My First Cooking Lesson

A while back I gave out my first cooking lesson.

I need to work on keeping the crowd's attention.

Sleepover

Want a little more insight into my food-obsessed life? Ok well this little tidbit may frighten you, or it may connect you to me on so many levels.

What occurs at midnight?

We make Betty Crocker brownies.

What's for breakfast the next morning?

The very same thing.

10 Arts Review

I'm in the process of writing my review for 10 Arts. Eric Ripert's attempt at a true "Phili" restaurant. I took the new camera, so don't expect the crap photos I so thoughtlessly presented you for the Vetri review.

Restaurant Wars

What a great episode last night. The cheftestants finally had a fun challenge.

The show started off with a quickfire consisting of manning the egg station at a popular breakfast joint (not Ihop). Antonia won, but we really didn't get to see much of the challenge. Clearly most of the time was being saved for restaurant wars. Mmm I was excited. Antonia's advantage allowed her to choose her team, and she clearly had the best picks, taking Steph and Richard. Wow, that's a team to beat. That left Spike, Lisa and Dale, and ahh the drama was inevitable.

The latter team tried an Asian restaurant, which was doomed to fail, while Antonia's group played it rather safe with a gastropub. I'll keep this post short, but I wish I could've gone to the gastropub. Is it only me? Or does anyone else hate Lisa? I can't stand her. Contrarily, I love Spike. It's pretty obvious he has no chance of winning, but the fact that he can seem to slide by every episode by doing nothing, is pretty amusing. Does he buy a new hat for every challenge?
I was kinda annoyed that Dale had to go home. Looks like no more Dale-Lisa drama for us viewers. I really hope Lisa flips at like Richard, who is rather quiet, next week. I wanna see her uppercut.

Dale being cut is just one step closer for Richard, and that makes me one step closer to the 5 bucks I'm entitled if he wins!

New Camera

Hey, Listen! There is light on the horizon. For mothers day my dad got himself, I mean my mom a new camera. It's kinda tricky, but I've finally figured out how to use it. This will replace the (as one commenter called it, and I agree 100%) "pinhole camera" that I've been using.

Nickmuffin Revamped!

I have recently taken the famed egg nickmuffin TM to the next level! My precious duck eggs have been gone for some time now, and endlessly I've searched for that same feeling of satisfaction that a fried duck egg sandwiched between two buttery english muffins can give you. The addition of other ingredients (cheese, spinach, mushrooms) has helped me in the mourning of my lost duck eggs, but nothing has helped me recover nearly as much as a new discovery. One day, a radical (not reactionary) idea came to me. Who doesn't like bacon and eggs? No one? ok good. Recently, my sister broke off a two week stint as a vegetarian with the sole quote "I couldn't resist the bacon." If my sister likes bacon, everyone does, trust me.

So yea, I was thinking about what I could do with bacon and eggs, but I didnt wanna do any of the boring (but delicious) obvious stuff like put a piece of bacon in my nickmuffin TM. So I took lots and lots of applewood smoked bacon. I rendered out all the fat, threw the bacon to my former-vegetarian sister, and saved the rendered fat. The next day, I took some of the fat from the fridge, heated it in a skillet, and fried an egg.


The outcome? Extremely delicious! The rich egg flavor combined with the salty, smoky notes from the bacon fat , and the buttery english muffin to create one amazing afterschool snack that would rival Cheetos if ever mass produced.

Yea, so how to end? Well, if you have money, and you want to do a restaurant based around the nickmuffin TM, phone me. Even just like a breakfast stand would be great. I'm free on Sundays.

Sam Talbot!

Sam Talbot, what a guy (he's even well dressed). Sam was my pick to win Top Chef season 2, and he should have, but came up just short. He came back last night as a guest judge and maintained his signature scowl throughout the episode.

The cheftestants had to forego giving some Chi-Town cops doughnuts and feed them some healthy meals. Spike (and his hat) won the quickfire with a messy-looking salad, and as a result got to shop for a few components of his healthy dish 10 minutes before anyone else. His choices would be unavailable to anyone else. Though he wouldn't admit it to Tom, Spike clearly tried to sabotage everybody by choosing bread, tomatoes, and chicken. Despite this advantage, Spike made an awful grape and olive filled chicken salad which he claimed "should work because it's salty and sweet." Tom reminded him that olives and grapes have other flavors to them.

I honestly can't remember the winning dish. I know Dale won, but none of the good dishes really stuck out to me. The bad dishes, on the other hand, were noticeable. Andrew's "sushi" did not appeal to me in the slightest. I knew he was landing himself in the bottom three once he substituted sushi rice with a parsnip, pine-nut mixture. Lisa was also in the bottom for jumbling some veggies and rice into what she called a "stir fry."

At judges table, Lisa made another enemy in Andrew. Of course she had to call him out in front of the judges. Fortunately for her, Andrew and his dirty mouth went home. I think Bravo might have rigged this elimination so that they could move their rating from TV-14 down to TV-PG.

As I saw in the preview for next week's episode, I was wrong about what I said in my previous top chef post about wedding wars replacing restaurant wars. Can't wait till next week.