom, did I want a taste of it!

Beautiful Meat

Our friend Robyn Lee just posted this in her blog, The Girl Who Ate Everything. It is one bite of a steak which she ate in Florence, Italy, known as the ancestral home of great European steak.

"This lil' chunka heaven? It probably destroyed most, if not all of the subsequent steak-eating experiences I will ever have. When again will I feel the sensation of my teeth crunching through the slightest carbonized meat crust into a moist meat sponge, soft as baby angels or what I imagine baby angels would taste like, releasing savory meat extract with every chew, or not releasing as much as being infused with this...meatness...the meatness..."

Yup. We're gonna have to stop at the butcher's on our way home.

Next Iron Chef: Pressure

This could also be called "Episode of Amazing Overstatement". Sure the chefs had to make a three-course dinner from a limited list of ingredients, then chill it, freeze it, pack it and load it on a plane, all in 90 minutes...from an airline kitchen which did not have the utensils they needed...but come on, surely they've dealt with worse things?

Not according to Chef Cosentino, who said, several times, "This is the hardest thing I've ever done in my life."

Oh, c'mon, Chris. Never had to decide between the girl who loves you and the one you love? Never had to put an old dog to sleep? Never had to fire your best friend?

Okay, good luck for you and your unspotted life. It still sounds like overstatement to me.

Then Chef Symon started in with it. "Biggest challenge of my life, never had anything worse to do..." Now hold on just a dad nab minute, friend. It probably took HOURS to get that fancy tat ("I LOVE TO COOK!" with flame effects) on your calf. What, you're telling me this was worse?

To tell you the truth, the grunting and whining got so bad I would have slapped Chef Besh if he had started in. Fortunately the combat veteran and battle-hardened marine obviously HAD seen tougher assignments, so he kept his trap shut.

Personally, I thought the idea of reviving in-flight food service was in dubious taste. It's so unpleasant to travel by air these days, you might as well challenge the chefs with "Snacks During Liposuction". (At least you look better after liposuction; the same can't be said of the commuter run from JFK to Cleveland).

It's a desperate person who travels on any airline these days. Still, Lufthansa still supplies full in-flight meals, so I guess they deserve some kind of recognition. And that new Air Bus looks like a honey.

Still, the chefs made some very odd calls. Symon, who won the challenge walking (or flying) away, served a tuna crudo. Yes, well, I love that kind of thing myself, but what's going to happen to the texture of raw fish after it's chilled, flash-frozen, then--heated? They weren't clear about that--in flight? In a word, bletch. And f it wasn't, I'd like to know why.

Also, what was with all the white asparagus and lobster? How the heck much is a coach seat on this flight going to cost? The last time I flew anyplace, they couldn't afford to serve a pat of real butter with the dinner roll.

Honestly, all the preparations seemed overdone to me. But then, I haven't been on an airplane since 1989, and everything I hear about air travel these days makes me think that I'll be hanging on to the underside of my tray table, whimpering like a frightened hound, for the extent of my next voyage into the balmy blue. I think a Hershey bar might fit my mood at that time, and three gallons of chilled spring water. (I get thirsty when I'm frightened). And maybe a kosher salami. But I'm just not going to be in the mood for anything complicated.

So I'll just record the judge's decision (Sanchez is out) and note that Donatella was disappointingly buttoned-up this week, and Judge Knowlton's hair looks like it's doing an impersonation of Severus Snape. And Judge Ruhlman seemed impressively lit. Not that he had been drinking, I don't mean, but that the studio lighting seemed to favor his rugged good looks.

Yes. Ruhlman in person could calm me on my next flight. Food just wouldn't be enough.