Coaching Cooking

The great polenta makeover has occurred! Monique, my partner in crime, came over and we went to town on the polenta problem. Monique also made a great tuna noodle salad with tuna, mayo, sliced olices, chopped dill pickles (and on and on, it was great and we ate like fiends). So we dined on polenta while enjoying the latest season of Weeds. Woohoo!

First, I cut the polenta into triangles and patted each piece with paper towels to dry them out a bit.

Then, I made a quick mushroom sauce with fresh brown mushrooms and oyster mushrooms. I sliced the mushrooms and sauteed them in butter and chopped garlic in a nonstick pan over medium-low heat. Then I turned the heat up to high after the mushrooms had cooked through and added a 1/4 cup of 2004 Sauvignon Blanc.

Then, I pan-fried the polenta after coating it with flour. I also used a nonstick pan for this step and added a few tablespoons of vegetable oil. Placing the polenta triangles carefully in the nonstick pan, I sauteed the polenta for a few minutes on each side until the polenta triangles were crispy.

The crispy polenta paired perfectly with the garlic-mushroom-wine sauce. I even made a second batch of the mushroom sauce to add to the rest of the polenta triangles. **Cooking tip**: I recommend adding a few spoonfuls of flour to the mushroom sauce as the wine is reducing. The flour creates a nice thickening and then you have an instant sauce.

Ciao bellas…

I’m a huge fan of Top Chef as I have proven here and here and here. So I have to wonder, “who the hell is this Padma Lakshmi anyway?” She’s always featured prominently as the host of Top Chef and they always tout her culinary skill (because she’s written A WHOLE COOKBOOK ALL BY HERSELF). Sorry, had to get a little Go Fug Yourselves on Padma for a minute.

Seriously though, I don’t get it. Padma is very hot and clearly knows her way around the kitchen (despite wearing that ridiculous string bikini/puffy coat/handkerchief combo in Episode 7) and yet I just don’t buy it. I’m much more likely to accept Tom Colicchio as a chef because he presents as someone who has expertise. That, and he probably won’t be wearing a bikini anytime soon. Even Gail Simmons, whose demeanor is glacial most of time, appears to have the culinary knowledge. I guess this show has fallen prey to the classic trilogy of characters: Father Knows Best, Mother Keeps Everyone in Line and Sexy Wins the Race.

Sigh, why can’t Anthony Bourdain just be one of the judges? He’s guaranteed to drink too much and to refer to crack houses or debauchery at least a few times.

I was all ready to decorate my sugar cookies with silver balls and icing, when I decided to do a little research of those silver balls a.k.a. silver dragees. According to this SF Chronicle article, silver dragees were removed from stores in California in 2003. WHAT?!! This is a reason why people mock California. We should be able to eat foods or even decorations that aren’t good for us because we should be able to choose to eat what we wanna eat! Yeah, I have to get all ranty because I think this situation is just ridiculous.

So I now possess contraband…and Mark Pollock can just come right over and take them from me. Yeah, I dare you to drive down from Napa to collect my silver balls. Go get some of your own…

In honor of junky quizzes everywhere (and my own half-assed attempt to lure in the readers via ProBlogger’s latest writing group contest), I present my Top 10 Food Trend Predictions for 2007 (in no particular order…) with the answers at the bottom of the page. Yes, some of you will attempt to read the whole thing and many of you will scroll up and down like crazy monkeys. Enjoy!

1. Hershey’s Kisses will release its newest flavor of chocolate kiss (in honor of their 100-year anniversay) and fulfill many a skinny-legged celebrities dream of total and complete train-wreck, nightmarish and that flavor is….

2. Carl’s Jr. and Jack in the Box will team up and make the burger famously known as…

3. Someone will finally invent diet food in pill form and call it…

4. Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie will jointly release their long-awaited cookbook called…

5. Donald Trump will open a restaurant called…

6. The new Top Chef, winning in a sick and twisted fate, will be announced and that person is…

7. Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods will battle out the latest form of microfood that is…

8. A well-known dish will be banned by this major city:

9. Starbucks will unveil its latest drink called the…

10. Pork, in a massive coup attempt, will tire of the label “the other white meat” and team up with….

Answers:

1. self-loathing…oh, and cucumber slices. Yeah, it’s not their best-seller. I prefer the candy cane ones myself.

2. the Ten-Dollar Super Testosterone Sirloin Philly Cheese Spicy Jack Ultimate Portuguese Double Patty with Sauteed Onions, Onion Rings, Onion Wedges, Onion Bits on a Sourdough French Ciabatta Roll with Bacon Guacamole Sauce…and it’ll come with its own leather carrying case and a shovel.

3. NWRs (NeoWonkaRichies): these pills will include flavors like: Vodka and a half-slice of olive, Melba Toast and Tuna (no mayo), that “diet� salad plate from the local diner with the tomato and hamburger patty, and a piece of chocolate (made with Splenda). These pills will help a person lose water weight super fast, but then they will also feel the urge to dress like the Olson twins and to wear makeup straight from “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?�

4. “OMG, the Simple Meal: Tips and Tricks on Roadside Cooking� with recipes for Humble Hermès Pie and Dehydrated Water.

5. D’Or: the restaurant where the glitterati and the slight of body go to strut their quickly waning stuff. Signature dishes include the foie gras with caviar, seared ahi tuna and abalone stuffed in a jewel encrusted shell topped with a rich gold flake sauce. Signature drinks will include the “You’re Effen Fired!� featuring black cherry Effen vodka, bitters and a signature cocktail pick with the Donald’s face on it (and the unemployment office number on the back).

6. Michael Midgley (a.k.a. Mike or the Dude Who Always Looks Stoned). At this point Tom Colicchio will have a heart attack while Padma Lakshmi tries to revive him with her bare, sexy hands. Gail Simmons will also try to help, but no one really cares.

7. microchips in flavors like scallion valley, cucumbertino, munchie view and san franchese with caraway seeds. These chips will come in teeny-tiny bags made from soy-flavored ink and pressed, organic rice paper and each bag will include inspiring quotes from gurus like Mitch Albom, Rachael Ray and Suze Orman. The microchips may cause a little bloating at first due to their high smug content, but in the long run you’ll feel pretty self-satisfied until it catches up to you when you mix carbohydrates with any alcoholic or dairy beverage (try the Compiaciuto!).

8. Boston will finally ban Manhattan clam chowder just like it has always wanted to since the turn of the last century. Some chefs retaliate by secretly slipping tomatoes into New England clam chowder. In retaliation New York City will to outlaw the term “chowdah� and the two cities reach an ugly tipping point involving several thousand cases of oyster crackers and a televised debate.

9. Compiaciuto with double shots of espresso and high-quality chocolate imported from sterile monks in Rome who hand-sort the cacao beans while wearing silk gloves. This drink induces pleasant feelings of worthiness until you have to remember that you paid $9 for it. Oh and it comes with a side of airy milk foam a la Ferran Adria.

10. creamed spinach to form the ultimate, modern steakhouse meal. Beef, in a fit of jealousy, will hire Dr. Phil’s consulting company to beef up it’s image. Yeah, ha ha ha…

Check out the other predictions, reviews and lists at ProBlogger. Hey, we can’t all be Nostradamus. Some of us are just going for that cheap, snarky laugh! Thanks to Darren Rouse for the motivation to write all this silliness. Not that I need motivation to be sarcastic…

Happy Holidays! May your drinks stay effervescent and boozy and may your food taste better than the Ten-Dollar Super Testosterone Sirloin Philly Cheese Spicy Jack….

As a foodie and aspiring chef, I promise I will never make a dish that looks like this:

This dish is called Ring Around the Tuna. It is as if vegetables were mummified in a evil, green gelatin prison, with radishy decoration (to minimize the creepy effects of the jello). Plus the green olive eyes staring out at you, daring you to take a bite. There’s tuna in there somewhere. It’s probably hiding because too embarrassed to be associated with the ring a.k.a. the Ring of Gelatin Death.

Ming, I watch you on “Top Chef” and you seem so calm, cool and rational (in that David Carradine–I’ll feng shui your house-kind of way)…

I bought your chicken egg rolls at Target today. Okay, I had high hopes for the flavor even though the box was a slight shade away from the blue label generic brand. I even felt excited to watch the egg rolls sizzle away in my toaster oven.

I bit into the flaky crust of the egg roll and the texture and taste seemed nearly perfect. Nearly.

Your judging on “Top Chef” last week was rational and even helpful if a tad on the “Father Knows Best” side.

It’s the PEPPER. The freakin’ pepper! You don’t put that much pepper in eggrolls. I don’t care if you need to spice up those Target brand eggrolls for the average layperson. The chicken, those vermicelli noodles, and every other ingredient seemed okay. The eggrolls weren’t even overly salty (which is a tough trick to pull with frozen). And how about throwing in some better Asian flavors? You admit on the packaging that you used hoisin sauce although I tasted nary a drop of it through all that peppery madness. Game over, dude.

Man, as Lois says to Jack in “Forget Paris” you are “just short of greatness.” That’s right, Ming, you and your Target line cookware are just short of greatness. It kills me…

Check out the almost master here.