If you like to cook...

[Wildcat]

None of them ever are.

Green doe think about this a minute.

Say several of the TnDeer members are coming to your house for dinner and you have one hour to get it all ready to perfection. You will also have some helpers to get the job done. BUT you cannot know what the main ingredient will be until an houre before dinmner time. There is no way you can start something and it will go together with the "secret ingredient" unless you know ahead of time.

Don't get me wrong. I like the show but the part of the "secret ingredient" is fake and because it is fake it turns me off.

 

[TennesseeRains]

Yeah - they did a special on Iron Chef...and there's A LOT more time involved!

On another note Ina Garten (Barefoot Contessa) is a pilot, has a MBA, and even worked at the White House as a budget analyst - writing the nuclear energy budget and policy papers on nuclear centrifuge plants for Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.

I kinda like watching her show - except for when she bakes stuff (actually I HATE baking) and starts measuring everything....

 

[green doe]

Ever see that show Dinner Impossible or something like that? The dude has something like 5 hours to make dinner for 200 people in a kitchen he's unfamiliar in with no ingredients? I watched it once. And that's only because they had some WWE wrestlers on it. I didn't like it too much.

TR, I did not know about Ina being a pilot but I did know the other stuff. Thanks for that info. Pretty cool. You gotta try her roasted shrimp.

 

[bowriter]

Iron Chef is just a show. Of course they know in advance. But if you want to see some real cooks, watch the sous chefs in the background. Their knife work is unbelieveable. The most irritating thing about Iron Chef is the freakin judges and their artsy fartsy ways. I watch it because I am still trying to figure out how to reach with bare fingers into boiling water.

Why do you have turn you fork upside down and put it in your left hand?

Now-Barefoot Contessa: She stole that name. The real Barefoot Contessa is a professional photographer orginally from Vermont, now living in N. Carolina. She is a very close and dear friend. She she stole the name from some dead hysterical broad. She led expeditions (the one still alive) all over the world and did it barefoot. She once walked across most of Australia barefoot. She is or was, the main photgrapher for McD and Porsche.

And boy can she dance.

As for the cook, can't stand her.

 

[bowriter]

Now there is a sous chef on tv that I would love to watch in action. Actually, I think she may have her own show. Crazy looking, spiked, blonde hair and works in shorts all the time. She works with Mario and Flay a lot on Iron Chef. She is always in the background. I have never seen knife work like that and she never wastes a motion. I have seen her on many shows, always as a sous chef and I have never seen a chef have to tell her what to do. She is an absolute master with Madalin slicer.

I think she may own a restraunt somewhere. I was watching her on some show making sauces and she had three going at one time. Try that in you home kitchen.

 

[green doe]

Now-Barefoot Contessa: She stole that name. The real Barefoot Contessa is a professional photographer orginally from Vermont, now living in N. Carolina. She is a very close and dear friend. She she stole the name from some dead hysterical broad. She led expeditions (the one still alive) all over the world and did it barefoot. She once walked across most of Australia barefoot. She is or was, the main photgrapher for McD and Porsche.

It was my understanding that Ina Garten took the name Barefoot Contessa from the specialty food store that she bought back in the 70's. The previous owner had named it based on a movie of that title from the '50s. The Barefoot Contessa store not only sold specialty foods, they also sold prepared foods and baked goods. But all that was before my time.

 

[bowriter]

The original Barefoot Contessa lived in Europe sometime before any of us were born. She was a historical figure of some note and I have long since forgotten how she got the name. Margo Pinkerton used the name to trademark her photography starting many years ago. Margo has a tremendous aversion to shoes or any kind of underwear. She is an addicted nudist and a real ball to take fishing.

There are several businesses and probably several people using the name. In fact, I have been thinking of using it myself.

 

[JimFromTN]

I realise they are not the same person but now everytime I watch the Barefoot Contessa, I am going to be thinking she is not wearing any underwear or shoes. I will never be able to watch that show again.

 

[green doe]

Thinking about that would kinda ruin the show for me, too, Jim. I'll just think about the oven roasted shrimp.

 

[bowriter]

LMAO

 

[BigAl]

I think Flay likes to drink as much as he eats. Ate at his place in Vegas and it was really good. Emeril live was a really good show, but they all lose their fire after a couple of years. At at one of his places, and the food was excellant. I like Paula when she first started cooking, but when she hit it big she changed and I lost interest.

Guy is probably my fav right now, and he's not even cooking. I'd love to win the lottery and hit the road and do a Diners, Driveins, and Dives tour.

 

[basset]

>>Never been a single dish cooked in England that was fit to eat.

Obviously you have never had a real English Christmas dinner... or good fish and chips.


>>Why do you have turn you fork upside down and put it in your left hand?
To see if we can pass for furriners. Why do you hold your fork in your fist and jam it into your steak like you were stabbing someone?

About cooking TV shows - I like to watch Gordon Ramsay yell at people who are trying to run restaurants.

 

[bowriter]

Well...I've had their fish and chips. Dang near the only thing edible but far from good. I also tried their kidney pie. As far as I could tell, all they did was cook the piss out of it

Some of the best food you will ever find are at little run down joints off the main road. There is one outside New Orleans that doubles as a bait shop. Best oysters and crawfish I ever ate.

I met Emeril one time, years ago when he was running Commanders Palace. I asked him if he knew the difference between Cajun and Creole. He started laughing and said, "Yeah, the price."

As for Flay drinking, I have never been around an executive chef that didn't drink. That's how they keep their pallete clean. I don't think I could boil a potatoe if I didn't have a drink in my hand.

 

[basset]

Roast beef and Yorkshire pudding with gravy, roasted potatoes, Brussels sprouts, and plum pudding with custard... you must have had the wrong pie or something, English cooking can indeed be a little heavy but done right it's really good.

 

[JimFromTN]

I'd rather eat Capt D's fish and chips than eat any in England. I lived there for a month and I never had a single fish and chips that were any good. The fries were so greasy that when you held them up they would roll back over you finger and leave a greasy spot. You have to drowned them in vinager to cut the grease and the batter slides off the fish. Its been a while but for some reason all I remember was peas and carrots and greasy fish and chips.

Do you remember the name of place outside New Orleans that doubles as a bait shop? Might see if I can find it the next time I am down that way. My wife an I drove around Lousianna tasting the local fare and I was a little dissapointed. Nothing was really seasoned well. Everything seemed bland. It was like they were afraid to spice it up so they expected you to add hot sauce if you wanted any kind of flavor. I don't think I hit enough hole in the walls. I did hit a couple and their gumbo was bland and so was the crawfish ettouffe. By the way, I much prefer Cajun to Creole. I don't care for fish or shell fish cooked in a tomatoe sauce, although I can't turn down a good shrimp creole. I definately prefer a cajun style ettoufee to a creole style. I much prefer a roux. There is a resturaunt called the Gumbo Shop in New Orleans and they put out a cookbook. I cook their crawfish ettouffe out their cookbook all the time and its the best I have ever tasted. I went to their resturant and ordered it and it was nothing like the recipe in their cookbook. It was not nearly as good. It seemd like it had been simmering on the stove for about 3 days too long and it was not nearly as flavorful. The best meal I had down there was in Slidell in a little hole in the wall called The Boiling Point where we got a crab and shrimp boil. It was fantastic. The next best meal we had was at the Acme Oyster House where we split a dozen oysters and a soft shell crab po boy. Of course, a good New Orleans breakfast of poached eggs on tasso ham and potato cakes smothered in hollandaise sauce with bloody Mary's came in a close 2nd.


Here is the Gumbo Shop cookbook. Its got allot of great recipes including crawfish ettouffe. Its also got a really good corn and crawfish chowder and a shrimp creole over blackened redfish. The recipes are actually allot better than what they serve in their resturaunt.

http://www.gumboshop.com/cookbook/cookbook.asp

 

[TennesseeRains]

On the upside, the Limys use newspaper to serve the fish...it'd be better - for your taste buds - to eat that.

 

[bowriter]

Jim the reason for that is the recipes are designed for small portions. In the restr. They are cooking in large quantities. Unless a dish is prepared individually, it is hard to get the seasoning right. I can cook for my wife a lot easier than for 60 people.

Gumbo and etoufe and even jambalya are all cooked to the cook's taste. And that will vary. With gubo and etoufe, the color of the roux is dependent on the cook. Some like a blonde roux, some a peanutbutter roux and some...like me, like a penny roux. Therefore that taste will vary.

As for the lack of seasoning, that comes from catering to the tourist trade. The cooks learned that most tourists can't handle too much seasoning. Next time you are down that way, keep an eye for shabby old joints with rusted pickups parked outside If you are ever in Lafayette, go to Dides and get the gumbo and dirty rice...if it hasn't burned down. And if you can work it in, try the crawfish festival Breaux Bridge. Eat and drink all day, dance all night. Then do it again the next day.

 

[BigAl]

Havent been to Orleans since before Katrina. been dying to go down and stop by Mothers and get a Ferdi Po-boy with debris.

 

[bowriter]

Mothers is open again.

 

[JimFromTN]

I have had that experience when cooking for larger groups. You can't just say since one batch feeds 6 and and you want to feed 30 so you just multiply all of the ingredients by 5. I have tried that and it turned out that it did not make enough roux so it was not thick enough and the heat from the spice was overpowering.

I ate at Perjeans once for breakfast just outside of Lafayette. Kind of touristy but the food was good. I seem to have better luck with breakfasts in LA. I think I had some kind of decadent waffles or something. I had grillades and grits for breakfast another time in LA. That was pretty awesome. I have been thru Beaux Bridge but we did not stop and eat. I wonder if the crawfish festival occurs around the time of the shrimp festival down on the Alabama coast. I could work in a very fattening vacation.