Top Chef Season 4

Another season of Top Chef has started. I have been watching this series since season one with my wife. We had mixed feelings about the first season because some of the competitors were weak, but each season the quality has been improving, though there were some serious clangers in season three (Clay and Sandee).

Why the series works for me is because it has strong production values that enhance the suspense and drama. I remembering watching the Knorr Junior Culinary Challenge. I was hoping to see the best of the new young Canadians, instead I was bored into submission. The producers did not create the character and tensions of good reality TV

Top Chef season four has some amazingly skilled people competing:

The Final Four:
Richard Blais
I can not believe that he is on the program - he was on Iron Chef America. He has some serious skills. I believe that he is the favorite to win the competition. He likes playing with new technologies and ideas. So far he has not taken a major step wrong, though he seems weaker on the leadership he should have.

Andrew D'Ambrosi
He is arrogant and has a bad attitude and is putting on a stupid persona, but he is good, he is someone that can win the whole thing.

Stephanie Izard
The hometown girl in the competition. She seems to be in doubt about her own skills. She does not seem to have much presence on the show so far. I would put her down as someone that will last till there about 6-8 contestants and then be eliminated expect for the fact that she has won two of the competitions. Her weakest moment was in episode number 2, Zoo Food. Her team did badly, though I would not say that it had that much to do with her skills, but with the weakness of her team. IF she had the leadership skills she should have, she would have killed the blini. Though her own salad was a failure as well.

Mark Simmons
A Kiwi on the show. He has skills, though he may go down for the same reason Micah suffered in season three, people that did not grow up in North America do not know traditional America classics. If he manages to avoid this problem, he should make it through to the end. While we are on the foreigner thing, I would love to see the show expand into Canada and have 2-3 Canadian contestants. I am sure this would allow the producers to access some Canadian production dollars.

The Others
Dale Talde
He has not impressed me with his skills to date. He looks like a competent mid range elimination. I figure in episode seven to ten he will be eliminated because he will be the weakest left.

Jennifer Biesty, Lisa Fernandes and Nikki Cascone
They have not shown themselves to be great or bad, they have not been making much impression on me to date. Safe for now unless they make a big mistake, but gone before the final four.

Spike Mendelsohn, Ryan Scott and Zoi Antonitsas
These three are the ones I see for elimination next. They are weak in skills and each try to make up for that in their own ways. If it were not for errors from someone of the ones already eliminated, some of these contestants would be eliminated.

A Very Interesting Local Blog

I was looking through blogs in the Victoria area and came across this very interesting foodie one. She is doing what I want to be doing with this blog, but have not had time to do. Dinner in the Yellow House

She also has backyard chickens, I look forward to getting my own soon enough. Though I think her error was getting chickens in the winter and not waiting till the spring. I will post details about the annual chicken run of backyard chicken set ups in greater Victoria.

Rob Feenie to Work For Cactus Club

Last fall Rob Feenie and his financial backers came to a parting of ways. I had been hoping to hear about a new and better high class food experience from Canada's Iron Chef. Instead I read something stunning - Rob Feenie is to be the food concept architect - do not ask me what that title means.

I thought he had done his thing for casual eating in his ads for White Spot, but no.

Cactus Club....... All it brings to my mind is a bunch of people in their 20s more interested in the beer than the food. If he were to go for casual dining, I think it would have been a better fit to work with Milestones.

I am trying to imagine the chicken wing crowd being happy with the unique food that Feenie is capable of. Cactus club is also spread over BC and Alberta - the idea of local ingredients can not be done consistently across the chain.

I think that this is a waste of his skills. I can only hope it leaves him with a lot of spare time to do other interesting projects.

I would love to see more of him on TV. I liked his battle with Moromoto on Iron Chef America. I liked the episode of Heat that he was on when he and Mark MacEwan cooked for a charity event in Toronto.

Yogurt Cheese

I was inspired by Alton Brown on Good Eats about making cheese from yogurt. I have done this before to some reasonable success so I bought some plain yogurt and started the process.

Problem one: I did not have cheese cloth. I strained it through some nylons and too much yogurt was getting through. I then put another layer around it using a jam straining bag. Still too much yogurt getting through.

Problem two: Flavour - the flavour was just too acidic and strong for my liking.

I would like to try this again and set up a proper press for cheese making. I also would like to work with kefir.

For a few months in 2005 I had a good kefir culture going. I was producing too much yogurt and started to make cheese and it worked well. I unfortunately killed the kefir culture and need new grains to get things going again.

Shocking, good raspberries!

We were out at Costco today and bought some raspberries. Normally I am loath to buy raspberries in the store even when they are in season locally. The only way I can properly control the quality is to pick my own. But today we saw a rather amazing batch of them at Costco.

Costco is a place I rarely buy any produce. Their stuff is not local, it is not cheap, and it is typically the worst sort of bland flavour one can think of. But there they were, 375 grams of what looked and smelled like good raspberries. We risked the $4.69 and bought them.

Low and behold, they actually are as good as they look.

Changes in diet

Given that Sheila is expecting, there have been some changes to the diet around here. First and foremost this means no alcohol and very little caffeine.

The dropping of alcohol has been easy, I was drinking very little lately. I will miss doing anything with the Beaujolais Nouveau this year.

Dropping caffeine is a bigger issue. I have become addicted again. Sunday and Monday had problems due to my lack of caffeine. I get headaches. I hope that I am beyond this now, but I am not certain. I will be even more sensitive to the effects of caffeine on my body now.

Sheila now needs to eat numerous small meals during the day and is not happy with meals where there are too many flavours and smells. I made a very good goulash on Sunday but Sheila really could not eat it.

Squash Season

Sheila reminded me that it will be squash season shortly and that we should be getting some. My problem is that I am reasonably indifferent to the squash as something to eat.

Soups are one thing I do like to make with squash and I was thinking of trying to recreate my bacon squash soup. I made it about five years ago in Lillooet.

1. Bake any winter squash - I prefer the flavour of baked because of the caramelizing of the sugars.
2. Fry up bacon - a fair amount, for a large squash I used about a pound of bacon
3. Take out the fried bacon
4. Fry some onion and garlic in the bacon fat.
5. Put everything into a food processor with some stock and puree
6. Add salt and pepper as needed.

It is a great simple but hearty soup.