I Watched This So You Won't Have To: "Knife Fight"

Debuting earlier this year on Food Network Canada, "Knife Fight" is a show hosted by former "Top Chef" winner Ilan Hall that pits two chefs against each other in a competition where they must make at least two dishes in one hour using a combination of two or three secret ingredients, and whatever is in the pantry. This is done for bragging rights in front of a live audience and is critiqued by Hall and two rotating judges, usually a celebrity and someone in the food industry. I've been watching this show on and off these past months, here's what I thought about the episode shown on March 5th:

• At the start of the show, Hall tells the viewer this isn't your mother's cooking show. If someone's mom had a hand in creating "Chopped", she would beg to differ. 
• Some people may remember Hall's role in the infamous "Top Chef" head-shaving incident done to molecular gastronomy douchebag Marcel Vigneron, so this show already has that going for it.
• We're lead to believe this show takes place after-hours in Hall's restaurant The Gorbals.  Reality TV being what it is, I question the idea of any chef letting a TV crew and an audience into their place after a night's service to film an "after-hours warzone". But I'm cynical like that, and I've never worked in a kitchen, so what do I know? And how underground can these after-hours chef battles be when they take place in a restaurant as mainstream as The Gorbals?
• We're also lead to believe he's been hosting these cooking contests for years. I would have thought getting his restaurant off the ground would have taken up a majority of his time, but again, this is reality TV, and all I know about the restaurant business is what I see on television, and read about in books.
• The winner of the competition gets a cleaver with the word "I win" emblazoned on it, the loser gets a smaller cleaver with the word "I didn't win" on his. Something tells me getting television exposure for themselves and their restaurant(s) is the biggest prize of all.
• Giovanni Reda is the master of ceremonies - does a cooking show really need a master of ceremonies?
• If you heard this much noise at a restaurant, you'd walk out, and bitch about the place on Yelp. There's got to be an "Applause" sign flashing in the building somewhere. I find it hard to believe that people can get that excited watching people cook. 
• Tonight's combatants are Raphael Lunetta and Neal Fraser. I'm sure these chefs are as good as the reputations that proceed them, but I can't believe the mere mention of these chefs names can cause that much of a frenzy. 
• Fun facts about the chefs: Lunetta loves surfing so much he's known as the Surfing Chef. At Fraser's Fritzi Dog artisan hot dog restaurant, you can get a sausage made with roast turkey and duck, and a sous-vide carrot for your veggie dog.
• We laughed at the idea back in the late 90's, but Kramer from "Seinfeld" with his peanut butter and jelly sandwich restaurant idea truly was ahead of its time.
• Our judges this evening are James Beard Foundation Award-nominated chef Mark Peel, celebrated chef Michael Cimarusti, and noted actress, winemaker (who knew?), and food lover Drew Barrymore. 
• No celebrity timekeeper for this week's episode. It looks like Barrymore pulled rank as the show's executive producer to get on the judging panel. The other judges may have more knowledge about food, but neither of them were in "Charlie's Angels", thus warranting the additional screen time.  
• A forty-day dry-aged rib-eye, abalone (a large mollusk), and Pacific Ocean trout are the mandatory ingredients. Other than the abalone still being live, these items don't appear to be so weird that they would throw the chefs for a loop. That being said, Lunetta seemed intimidated by the amount of food he had to use, and the time he had to cook it in. Fraser, on the other hand, seemed to take everything in stride and rolled with the punches.
• The audience is said to be made up of their chefs' friends, family, and whatever celebrities happen to be in the area. Either these chefs know, or are related to the most photogenic people in L.A., or there was a casting call for people to attend this show. That would explain the woman in the bunny ears, and the hipster in the leather fedora, unless this is how west coast foodies usually dress.
• Mollusks are hard to shuck, no matter how big they are.
• Barrymore on her foodie cred: "I had my first octopus at six years old, I never turned back." Something else that she tasted for the first time at a young age was alcohol - hindsight being 20/20, she should have stuck with the octopus. (Too soon?)
• Not hearing a lot of questions about cooking from an audience allegedly made up of foodies, just a lot of hooting and hollering. The judges though are very interested in what's going on in the kitchen, so it's good to see they're taking their job seriously.
• First dish out from Fraser: sauteed abalone with shishito peppers with a green garlic purée. Raves from the judges, though Peel wasn't crazy about the abalone.
• Lunetta seems to be having trouble in the unfamiliar kitchen, he is soon heard saying he's "in the weeds". This admission seems to surprise Cimarusti.
• I wonder who feeds the audience and the cast because the only people I see eating are the judges. Lots of people in the crowd are drinking, so I guess it's an open bar.
• Second dish out from Fraser: Ocean trout on English peas with a white carrot purée and mushrooms. More raves from the judges and some concern about whether the Surfing Chef will be able to plate anything.
• Even though he's running behind, Lunetta takes the time to properly debone the fish he's preparing. He is though ignoring the judges, and focusing on his cooking.
• Having the chefs walk the dishes out to the judging area really adds to the drama given the time constraints they're under.
• Do chefs usually carry around special spice blends with them? Seems kind of convenient that Lunetta just happened to have the spice he would normally use on a rib-eye for this competition.
• Also convenient: that Barrymore's wine just happens to be available for Lunetta to use for his pan sauce.
• A woman famous for her substance abuse issues has her own brand of wine. Think about that for a minute.
• With two dishes out to the Surfing Chef's none, I think Fraser is the clear favourite to win the competition unless Lunetta blows the judges away with his creations.
• 10 minutes left in the cookoff, and neither chef has touched the rib-eye yet.
• Lunetta announces he will walk all his dishes out at once when they're finished. The judges are OK with this.
• Third dish out from Fraser: Côte de bœuf (a fancy way of describing a rib steak) served with cheese grits and a horseradish gremolata (a chopped herb condiment). Enjoyed by the judges, with the gremolata, in particular, getting raves.
• With the clock ticking down, and the crowd chanting his name, Lunetta finally brings out his food. He presents to the judges a sea trout and abalone with a guava and citrus emulsion, and a côte de bœuf with a pan sauce made with pink peppercorns, beef fat and bones, and wine.
• Barrymore on tasting Luntta's beef dish: "It's like Christmas in your mouth!" 
• Peel liked the beef as well, particularly the pan sauce, but thought the dish was too complex and ambitious. Cimarusti liked the Surfer Chef's fish so much, he jokingly planned to steal it for his own restaurant. 
• It must be hard to judge people you know and have worked with, and admire. You can see the judges have a lot of respect for the chefs in tonight's competition.
• Lunetta doesn't like his chances of winning this contest. That belief holds true with Fraser winning, as I expected. A good time was had by all, all hail the Hot Dog King.

Bottom line: Watching "Knife Fight" is like watching a CGI car crash directed by Michael Bay - you know what you're watching is fake, but you can't help but look at all the explosions. This show is food porn on speed. But interestingly enough, after seeing this episode, I wanted to head to my kitchen and cook something, which usually doesn't happen to me when I finish watching a cooking show. If you want to learn something about cooking, watch Hall's "Eat Like a Man" series of videos. But if you want to see celebrities and hipsters pretend to care about cooking, this is the show to watch. As guilty pleasures go, this show can't be beat.

Stock vs. Broth

As everyone is aware this winter of 2015, it's as cold as fuck outside. It's no surprise the current bone broth craze is taking off, who doesn't like a bowl of something hot and tasty when it's freezing out. When you read the article, you'll see the terms broth and stock are used interchangeably. Both are liquids flavored with vegetables, meat scraps, and bones, and are used as the base for soups, and sauces. You may be surprised to learn that the two are not the same.

Both culinary schools and old wives tales will say that broth is made from meat and stock is made from bones. Stocks are unseasoned, which is why they make a great neutral base for a soup or a sauce, but pretty unremarkable on their own. What makes broths so satisfying on its own are the seasonings, like salt, pepper, or wine; a broth is essential a seasoned stock. The heated bones, cartilage, and skin turns into gelatin thanks to the collagen, which adds to the stock's body, texture, and taste. Now that that's cleared up, here's a recipe for a basic beef broth. Whether you substitute it for your morning Starbucks as some in New York's East Village have is up to you.

Ingredients

2.72 kg. beef soup bones (or a combination of knucklebones, neck bones, beef shank, and oxtail)
1 large onion
3 large carrots
2 stalks celery, including some leaves
1 large tomato
1/2 cup chopped parsnip
1 medium potato
8 whole black peppercorns
4 sprigs fresh parsley
1 bay leaf
1 tablespoon salt
2 teaspoons dried thyme
2 cloves garlic
water

1. Preheat the oven to 450 °F (230 °C).
2. Trim the root end off onion, then slice or quarter it, peel and all. Scrub the carrots and chop them into 1-inch chunks. In a large shallow roasting pan, place the soup bones, onion, and carrots. Bake, uncovered, about 30 minutes or until the bones are well browned, turning occasionally.
3. Drain off the fat, and place the browned bones, onion, and carrots in a large soup pot or Dutch oven. Pour 1/2 cup water into the roasting pan and rinse. Pour this liquid into the soup pot.
4. Scrub the potato and chop it into chunks, peel and all. Chop the celery stalks into thirds. Add the celery, tomato, parsnip, potato, peppercorns, parsley (including stems), bay leaf, salt, thyme, and garlic to the pot. Then cover everything with 12 cups of water.
5. Bring mixture to a boil. Reduce heat. Cover and simmer for 5 hours. Strain the stock, discard the meat, the bones, the vegetables, and the seasonings. Makes about 8 cups.

50 Kitchen Hacks To Make Life Easier

Anything that either saves me time, makes my life easier, or makes me look like a superstar with minimal effort, is something I like. If you feel the same way, you're going to love the list below, provided by the good people of Kit Stone.

The new food trends for 2015

Greetings and salutations everyone. Hope the holidays were good, and the start of this new year has treated you well. During my downtime, I ate a lot of good food, hung out with family and friends, and enjoyed the two cookbooks I received as gifts, a reprint of my late mom's beloved "All New Purity Cook Book", and "The Official DC Super Hero Cookbook", the closest I'm going to get to the out-of-print cookbook I loved back in my youth. To get back into the swing of things, I thought my first entry of 2015 should be a comment about this year's predicted food trends.

• The new cocktail ingredient: Tea
  Taking advantage of the millions of tea drinkers in the world, bartenders will be looking for ways to add it to more drinks. This isn't as crazy as it sounds, as several local brewers, like the Dominion City Brewing Company, have made some great beers with tea. The green tea powder matcha will also be appearing it everything from pesto to antioxidant-rich drinks due to its vibrant colour and flavour.
• The new comeback food: Foie gras
  About two weeks ago, a judge overturned California's ban on the sale of foie gras, to the delight of chefs, foie gras producers, and lovers of fatty duck or goose liver everywhere. Because of this, restaurants will soon be making foie gras the centerpiece item of haute cooking again. I'm sure the number of death threats issued against chefs who resume cooking with this controversial food will decrease as the months go by.
• The new comfort food: Uni and guacomole
  Uni is the Japanese name for the edible part of the sea urchin; guacamole is in my opinion the best thing you can do with an avocado.  Together, they are a high-end comfort food combination that makes truffled macaroni and cheese look like last year's Kraft dinner. You might need an in with the chef at your favourite gastropub to get this before it starts appearing on the menu.
• The new cooking trend: Stem-to-root
  Picture cauliflower leaves being sauteed, and served over polenta with a sprinkle of parmesan cheese; carrot tops made into pesto and fennel tops finding their way into a relish; limp celery simmered back to life with ground meat, white wine, and aromatics. With the head-to-tail movement working so well with meats, it seems logically that a similar movement would happen with vegetables.
• The new foodie trend: Taking a selfie with the chef
  Why just snap a picture of your food when you can have a picture of the person(s) who made it? Given how temperamental chefs can be about people in their kitchens, I can't see this catching on, but with all the attempts to make chefs the new rock stars, who knows? Can't wait to see how this plays out at Union613...
• The new food treatment: Pickling and fermenting
  Vegetarians won't be the only ones benefiting from this, expect to see a lot more vegetables getting a bath in either vinegary, herbal or garlicky solutions this year.
• The new kale: Various contenders
  Several vegetables are vying for the chance to replace kale as the trendy choice in the produce department. Root vegetable like kohlrabi, celery root, and parsnips (one of my favourites) is predicted to be appearing in more kitchens, along with radishes and cauliflower. As a parent with poor eating habits, my wife is always looking for new ways to trick my son and I to eat healthier, so having something new on the vegetable side of the plate is always a good thing.
• The new Starbucks order: The flat white
  All the rage in Australia, the flat white is milk poured over two shots of ristretto (the first, most concentrated part of the espresso shot), with a thin layer of microfoam on top. What's the difference between that and a regular cappuccino? Beats me, I'm still uncouth enough to order a pumpkin spice latte in the fall.
• The new taste zone: Sour
  While umami will still get a lot of attention, the use of citrus, mustard, and vinegar will be seen in everything from beverages to entrees to desserts this year. It's about time sour have gotten some of the spotlight, it's an underrated taste. Who don't like a sourball gum every now and then?

Science and Cooking: From Haute Cuisine to Soft Matter Science - Baking

As I posted in a previous blog entry, I've enrolled in an on-line course about the relationship between science and cooking.

Here's what went down week 9 .

• To coincide with all the holiday baking going on, this week's lesson explores the basic physics and chemistry involved in baking. Joanne Chang is this week's celebrity instructor.
• Baking involves a lot of the topics already covered in the course. Understanding these concepts won't make you a master baker, but hopefully, it will help you make better sense of the recipes you're using: 
• Elasticity -  the properties of gluten; the elastic network that occurs in proteins, starches, and sugars.
• Viscosity - any time something expands and rises, it involves the flowing of molecules by each other; without it, your breads wouldn't rise, and your cakes and cookies wouldn't expand.   
• Emulsions - baked goods tend to be made of bubbles that are packed together, and those bubbles are the result of gas expansion that occurs during baking.
• Heat transfer - obeys the laws of diffusion.
• Joanne Chang shows us some of the science behind making a birthday cake and a flaky pie dough:
  
  
• Though a birthday cake would work for Christmas baking (think about it), here's the recipe for another cake used in this lesson to try over the holidays, a Coca Cola cake:
  

  Ingredients

  1 cup cola
  1/2 cup buttermilk
  1 cup butter, softened
  1 3/4 cups sugar
  2 large eggs, lightly beaten
  2 teaspoons vanilla extract
  2 cups all-purpose flour
  1/4 cup cocoa
  1 teaspoon baking soda
  1 1/2 cups miniature marshmallows
  3/4 cup chopped pecans, toasted (optional garnish)

  
  
  1. Combine the cola and the buttermilk in a bowl, then set the mixture aside.
  2. Beat the butter at a low speed with an electric mixer until creamy. Gradually add sugar; beat until blended. Add the egg and vanilla, and again beat at low speed until blended.
  3. Combine the flour and cocoa to the cola mixture. Add to the butter mixture alternately with the cola mixture; begin and end with the flour mixture. Beat at low speed just until blended.
  4. Stir in the marshmallows. Pour the batter into a greased and floured pan. Bake at 350° for 30 to 35 minutes. Now is the time to make your frosting.

  1/2 cup butter
  1/3 cup cola
  3 tablespoons cocoa
  1 (16-ounce) package powdered sugar
  1 tablespoon vanilla extract
  2 teaspoons vanilla extract

  5. Combine the butter, cola, and cocoa and bring it to a boil in a large saucepan over medium heat, stirring until the butter melts. Remove from heat, and whisk in the sugar and vanilla.
  6. Remove the cake from the oven, and allow it cool 10 minutes. Pour the frosting over the warm cake. Garnish with the pecans, if desired.

Infographic: Holiday Drinks From Around the World

Infographic via visual.ly

Deceived by a Huxtable

With Bill Cosby's troubles being one of the biggest stories in the news these days, it got me thinking about an episode of "The Cosby Show". It was the one where Denise wanted to sleep on the sidewalk in order to get tickets to see The Walking Lemons, that ended with Denise and her friends, Cliff, Claire, and their friends all dancing in the living room. The B-plot of this episode involved trying to get Rudy to eat her Brussels sprouts. The cutest Cosby kid hated those mini cabbages, and who could blame her? They were boiled, green, and slimy. But as is the case in most vegetables, getting children (and adults) to eat them all depends on how you cook them. I recently tried a recipe that brought out the flavour of the sprouts and made them a great side dish for any dinner table. As for Cosby himself? Like many people who grew up watching the Huxtables, and have fond memories of Fat Albert, I really hope the rape accusations aren't true. But with more women coming forward by the day, it looks like all the jazz musician grandfathers in the world can't save him now.

Ingredients

4 strips thick-cut bacon
2 tablespoons butter
454 g. Brussels sprouts, halved
1/2 large onion, chopped
salt
pepper

1.  Cook the bacon in a large skillet over medium-high heat until it's crispy. Place the bacon on a paper towel-lined plate, and then roughly chop it up.
2. In the same pan with the bacon fat, melt the butter over high heat. Add the onions and Brussels sprouts and cook, stirring occasionally, until the sprouts are golden brown, about 8 to 10 minutes.
3. Season everything with salt and pepper, to taste, and toss the bacon back into pan. Serve immediately.
   
   Makes 4 to 6 servings