So, who watched Kitchen Nightmares last night? Of course, I felt personally obligated to as a Gordon Ramsay fan.
Anyway, I’ve seen the BBC version of this show, where Gordon does the same exact thing in British restaurants. Let’s just say that Fox certainly “dramatacized” and ”reality-TV-ized” this show. The corny announcer, the suspenseful music, the fist fights… I was almost certain that the entire show was staged until I read the message boards on Fox’s website. Apparently the crazy people in the Babalon restaurant were not faking it.
The self-involved restaurant namesake (I think the restaurant was called something like, “Peter’s place”), did absolutely no work on the failing restaurant but had no problems buying a Mercedes, Rolex, and 3 thousand dollar suits and walking around the restaurant pretending he was on the set of the Godfather. Let’s punctuate this with a suitable New Yorker expression— “Oy.”
Though the show was a little overdramatic, I’ll still be watching. It’s a lot more entertaining than the British blokes standing there dumbfounded while Gordon yells at them.
In other TV news, I’m really looking forward to the Ugly Betty season premiere next week. I re-watched last season’s finale tonight and was overcome with emotions yet again. (Yes, I know it’s just a stupid TV show.) The series of events combined with the West Side Story soundtrack are just a little bit much for me to bear. I need to know what happens next!
Somehow though the internet foodie grapevine I learned that Michael Ruhlman is coming to Durham this coming Sunday afternoon to do a reading from his latest book, “The Reach of a Chef.” I had Oak go over to the Regulator Bookshop to pick up a copy and I am furiously trying to get through it. I’m only about halfway through – will it happen by Sunday?
Basically it’s about the changing role of chefs in our society and how the culinary profession has changed in the past 20 years. I’m sure I’d appreciate/understand it much more if I had any knowledge of these things, but it’s still a good read. I doubt I would last longer than oh, 20 minutes working in a professional kitchen! I’m lucky if I make a meal at home without hurting myself (Oh, mangoes are not my friend….).
Anyway, I’m about to embark on the chapters about our favorite “celebrity chefs”, Rachael Ray and Emeril Lagasse. I’ve just finished the section about two chefs who are their complete opposites; refusing to leave their kitchens on the pursuit of excellence.
To my less culinary-inclined readers: Are you asking “Who is Michael Ruhlman?” Well, I’m sure if you watch Anthony Bourdain, just think about the Las Vegas and Cleveland episodes. Ruhlman is what you might call his “sidekick” or “guide” for those cities. If you’re a seriously old school AB fan, you might also remember the trip they took on Cook’s Tour to The French Laundry in the Napa Valley. He also has written several other books, including work as a co-author on Thomas Keller’s cookbooks.
This entry title is inspired by one of our favorite Gordon Ramsay quotes. Hell’s Kitchen; someone made a broccoli soup that was curried, or in some way overcomplicated for Chef Ramsay’s taste. So, when I saw a recipe for broccoli soup in the September 2007 issue of Everyday Food, I just had to make it based on our amusement with that quote.
It turned out pretty well. We only had a pound and a quarter of broccoli (versus the recipe’s 3 pounds) so I pretty much had to guess/approximate the quantities. Apparently it doesn’t make much difference in this case because it turned out pretty well. I think it’s one of those recipes you can just approximate everything and adjust as you see fit. Saute some onions and garlic. Add broccoli and potato cut up into small pieces and cover with broth (vegetable or chicken). If you want you can add some water too – like one can of broth, and a half can of water. Boil until the vegetables are soft but still firm to bite. Puree in batches in a blender; return to pot. Add lemon juice to freshen the flavors, salt and pepper to taste. Make it rich by stirring in a quarter cup of heavy cream before serving.
Would Gordon approve? Doubtful. But was it tasty? Yes.
Everyone makes fun of my obsession with bad Chinese food. I just can’t help myself. I don’t care if it’s strip mall Chinese or mall Chinese, I’ll eat it. Of course, I also do enjoy the quality stuff as well.
Until recently the only place that we ate Chinese food was out at restaurants (including my self-indulgent lunch runs to the famously bad Wok-n-Grille in RTP. I have to go there alone since everyone else refuses to go there.. pretty sad.).
A few weeks ago, we made fried rice for the first time. We had a little seasoning packet with instructions. It was really good. Not all greasy and completely brown like you get at restaurants. We’re pretty sure we can make it again without the packet now that we know what the basic steps are.
Oak has also come up with his own recipe for what he calls “General Oak” – basically his version of General Tso’s Chicken. He fries the chicken thigh pieces, and then tosses the pieces in bottled General Tso sauce for me, and Buffalo sauce for him. We’re both happy!
Sidenote: I think Oak’s obsesssion with Buffalo sauce far surpasses my interest in bad Chinese. If it’s Buffaloed, he’ll eat it. In fact, there was a place at the fair we found last year that says “we’ll Buffalo anything“. That will have to be our first stop this year.
Anyway, I recently came across a coupon for Wanchai Ferry. It’s basically a dinner kit type of thing – you add some cut up chicken to it. It includes the rice, sauce, and bamboo shoots. We also added some green pepper. Surprisingly BOTH of us enjoyed it!! Easy enough for a weeknight. Next is to figure out how to make this sort of thing without the kit…. Will have to browse the Asian sauces aisle at Teeter next time we’re there.
I’ve been trying to get back into making my scrapbooks, as I have about 2 years of stuff to catch up on. I finished scrapbooking our wedding and honeymoon pictures, but I’ve still got stuff from 2005 waiting to be done. So I’ve gotten some new “scrapbooking toys” that I’m enjoying – letter stickers, chalk, a nice pair of scissors, some letter stamps.. makes the whole process a little more creative and fun with more tools. Anyway, I was reading the forum on scrapbook.com, and I found this thread that mentioned about how HP’s website has a whole section on scrapbooking!
I’m not particularly interested in the whole “digital scrapbooking” phenomenon, where you make the whole scrapbook pages in Photoshop and then print them out… though I think I’d enjoy it, I try to take scrapbooking as some time away from the computer!
But, some of the ideas on the HP activity center might be enough for me to give the “combined digital and regular” scrapbooking idea a try. Especially interesting is this information on how to emboss with your inkjet printer. Another idea I’ve seen is to print out letters backwards on a sheet of paper, and then cut them out with a craft knife, and you’ll have your own custom title for the page.
Another techy-related scrapbooking item I found was this ScraPerfect, which will prime any surface for printing in an inkjet printer. Supposedly with it, you can print on slick vellum, regular transparencies, ribbon, and all sorts of stuff.
Well, my trusty Fuji FinePix A303 that I received as a graduation gift from my aunt and uncle bit the dust. She led a full and happy life, accompanying me on many trips and I’ve posted many photos and printed many photos on DotPhoto with her. It just scared me when I realized that the camera was four years old!! Man these years have flown by.
We’re pretty much convinced that she heard us when Oak mentioned that maybe we should get a new digital camera, since the prices have fallen on them so much lately. She obviously took this as offensive and decided to give up about a week after he made that remark. Poor Fuji!
Anyway, we picked this Canon Powershot A560. I haven’t transferred any pictures from the camera to the computer yet, but it seems great. There are settings for just about any shooting situation (the beach, nighttime, indoors, kids and pets… the list goes on). So it will be fun experimenting with all of those to see if they make any difference!
So, stay posted for more pictures!
For Oak’s birthday, we decided to go to the chef’s table at the Angus Barn. We’ve been reading lots about chef’s tables, but they’re usually soo expensive. Angus Barn’s is a little more reasonably priced, since it actually includes the wine pairings. And let’s just say, they were not skimpy with the wine.
We were seated in the middle of what we figured out was the group dining kitchen. That is, the stuff that the people we watched people make was for groups in the party rooms. So they were making tons of steaks, tons of salmons, etc. And it was all done in a relatively short amount of time. Pretty amazing to watch, and so calm in comparison with Gordon Ramsay’s Hell’s Kitchen! Then again, I don’t think that things were being done individually by order, it seemed like the waiters would just take the number of rares, mediums, etc. that they needed for a particular table. We were free to walk around the kitchen and ask questions. Oak’s favorite part was the dessert lady – she kept walking by with huge cheesecakes, cakes, etc. from the fridge. Yum.
I should have kept some notes or something, since I haven’t written about this until almost a month later. So forgive my lack of memory/detail.
When I called to make the reservation for the dinner, I got asked if we had foods we didn’t like or were allergic to (salmon, lobster, and shrimp!), so I think that these dishes were adjusted accordingly (I’m guessing maybe the soup had shrimp in its original form). Very nifty!
First course was what they called an “amuse bouche” (which, from my experience in French class — roughly translates to “amusement for your mouth”). It was a kind of bruchetta, but with a thin slice of filet mignon! It was served with a sparkling wine. For the second course, we had a crab soup with a coconut and lime base… pretty exotic for what we were expecting at the Angus Barn!!! For the third course, we had a scallops fettucine. In between the third and fourth course, we had a raspberry sorbet “palate cleanser.” The main course was a filet mignon on risotto. For dessert, we both had huge slices of chocolate cake that we ended up bringing home with blackberry dessert wine.
The wine manager was our main host for the evening — the wine pairings were all delicious. We also got a tour of the famous wine cellar and wine cellar kitchen, which is where our food was prepared. Turns out there’s another version of what we had in the wine cellar kitchen called the “Captain’s table.” In this case you actually get to see the food being prepared… but there is less action there unless a dinner is also occurring in one of the wine cellar dining rooms. We also got to meet the executive sous chefs, but not chef Walter. Sigh! Maybe next time!
The wine cellar events look totally worth it… someday we’ll have to go to either the new year’s eve celebration or one of the murder mystery dinners!
This past weekend, we went on a Segway tour of Wilmington!! It was a lot of fun but surprisingly more work/coordination than I suspected. The shifting of weight by leaning forwards and backwards, the steering… yet some people say Segways are for lazy people. Hmmph. My feet were a little sore by the end of the tour!!
We got to cover a lot of ground in the few hours we were out. We went by a lot of the historic homes, to the base of the bridge in the background of this photo. At that point we got to upgrade from “turtle mode” to “regular mode” and speed our way down the riverfront to the end!! Of course, Oak was a speed demon. I only got up to about 8 mph. All along the way, people stopped us to ask questions, so if anything this is a great advertising method for the Segway shop!!
It’s too bad Segways cost like 5 thousand dollars apiece. Geez. Maybe only worth it if you lived in a city where this kind of transport would be convenient.. like if your commute doesn’t involve highways. 
If only they could find a way to make the whole thing look less dorky!
On Friday night, we didn’t particularly feel like cooking. So we went to Panzanella. Panzanella is owned by the same co-op as the Weaver Street Market, which means that they have tons of fresh and local ingredients. Yum. I had “Niman ranch pork loin marsala” and Oak had “Yukon gold potato gnocchi.” Both were delicious. Mine was accompanied by the first polenta that I enjoyed, I think because it must have had a half pound of cheese in it! Oh well! Speaking of cheese, we shared a piece of the celebrity dairy goat cheese cheesecake for dessert… Also incredibly rich and tasty. We’ll definitely be returning there soon. Unfortunately I think we’ve missed most of the farm dinners already for this season, so maybe we’ll give that a shot next year!
I was thoroughly confused that Panzanella’s menu does not contain their namesake, however. Especially in the height of tomato season! I made Giada’s Panzanella recipe for a potluck at work in July and everyone went crazy over it. Definitely give it a try if you’ve got a loaf of stale bread and an abundance of tomatoes! I suppose the issue might be that when you make the salad, it has to soak for a few hours, but after that few hours, it gets kind of soggy. I can’t imagine how a restaurant would manage to balance this one out. Well, I’ll keep an eye on the menu.. maybe someday!
