Medellitin

DISCLAIMER: READING THIS BLOG POST MAY RUIN TOP CHEF FOR YOU FOREVER. IF YOU DON'T LIKE SAUSAGE, DON'T TOUR SAUSAGE FACTORIES. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. I started to reliably predict who was going to be eliminated around season two of Top Chef. This isn't because I am a super genius, it's on top of me being a super genius. If you think about competition-based, reality television, each episode is a story with a winner and a loser. The winner and loser of an hour long television show are likely to get more airtime. When there is someone going home, it is in their best interest to make you as invested in that person as possible. This breaks down to three simple rules: The loser is the star of the episode. The star needs facetime early and often. The star of the show needs to have in-episode strife. Today's episode (Season 5, Episode 7) is a great example. While livetweeting (f'ing shoot me now, I livetweeted something), I called Gene and Melissa being elimina...

A: My Next Blog Post.

It is really uncomfortable to admit my love for fishing. Even before I started my culinary love affair with fish, I have always enjoyed the simple pleasure of casting a line out into the water and waiting for something to happen. And waiting. and waiting. Most of my angling experiences were in a southern Vermont lake, teeming with perch, large and small mouth bass, and trout. In the ten years we went up there, I think we caught about three fish that the state would allow you to keep. In later years, I would occasionally get out on the ocean, mostly in New England and primarily blues and stripers. Just before new years I had the chance to go ocean fishing in the Florida Keys. According to our first mate, are likely to catch (in order of my personal preference): Blackfin Tuna, Grouper, Wahoo, Mackerel, King Mackerel, Sailfish, Barracuda. As luck would have it, we caught about 15 fish in three hours, which was mostly barracuda, king mackerel and 1.5 Mackerel. "One point five...

As far as food blog meme's go, Khymos' "They Go Really Well Together (TGRWT)" contest. Martin Lersch (it's his blog), is one of those smart, sciencey food guys. He way more scientist than chef, but if you read me, then you clearly don't care about that. I like reading him because he doesn't dumb anything down. And when people don't dumb things down, it means you have to smarten up. You should be reading his blog in general, but what I really wanted to talk about was TGRWT. Once a month, Martin announces two ingredients that well, go really well together. Some flavor-pairings are really counter-intuitive. Here is his description: The name refers to flavour pairing of ingredients based on their content of volatile aroma compounds. The idea behind flavour pairing is that if two (or more) foods have one or more volatile compounds in common, chances are good that they might taste well together. Click for a list of other flavour pairings and to read...

I have a fatal attraction to unusual product. Even worse, I recently bought the bizarre at the bazaar and promptly forget its name: In attempts to do research, i typed "tuber that looks like a maggot". Instead I found this video: [vodpod id=Groupvideo.1859815&w=425&h=350&fv=] more about " Maggot Lives Inside Woman's Head ", posted with vodpod Then "tuber maggot". The results were not promising. I had a vague memory of the sign. Whatever these little nuggets were called, it began with the letter C. Let's refine our approach. This was a tuber. A tuber is a root vegetable. Let's zip on over Wikipedia , and look at my options. Wikipedia tubers that begin with a C: Chufa and Crosne. A couple of google searches later and we are confirmed. They are Crosnes. The Internet also suggests simple preparations. Butter, salt and pepper. Boiled. Pickled (Chinese preparations). Raw (Crunchy in salads). First attempt had them...

I have been slowly transcribing notes from a number of food talks i've been to dating back about five months now. I have seen: Alex and Aki from Ideas In Food (Liquid Nitrogen) Wylie DuFresne and David Zuddas at the French Institute Ferran Adria at the NYPL Grant Achatz and Nathan Myhrvold also at the NYPL Thomas Keller and Michael Ruhlman promoting Under Pressure Since I have already written about Liquid Nitrogen and Under Pressure , I suppose I only owe you Achatz, Myhrvold, Adria, DuFresne and Zuddas. I don't know if this is intentional or by accident, but all of the remaining talks really focused on food as art and/or the future of food. That is a ridiculous amount of knowledge and culinary perspective to absorb.  While each one incrementally changed how I thought about food, getting such a high dose of foodthought in a short period of time has forever altered how I interact with food.   Did I mention that, in one trip to Chicago, I experienced Moto, Alinea, Blackb...

Everyone has experiences that change the way they perceive one of their five senses. Altered Tastes is an ongoing feature where I discuss culinary moments that rewire my sense of taste forever. Without further adieu... I love mushrooms. Love them. I will judge any produce section by the variety and quality of their mushrooms. Usually, I am into the exotics. Mushrooms that can't be easily cultivated. You know, the good stuff. But I digress, because today, I discuss: The garden-variety, white button mushroom. The vanilla of fungus, found plastic-wrapped in produce aisles at every grocery store. Sliced raw atop all the most uninspired salads I have eaten. I've never given this mushroom much consideration. In fact, I am generally prejudiced against them. Recently, I had the opportunity to visit a mushroom farm. Walking past a steaming pile of compost, and I mean steaming , we entered one of the pens. Mushroom studded compost pallets extended as far as the eye can see. ...