Sweet and Sour in Boston

So I know I'm getting to be an old lady when Top Chef is 15 minutes longer and I can hardly stay awake. Stupid Bravo. They totally didn't need to add those 15 minutes, they could have cut out those weird snippets they keep doing (mostly about Hosea the Hussy and Leah the Leper...as in, she's all over Hosea...). Anyway. They start off with their quickfire challenge and as Padma is standing there, Bravo conveniently edits Fabio giving her the once over :) I wish he'd give ME the once over...but only if his name was John Paul. So they do this tasting and it ends up being Stefan who loses to Hosea. Great. Hosea is around for another week. Ugh. Then they find out they're going to be catering Gail's bridal shower. They get into teams of "Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue". According to Yahoo the phrase has this origin: http://ask.yahoo.com/20031027.html
JP previously wondered if I'd use the phrase at our wedding. More than likely. Oh, and the something blue can be anything (flowers, handkerchief, dundies). Anyway, they break up into teams and try to figure out what to cook. Something New and Something Blue definitely have the hardest task at hand. Something blue kept talking about the ocean and blue and I kept yelling at my TV..."USE BLUE FISH!!" but did they listen? No. Idiots. I blame Leah. Everyone goes to the kitchen to prep and we find out exactly what everyone is going to make. Honestly, this elimination challenge isn't that exciting. Booooring. The next day they head to Manhattan to Gail's "bridal shower". Seriously? Where are the presents??? Where are all the ribbons on the presents?? How will she know how many children she's going to have if she doesn't have any ribbons to break??? And if there aren't any ribbons, how will she make her fake bouquet for her rehearsal? And really ladies (read: PADMA), where is the cake?? This bridal shower SUCKS.
Everyone presents their food. Jeff's sorbet is loved. In yo face Stefan. Jamie's carrot mixture thingy is a hit, but stupid Ariane's lamb is an even bigger hit. WTF. Seriously. She hasn't proved she can cook anything. John Paul makes a fabulous turkey. I'm sure I could make a tomato salad with my eyes closed. And Joey makes fantastic lamb (or so I'm told because I hate the stuff). All of us aren't chefs. And we don't belong on Top Chef. Neither does Ariane. She really hasn't proved herself at all. Making the basics isn't going to win the competition. Kick her off already.
Team New fails miserably and for a little bit I'm scared my beloved Carla and Eugene are going to be sent home...
Team blue presents their lackluster fish (which totally would have been better if they did a BLUE FISH). Too bad Fabio's charming personality couldn't save their team from the bottom 2.
At judges table Carla doesn't throw Danny under the bus. I believe she is the ONLY person in TC history to keep her mouth shut even though she's not the one who messed up the dish. Kudos Carla. Kudos.
The judges discuss and the Blue team is safe. Bummer. I was hoping Leah would get sent home. Or that other girl with the bangs. Who is she again??
In the end Danny is sent home. He likens his being sent home to a ref making a bad call in a football game. Sadly, he is wrong; the fans will not be booing because you are gone Danny.

Oh god…they made this 15 minutes longer than usual…get ready for tons of Real Desperate Housewives and Swanson commercials. (I totally want the mom in that commercial to be like, “Wanna know a secret? You were adopted and now we are going to cook you alive in this chicken broth.” I hate child actors and actresses…they make me want to puke. And don’t even get me started on the Desperate Housewives show…seriously, if they want to make this show interesting, have it be about early-20’s hotties always in their bikini, not middle aged fat women.)

Anyway, on to Top Chef. Ariane won last week and she’s still frustrating the hell out of me. When you think of Top Chef, don’t you want an aspiring Boulud, Ripert, or Keller? Not some Jersey mom? I dunno, maybe she’s a much better chef than I’m giving her credit for, but dammit, do something to wow me. (Then again, maybe the competition is just that bad this year…in fact, I’m really beginning to believe that this year just has incompetent ass-hats pretending they can cook.)

So Top Chef can still continue to surprise and intrigue me, and this week’s quickfire did it for me. Testing your palate is a great Top Chef challenge. And I like the tournament style chalkboard. (Side note, even though the BCS has looked fondly on my beloved Sooners a few times I would love a playoff in college football.) There are a lot of clips of people showcasing how much they hate Stefan, but damn, I kinda dig this cat. Jamie knows he has a crush on her, and even wonders if he knows what a lesbian is. Um…honey, he’s EUROPEAN! Straight, gay, it’s all the same with him. Hell, he’d probably bring Fabio into the mix. Anyway, back to the tasting palate challenge. Hosea wins, and with it he gets immunity. Also, there is a confessional that both Leah and Hosea have significant others, but they still flirt a lot. To this I say: I’m still not seeing this great rack on Leah.

The cheftestants are broken up into 4 groups, “old”, “new”, “borrowed”, and “blue”. They all know this has something to do with a wedding. Do women even abide by that old saying? I mean, I’m not sure if Abby really is, and I don’t see why she would either. Who would want something old or borrowed on their wedding day…and if your wedding colors are different, why would you have blue if it might clash? Weddings are dumb…

The elimination challenge is for the cheftestants to cook four dishes (one from each group) for Gail’s bridal shower. Since Gail works for Food and Wine magazine, the 40 women who are attending will be foodies of some caliber. Throughout this challenge the cheftestants talk about their significant others and their weddings. Fabio’s wife is a hottie. Of course, I wouldn’t have expected anything less. The dude has the “Joey Tribiani” smirk every time he talks and it’s a winner with the ladies. Ariane talks about her family and they show a picture of what I would classify as the typical Jersey family. Jamie talks about how she hasn’t had this experience yet. I guess that means she never will either, what with her living in California and all that Prop 8 business. The big reveal comes when Tom does his sniff and sneer and Stefan mentions how he’s been married twice, to the same woman. This is also probably a good reason Alex was let go last week. He probably would have cried like a little bitch talking about how he’s missing his wedding planning, etc. I’m starting to believe Bravo is picking people off due to agenda, instead of talent.

So team OLD does heirloom tomatoes, something I would never have guessed of doing. I guess heirloom tomatoes are old tomatoes. Great… I guess. Stefan comes off as an insufferable know-it-all, and Jeff and Hosea aren’t thrilled. Jeff does a sorbet and it does fabulously, even though Stefan thinks it looks like crap.

So team NEW does deconstructed sushi, which sounds cool until Eugene decides he can’t cook properly anymore and Daniel…well old Danny boy goes ape-shit. Like he goes completely nuts! He adds mushrooms to Carla’s salad (a big no-no in my book…don’t touch other people’s food) and he adds way too many sauces all over the plate. Craziness. When they were discussing what they were making, I knew it would either be a complete success or disaster. There was no middle ground here. Sadly, it was the latter and they were the worst dish.

Team BORROWED, borrows from Radhika’s Indian culture and they go out and celebrate thanksgiving with all the white people, who of course then proceed to rape their women and give them rats. Oh wait…it’s the other type of Indian culture they borrowed from. They make a lamb spiced with some sort of Indian marinade. It goes all dramatic with the cooking of the lamb (of course done by drama queen Ariane) but it’s cooked perfectly and tasted great. Dammit…Ariane is safe for another week.

Team BLUE, lead by Fabio and his dream of the deep ocean, go with “controversial” Chilean sea bass (also known as Patagonian Toothfish, but if it was still named that, no one would ever buy it, but change it to Chilean sea bass and everyone including Al Gore will eat it even if it’s being over fished) and some sort of yellow and green sauce. Fabio ties it all together to the 40 horny and drunk ladies in the bridal shower, but sadly the food doesn’t match up to his charm. It’s bland. Seriously, it looked boring and like crap from where I was sitting. They are up for elimination with team NEW.

Jeff and Jamie are praised for their work by the judges, but Ariane wins again. WTF??!?!?! Is this season that bad? Where is the magic in all these chefs? I think Jeff totally got robbed, and you definitely can make a case for Jamie too. Radhika, I believe, made the actual marinade for the lamb. So all Ariane had to do was put it in the oven and take it out when her thermometer said so. That’s it! All those wonderful flavors the lamb had, was not because of her! Ugh….

Anyone from team NEW could get kicked off and I wouldn’t be surprised. While team BLUE’s food definitely wasn’t exciting, at least it wasn’t a complete disaster. I take back what I said earlier…if Carla leaves, I’d be surprised. She was quiet and didn’t speak up, but she didn’t screw up on a dish she’s known for (Eugene with sushi) or go absolutely nuts like Daniel. (That’s saying something when you out crazy “Crazy-eyes” herself.) In the end it was Daniel’s turn to go. He looked like he was about to cry when they said it, but he left with some dignity. While he grew on me as a cheftestant, his chops seriously weren’t there for this competition. He’s only 25, so he’ll get a bigger palate soon enough. Martha Stewart next week…yikes…

Dinner tonight:

Abby made this dish on Sunday. Not too bad, considering we have never tasted it before. Pretty good actually. Abby can write up the recipe if she wants.

This is my very very brief recap of Top Chef from last week. Leah sucks. Seriously. She's just getting on my nerves. I think she talks too much and she acts like a know it all. I don't care that you know what everything is, keep it to yourself. Stop acting like a not so amuse(ing) douche. I'm still in love with Fabio. He's my number one. I'd like to see it come down between him, Crazy Carla, and possibly Jamie...although Danny is starting to grow on me. Did anyone else immediately think of Fozzie Bear when Danny yelled WOCKA after he finished his segment? I dig it. Ooh David Dust can refer to him as Straight Fozzie Bear instead of Straight Danny Bear! He's still a bear!! Anyway...stupid Arianne made a stupid salad and stupidly beat everyone else. WTF people! You're going to let Arianne beat you on TWO challenges? STEP IT UP PEOPLE! Rewind just a min, it comes down to the top 3 being Jeff, F<3bio, and Arianne. The bottom 3 are Jamie, Melissa, and Alex. So the top 3 are woken up at 2am and then brought to the Today Show. They prep their food and then their food is given to the ladies of the show. I only recognize the lady from the View and then Kathy Lee Gifford. The Cheftestants aren't allowed to actually give their presentations. I believe in my heart that if they were actually allowed to give their 2 minute shtick Fabio totally would have won. How would they not vote for him? SO dreamy. Even Jeff would have done better than Arianne. No way would they have voted for Jersey. The ladies try each piece and Kathy Lee the annoying drama queen must have felt that she wasn't garnering enough attention and totally spit Jeff's out. I'm guessing if she had met Jeff, there's no way she'd ever spit anything of his out...
Onto the bottom three...the night before they have j-table Melissa is outside with Hoseya, Leah, and I'm not sure who else. Anyway, Leah keeps telling Melissa to make sure she stands up for herself and let the judges know she wants to be there. Melissa agrees and totally says she's going to do just that. HELLOOOOO have you NOT watched the last 4 seasons??? NEVER listen to anyone who has immunity. Dumbass. Guess it works out in her favor though because she gets to stay another week and Alex is sent home to his (almost) bride. Best wishes man.

Next week...Padma is conveniently throwing a bridal shower for Gail and letting the Cheftestants cook...whatup free food?

Nothing much on the food front for us. Friday night was spent drinking way, way, way too much, mainly at Jillians, but I can say that the BBQ Chicken Pizza was damn good. Jillians is a pretty cool spot. Pool and bowling and a lot of people trying to be trendy. You got a mix of young and old. The pool and bowling are kinda expensive, but Abby's red bull and vodka was $7. That's not bad in Boston. Not bad at all. I ended up spending way more than I needed too on shots and lots of beer, which lead to me being hungover on Saturday morning.

Saturday night, following a midday drinking binge at a friend's housewarming party, we got home just in time to watch my Sooners win the Big XII championship. Bring on the Gators! About the only thing that went wrong last night was that Foodler and Gourmet Curry House really let us down. Craving some good Indian food, we jumped onto Foodler and made an order for Gourmet India. The menu of Gourmet India did not allow us to order single nan...instead we had to order catering portions, which meant 5 peices of nan. Whatever, we were hungry and we like Gourmet India. 5 minutes after I placed my order, I got a phone call telling me that Foodler was no longer working with Gourmet India until they fixed their menu...dammit! Fine, we went with the next Indian place on Foodler, which was Gourmet Curry House. Bad, bad, bad. The chicken tiki masala was bad and way too spicy. The vegatable samosa dry and had no flavor. The rice wasn't the typicaly Indian rice, more like Chinese takeout rice. The nan was good though. I give Gourmet Curry House a 1 out of 5.

Today, it snowed and was cold and we wanted some pho. Since we had to drive to run errands, we went to Dorchester for the Vietnamese food. We went to Sunrise Vietnamese Restaurant, a place we have been before. The pho was good, not great. Abby's broth was very different than mine, even though we ordered the same thing. Not sure if the combination of hoisen, sirachai and lime juice was that much different either. I give it a 2.5 out of 5. Worth giving a shot if you are in Dorchester.



Finally, my Top Chef recap. Basically...I'm not impressed. The breakfast amuse bouche was a good quickfire challenge, and while I agree with Leah that it is suppose to be only one bite, you shouldn't bring that up just to spite your competitors. Guess it worked in her favor because she won. (A note about Leah: They mention her great rack...I have yet to see it. Seriously, if you keep mentioning a great rack, you best show the audience the boys! Come on!) Rocco is a great guest judge, but he seemed off in this episode...not sure why. Probably just me though. The elimination challenge was kinda neat, but I agree with the bloggers on the interweb that that seemed more of a challenge for Next Food Network Star than top chef. Let's get back to the food people! I also didn't realize that Kathie Lee was on the Today show. (My sister Suzy said she's on the 4th hour...really? A 4th hour of Today show? WTF? Do we really need 4 hours of Today show?) Arianne, again showing nothing that would classify as being a top chef, did show some freaking smarts for understanding the time constraints of the challenge and made just a tomato salad. Jeff and Fabio both seemed to have done better dishes, and I even think Danny did a better job. I'm really sick of Arianne. And the dude who got kicked off, Alex, seriously, you are about to get married and you try to be on a competition? WTF? Either you are fully driven to win Top Chef, or you aren't. That didn't mean Melissa should have "thrown you under the bus"...but her point is valid. Alex should have been kicked off for crying after reading Richard's letter...I wonder if he was trying to apply to be part of Team Rainbow....And that brings me to the defensive Jamie. She seems like she has the chops to do something, but damn, you gotta take criticism a lot better. How many times in the past seasons did someone get kicked off earlier than they should have because of their bad attitude at the Judge's Table? Just stand up there, defend your dish and act like a professional.

Speaking of Rocco, there was an episode of Rocco Gets Real where he helped some lady make coddle (an Irish Stew). Abby's making that for dinner now. Will post pics of it later.

Found this while trying to read some stuff on my Sooners:

http://newsok.com/city-mom-gets-prize-top-chef/article/3327092