chiaros
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Posts posted by chiaros
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21 hours ago, ratgirlagogo said:
PLEASE. LIke Morticia would ever have been caught DEAD in paisley. Padma's doin' Cher here.
16 hours ago, dewelar said:Or worse, caught ALIVE in paisley.
Perhaps it might be a notion to consider that paisley, tweeds, tartan, flannel, allblack, leather, frilly lace, whateverelseyouhaveinmind - are but artifacts of the suppositions imposed by *some* folks on what "fashion" or "tone" needs to be. "Fashion" is but an artificial construct lacking provable declarations about a person's (or, even, a FICTIONAL character's) idea of himself or herself.
ETA: And, in this vein, I also note that it has been reported that Joe Sasto has several leisure suits including a banana/canary yellow one which he wears at certain functions, and revels in it too. Why not? It sounds like something that would make my lip curl at the corners in both amusement and delight - but I imagine fashionistas would recoil in horror at even the very notion of it. Because they wouldn't be caught dead (or alive) in it?
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16 hours ago, noveltylibrary said:On 3/9/2018 at 4:22 AM, chiaros said:On 3/8/2018 at 10:49 PM, LeighLeigh said:
Padma dressed appropriately this week.
Yes, Padma didn't have a boobage problem this episode. What a surprise.
You're right. I take it back. She DID have a boobage problem. And she definitely looks like Morticia Addams here, except that even M.A. did not spill her boobs out like that. But P.L. does resemble more this "hair wig model" as shown here, boobs and all.
Somehow she managed to be more "covered up" in the early parts of the episode - maybe that was what I remembered when I made that post.
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On 2/4/2018 at 9:58 AM, chiaros said:
He made some recommendations for "a perfect day of eating" on Maui in this article from Nov 2017: https://www.jetsetter.com/magazine/1952/best-restaurants-on-maui-sheldon-simeon . The only overlap with the Feb 2018 F&W ad is L'AVA's Sportsbar & Karaoke.
He also hosts "Cooking in America", a series put out by Eater, now in its third season – https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUeEVLHfB5-QDnrM7U_DmP31k8L_2cB2k – and back in Season 1 episode 1 he talked about food in Hawaii: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yppa6dc8uf0 .
An article from 2014 also reported on his past restaurants and background, and dwelt on a meal (illustrating his food) at his past restaurant MIGRANT: https://mauitime.com/food-drink/maui-restaurants/migrant-maui-chef-sheldon-simeon-means-it-when-he-says-come-my-house-eat/ .
A couple of updates:
https://www.eater.com/2018/3/14/17101836/sheldon-simeon-lineage-maui-hawaii-opening
https://www.pressreader.com/usa/hawaii-tribune-herald/20180213/281986083020413
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Titles of Season 3 episodes given here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/TheExpanse/comments/83nzja/season_3_episode_titles/
WARNING: The posts subsequent to the O.P. (where the titles are given) have lots of spoilers (all "blurred out", though, until you hover your mouse/cursor over the blurred text and brief outlines are given) of what is thought to happen in the episodes (or at least the main thrust of the episode).
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1 hour ago, spacefly said:
I did spend a portion of the finally trying to see where the missing 9th person was at the table. oe said he was cooking for 9 but only 8 at the table.
Joe F did say "nine people" but I suspect he meant that plate #9 was the "Beauty Plate" for the camera shots.
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18 hours ago, stewedsquash said:
@chiaros Your description of vitello tonnato made me google it. I finally understood what he did with the dish and agree with what you said about it.
3 hours ago, Wings said:I just googled that dish. I must have missed hearing him say this. Odd but it must be good.
Vitello tonnato is an Italian dish of cold, sliced veal covered with a creamy, mayonnaise-like sauce that has been flavored with tuna.
Joe Flamm even called it by an "inverted" name, "Tonno Vitellato". :-)
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3 hours ago, freespeech said:
I really enjoy the show, but I was upset at Adrienne cutting up what looked like a live octupus. They have brains, they are cognizant - I just thought it was awful.
51 minutes ago, The Solution said:They're food. Tasty food.
48 minutes ago, Rahul said:The same can be said for all mammals, reptiles and poultry that humans consume.
(Disclaimer: I am a vegetarian)
https://www.google.com/search?q=paul+the+octopus
https://www.google.com/search?q=octopus+intelligence
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-mind-of-an-octopus/
http://theconversation.com/octopuses-are-super-smart-but-are-they-conscious-57846
...and regarding eating them...
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30 minutes ago, chabelisaywow said:
I made "another white guy" comment - and I admit it was more because I just liked Adrienne more.
I skim most Top Chef seasons since the douchey Voltaggio won.
OK, you liked Adrienne more. I might just murmur, though, that one might broaden one's horizons to include folks who are non-white-non-black. Just a suggestion.
As for "the douchey Voltaggio" – that is your opinion, of course, and you are fully entitled to it. I myself thought Michael Voltaggio was a very worthy winner, and he expressed his drive and reason for being the chef he was very well at Judges' Table in the finale of Season 6. His comments made clear why he was the person he was. If you skim TC seasons you may well have missed this. I never thought his reactions towards others in his season was "douchey" - rather, they were the result of his being driven to create excellent food, and folks who got in the way of that were liable to be caught up in his drive. His brother included, let alone people like Robin.
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2 hours ago, hendersonrocks said:
Thank you for sharing these two links - I really enjoyed both videos. PSA to others, they're short - 2 mins each, roughly, and give a good window into how each of them are feeling post-finale - I thought Adrienne's, especially, was worth watching. She's a good egg.
They were interesting vids. And yes, as you say, Adrienne was a "good egg" – but she did acknowledge that even she herself thought that Joe F was likely to win as dinner service proceeded towards the end.
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1 hour ago, awaken said:
Didn’t Paul Qui win a season, Stephanie Izard, and Kevin from Philadelphia? I don’t believe they’re white males.
Also Hung Huynh (S3), Kristen Kish (S10), Mei Lin (S12), and Brooke Williamson (S14) who were all also not white males. So that makes 7 out of 15 TC winners who were not white males. That's a 47%winning rate for non-white-male winners. That's not shabby at all considering the preponderance of white males in the higher echelons of the food industry in the USA at the restaurant level. (What one might think about that is a different topic) But I also suspect that those complaining about "another white male winning" don't see non-whites-non-blacks (of whatever sex) in their calculations (and only white or black females that they approve of).
ETA: There were also eleven runners-up (out of 15 seasons, including S3-S7which had double-runners-up)) who were not white males. Coming in second isn't too shabby either, and the representation of talent in this pool shows that "white males" don't dominate Top Chef.
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5 hours ago, LeighLeigh said:
Padma dressed appropriately this week.
Curtis Duffy was a pleasure to look at.
Yes, Padma didn't have a boobage problem this episode. What a surprise.
Curtis Duffy looks a lot older than I would have expected, from what he looked like just a few years ago. (Yes, I ate at his previous restaurant and have seen him in person) I'm sure folks also know (or, for those who do not) that Grace (the restaurant that Duffy helmed in Chicago that got those three Michelin stars Top Chef "touted" on this finale episode) has closed, and Duffy is embroiled in a dispute with the owner of Grace.
https://chicago.eater.com/2017/12/20/16803456/grace-closing-curtis-duffy-michael-muser-dispute
Of course, when they shot this season of Top Chef (in summer 2017) Duffy was still helming Grace. But since then......
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I like John Tesar. His life's journey and travails and recoveries I find humanizing and affecting. His cooking chops, too, I think is not in question.
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Joe Flamm on the finale: http://www.bravotv.com/top-chef/season-15/videos/joe-flamm-reacts-to-the-top-chef-season-15-finale
Adrienne Cheatham on the finale: http://www.bravotv.com/top-chef/season-15/videos/adrienne-cheatham-opens-up-about-the-emotions-of-the-top-chef-season-15
Adrienne says that as the meal went along and as she was tallying it up she began to realize that Joe might take it.
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5 hours ago, bobbobbob199 said:
Based on the comments, the finale wasn't even close...I get the feeling it was a resounding Joe Flamm victory. He basically won the 2nd and 4th courses, Adrienne won the first, and the third was leaning towards Joe also.
Although I appreciate Adrienne's passion for southern cuisine, it seems like she cooks her best food when it is not related to Southern cuisine, or uses French technique to redefine Southern cuisine. Her third course seems to be too close to traditional southern cuisine. Her first course looked amazing, though.
Agreed for the most part.
Glad Joe Flamm won. (I would also have preferred a Joe vs Joe finale - but that's water under the bridge)
For myself, I would have preferred Joe F’s dishes every course, I think. I thought Adrienne's dishes were either somewhat overwrought or skated towards being mish-mashes. Including her 1st course. It also seems to me that a dish can be "innovative" or "inventive" but the question is does it taste wonderful? Do the ingredients make sense or are they just...innovative?
Joe Flamm was also inventive but in a more subtle way, I thought - like his inversion and play on Vitello Tonnato in his first dish, and it seemed to be very tasty. Adrienne’s first dish was ooh and aahed over by the judges but it seemed different diners liked different parts of it, even though Padma and Gail loved it in its entirety.** Tom C mentioned the uni and ham worked well together, and for myself I’d like that too – but buttermilk dashi? Um…no.
Joe F’s pasta dish brought together less-seen ingredients with vision and - thanks to Joe Sasto, who contributed to the conceptualization and was basically the one who enabled its reduction to practice - was quite, quite lovely. I would have just admired it for a while before reluctantly putting my fork into it, and them promptly ordered another round of it. But the octopus and inky grits? Not for me, thanks, but you’re welcome to it.
Asparagus cooked in asparagus juice, plus bone marrow sauce - sounds like a sublime combination. OK, chewy ribeye was regrettable - but...why not just turn a chunk of it on the plate by 90 degrees and cut against the grain? In other circumstances, steak that still has texture and some resistance to it sounds nicer to me than meat so soft that it is mushy. The short ribs sounded nice, but the beans - half-mashed beans - um...I’ll pass; and Nancy Silverton also said it was dry.
That chocolate cake and the fixings for it - glad they/Fatima finally got it right, and it looked very elegant and attractive and it seemed it tasted wonderful, if mis-named. The ricotta wouldn’t have bothered me. That not-banana-pudding with blobs and bits and pieces scattered over the plate - it looked like something that fell off the counter and smashed to bits on the floor. In this case, too, the mis-naming had to do directly with what one expected the tastes to be; whereas in the other case the mis-naming merely had to do with who would have made it.
** And that tuile, which seemed very important to the dish, was successful only because of her getting specific cooking advice and info midway through the 2-day cooking process from Chef Ripert.
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3 hours ago, LennieBriscoe said:
She got a cooking tip DURING the competition from Eric Ripert.
3 hours ago, candall said:It was just a little bit weird for Adrienne to phone up Eric Ripert and tell him her tuile wasn't coming out right. Oh, right! Whisk it in the pan. Thanks!
2 hours ago, hendersonrocks said:Well, they both had cheffy mentor conversations - and it certainly seemed as though Adrienne’s provided specific assistance midway through the final that actually helped improve her dish whereas Joe’s was before they started prep.
Yes. When I was watching this happen on the show I was thinking, "Is this even allowed?"
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2 hours ago, bluepiano said:
I've always thought he was the least deserving winner. Aside from his mediocre cooking, he was openly dismissive of non-American cuisines, once saying that he didn't like Asian food because he didn't like "sooey sauce." Any chef who doesn't know how to pronounce soy sauce should not win Top Chef in my book.
Kevin Sbraga wasn't the only one dissing "Asian" cuisine on that season of Top Chef (S7). Kenny Gilbert and Timothy "Tim" Dean were even worse. The latter two were openly sneering (let me rephrase that – SNEERING with curled lip) at Angelo Sosa for cooking ONLY "Asian" (according to them), whatever they thought "Asian" to mean; and one of them - as an example - simply dismissed contemptuously a dish Angelo was cooking as another "Asian dish" because it had a few drops of soy sauce, never mind that everything else in that dish was European in nature. These two chefs (and to a lesser extent Sbraga) conveyed the impression, at least as portrayed by the show as I recollect, that they thought "Asian cuisine" to be beneath contempt.
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3 hours ago, LeighLeigh said:
First Manbun, now Padma. My daughter was watching an old episode of Star Trek Enterprise, and Padma was a guest star. She played a princess (naturally).
Not JUST a princess. She played...
QuoteShe is Kaitaama, to be the First Monarch of the Sovereign Dynasty of Krios Prime.
Riiiiight......she is to be the MONARCH over all.....
See here: http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Precious_Cargo_(episode)
Heh. As it happens, I am playing Season 2 of ST:Enterprise - from my CD set of the whole series right now. I do this from time to time; I enjoy this iteration of ST quite a bit.
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17 hours ago, cooksdelight said:
I didn’t single him out, I mentioned “They are all barehanded” but his photos were my first reference since they were the one posted from the episode. I guess it doesn’t matter if you snot up your food if you’re on teevee. :)
Thanks for the clarification. Indeed they ALL were using their bare hands.
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5 hours ago, cooksdelight said:
Looking at the pictures above of Sasto, does it bother anyone that they are all barehanded, not using gloves, to handle food?
Regarding "hands", contd: Chris (of Joe S and Chris) did have gloves on sometimes, like when peeling the yellow beets:
...but also did not, including when he was plating the dish - like with those green beans, as shown below:
So – EVERYONE used their bare hands to handle AND plate their food, including RIGHT IN FRONT of both the judges and the diners. As previously noted, Adrienne was shown rubbing her nose (one of the largest depositories of bacteria and germs) with her bare hands then went back to prepping her food with those nose-rubbed-hands.
It is unfair to Joe Sasto to single him out, if one were inclined to lean in this direction.
ETA: All of them also shook hands with various people, like the judges and famous chefs (thereby transferring germs from the hands of those other people to their own hands) - then went back to prepping their plates with their food using those same bare hands. ;-)
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5 hours ago, cooksdelight said:
Looking at the pictures above of Sasto, does it bother anyone that they are all barehanded, not using gloves, to handle food?
Regarding "hands", contd...Here are some screenshots of Joe Flamm and Carrie:
(The second and fourth shots also show their hands SLATHERED with the same food that went into the dish, replete with all their germs and bacteria and whatnot)
There would seem to be a period when Joe F did have gloves on:
...but it would seem that wasn't done for all the plating of the zucchini - see Carrie woman-handling them in the immediately previous shot..
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5 hours ago, cooksdelight said:
Looking at the pictures above of Sasto, does it bother anyone that they are all barehanded, not using gloves, to handle food?
Hmm. Do you eat sushi, especially nigirizushi?
Anyway, regarding "hands" in this episode: Here are screenshots of Adrienne & Bruce handling their food. Note the second shot where Adrienne RUBS HER NOSE (and then goes back to handling the food with those same hands; the third shot is not immediately after, though). Bruce is handling those chard leaves that were used to wrap that too-runny corn concoction.
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46 minutes ago, Fiero425 said:
We've had "comebacks" of epic proportions going back to Season 7! Kevin was mediocre at best and failed challenge after challenge, but somehow got his act together during the finale to win it all! Obviously anyone who survived LCK to win was huge like Kristen in Season 10 and Brooke from Season 14! ;-)
Indeed, Kevin Sbraga skated by so, so many times. and escaped elimination by just being not quite the worst each time. Much like Adrienne this season. Kevin S also got the sheer luck of drawing Mike Voltaggio as his sous chef in the finale in Singapore, even if he had "studied up on" the local cuisine. IMO his "victory" was due more to Mike V rather than himself.
As for Kevin Sbraga's culinary endeavors without Mike V to help him - ALL of his restaurants in Philly have closed. He is, currently AFAIK, out of the culinary scene for the time being.
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On 3/2/2018 at 5:11 AM, Rammchick said:
Yep. It's why sushi is only marine fish.
Additionally, the best sushi is not always the freshest fish. It depends on the seafood component, but different fishes – besides being frozen, are also aged (yes, literally aged - like beef; or, for that matter, like game meats) for different periods depending on which fish it is. (Shellfish would tend to be served as fresh as possible, yes)
On 3/2/2018 at 3:09 PM, Blonde Gator said:I am such a fish snob (because I can't bear the thought of fish that's been out of the water for more than six hours or so) that I rarely order it in a restaurant, unless I can actually see it first.
Based on the above statement, one might suppose, then, that you would never eat sushi or sashimi, especially in a high-class restaurant? Unless, perhaps, if you sit at the sushi bar and "see" the tuna and other fish cuts and are allowed to smell it and poke at it? [One can see the fish, but anything more I think it unlikely the itamae in most places would oblige] See my comment above. If you go to the finest sushi restaurants in Japan or anywhere else (including in the USA) and expect to be served the freshest fish straight from the ocean and that had been alive just a few hours before you may be disappointed.
Here are a few references for those who were not aware of this:
https://www.thesushigeek.com/the-sushi-geek/2016/02/05/719
https://www.quora.com/How-does-a-top-sushi-chef-age-different-fish
http://www.foodandwine.com/fwx/food/freshest-fish-doesnt-always-make-best-sushi
And, in the vein of talking about sushi and sashimi, here's some stuff on the tuna that goes through Tsukiji Fish Market in Tokyo, from which places like Sukiyabashi Jiro, one of the most famous sushi places in the world (and any number of other sushi places there), get their tuna. Note: the tuna has been frozen, for days, out of the water for days; and will be aged further by Chef Jiro Ono (and now his son) for days longer.
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On 3/2/2018 at 9:18 PM, stormy said:
I don't know, maybe it's me but Padma's boobs hanging out really bothered me.
Other than that, I was very happy to see Joe go. He seemed to be wandering around like he didn't really know what was going on.
Taste Testing: Dining at the Restaurants of Cheftestants/Judges
in Top Chef
It's interesting - the resistance of 'Murcans (and, to a lesser extent, "Western Folks") to bone-in meats. Speaking generally, of course; there are always exceptions. The reluctance of 'Murcans to have bone-on ribs in a Chinese dish, or a whole fish where you have to pick the flesh off the bones, or chopped-up chicken pieces where the bone is entirely left in --- it is curious how so many people resist these things. Cooking meat with the bones endows the dish with more flavor - and in many cuisines the resulting "separating of the meat from the bones at the table" is NOT an issue, and handled easily. Cooking steaks bone-in has even been thought by many 'Murcans to be desirable, yet just as many dislike it - perhaps because of the "inconvenience" of having to cut off the meat from around the bones. So interesting.