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We lost a geek last week, but we still had a local bachelorette to root for along with a "dream date" to our fair city on "The Bachelor"!
The first group date involved clowns, and was therefore instant fast-forward fodder for us, especially since it didn't involve Sheena. Some chick named Hillary won a one-on-one date with Brad and they took a private jet to San Francisco and had a fancy dinner in a private dining room in a hotel we couldn't identify. All we got was one obligatory cable car shot before they went inside. Hillary cried the entire time and that probably scared Brad into giving her a rose. After dinner they went to the Ghirardelli Square ice cream parlor and made their own sundaes. (Has anyone been there recently? They drastically cut down their menu of ice cream offerings, and it kind of sucks now.)
Back in LA it was time for another group date, which took place on a sail boat. Sheena was amazed by the size of its sails. She and Brad did a little competitive jet ski racing, which raised the ire of the coast guard who came by and broke up their good time. So much for one-on-one time with the Bachelor, Sheena! Later there was some ridiculousness where Brad tried to pass off his twin brother Chad as himself, even though his twin really doesn't look that much like him. In fact, he's a little better looking. Brad hoped Chad would be able to walk into the room and know right away who the right woman for him would be. A surprising number of women fell for it, probably because Brad never told them he had a twin. And they were drunk. But our girl Sheena knew something was off right away, and for some weird reason she cried a little about it. Once again, tears seem to the be ticket, as she was given a rose at the rose ceremony.
Thanks to SFist Rita for letting us know that two local chefs were vying for the title of "The Next Iron Chef" over on the Food Network. We missed the first episode, in which Jardinière chef Traci Des Jardins was eliminated, but this week the other local chef, Chris Cosentino of Noe Valley eatery Incanto.
The first challenge was "simplicity," and a one bite meal. Chris did an ahi tuna cured in olive brine, tomato juice, and basil, with a tiny salad on top that had way too many ingredients including orange zest, tomato, mint, and celery leaf. We have no idea if he lost that challenge because the rules of this show didn't seem to make much sense to us when we watched it at 1 a.m. last night, but the big challenge required the chefs to use weird new tools and chemicals.
New York chef Wylie Dufresne was in charge of teaching them how to use all these tools and chemicals and it did nothing but bore us. Learning how to cook can be hard enough. Start throwing chemicals like xantham gun and liquid nitrogen into the mix, and it's just nothing we would want to take home and apply to our home kitchen. (Of course, most of the stuff in "Iron Chef" isn't anything we'd ever think of making, but the preparation is more fun to watch when you see they're using normal, every day pots and boiling water.) So, we kind of zoned out on the challenge. Chris Cosentino didn't seem to like it much either. He did some razor clams and made a "shaving cream" out of some freaky chemicals. Razor clams and shaving cream! Ha! He also made a smoked duck. Less ha. The judges liked the clam dish a lot, so much so that they gave him the win for the challenge. He'll live to cook another day.
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That is some rather uninformed commentary about the Next Iron Chef. There is nothing "weird" about those chemicals. Most of them are just polysacharides, similar the to the pectin you find in jelly, and act a gums.
In fact, I found it rather funny that one of the ingredients they asked them to use was lecithin, an emulsifier, as if it was some sort of new science fiction item, given that lecithin is found in egg yolks, which are routinely used in the kitchen as emulsifiers (think mayonnaise).
It really annoys me when people start complaining about additives as if they are something new or all bad. Hello? Nitrates? What do you think is used to make jamon serrano and prosciutto? Pectin for jellies? Gelatin? The same people that bitch about MSG in Chinese food would mortgage their children to each truffles, which are full of them, and don't realize that mushrooms, tomatoes, seaweed, soy and many other foods have plenty of glutamic acid.
Well, misinformed or not, I think a lot of people would have a different gut reaction to hearing that "lecithin" was used to thicken a sauce in their dish than they would hearing eggs yolks were in it. And even most of the chefs on the show felt quite uncomfortable utilizing those things in their cooking.
You are correct, and you make my point. Most people's reaction would be wrong and uninformed. We live in a society that is heavily dependent on science and technology, yet most people become scared the second they hear some scientific sounding term, even if it just describing a rather mundane item in more specific terms.
Certainly some additives are bad and most can be used to make food worse rather than better. My own hypothesis is that additives have been given a bad name as a result of being used to extend the shelf life of mass produced products or to mask their deficiencies.
I posit that people do not mind additives or techniques if their use results in a product that is obviously different from initial product. Therefore, most people don't mind, and in fact enjoy, jamon serrano (cured ham), salted dry cod, jams and jellies, pickled items, canned food, etc.
But that same people start associating bad taste and unhealthiness with additives when they are used to make that mass produced cupcake be able to sit on the shelf for a month and still be somewhat moist and flavorful, because they can compare it to the taste of a freshly baked one, and tell the later is much better.
Shouldn't the bachelor and the future ex-girlfriend (It happens nearly 9 times out of 10 if the gal was the final rose chosen) be wearing a hat while grabbing ice cream? Just what we need, hair in our ice cream the next day when it is opened-up for regular service.
Did you wash your hands too? Ooops, lost a fingernail.