TV Chefs Blog is where we cover the celebrity chefs and cooking personalities: the news they make, the new products they sell, the restaurants they're opening. We also review the television cooking and food shows. We report on the more famous food authors and their new cookbooks too. If it has to do with eating it, making it and the star cooks who do it, it's here.
What a wild weekend and week this is for food shows! Really. It’s probably the busiest in quite a while. Why? Changes in shows, brand new programs and new episodes and “seasons” of returning favorites.
First, a lot happens tomorrow, Sunday. The first big thing is the premiere episode of a certain Iron Chef’s latest cooking show: Grill It! with Bobby Flay How does this new one differ from Boy Meets Grill? Well, first-off Flay put the word out in the Spring he wanted to hear from the best grillers. So each episode features a guest, an amateur or pro-am griller who demonstates their specialty. Bobby then follows suit. Or as the Food Network puts it: “The guest griller’s best recipe will be the ‘food of the day,’ but Chef Flay will not know the selection until the guest arrives and will have to whip up his own recipe on the fly.”
Nice idea. And Flay behind the outdoor grill — hey, sure the guy is extremely versatile — but this somehow always seems where he’s happiest, or at least where we the audience are happiest to see him. Btw the first show features grilled beef short ribs! Interesting piece of trivia here. The “Grill It!” cookbook which came out months before the show is currently number 3 on the NY Times books list. The premiere show is on at (why do they do these ungodly hours?) 9am Sunday.
Immediately after at 9:30am Eastern is the second episode of the absolutely wonderful new Secrets of a Restaurant Chef with Anne Burrell who’s doing an entire roast leg of lamb and a peach crisp dessert. Right there are two don’t miss shows with two talented chefs. Love it. An hour later, Sunny Anderson returns with her new episdoes of her new and popular Cooking for Real; that’s on at 10:30am.
The rest of the news for manana is night and late night. First a brand new Iron Chef America episode with challenger Michael Cimarusti taking on Masaharu Morimoto. A quick “Google” of Cimatrusti shows he loves seafood, Japanese knives, sushi … sounds like a good pairing for an interesting food battle. Wonder what the secret ingredient is going to be.
Right after ICA is the latest episode of the Next Food Network Star. After that is a sneak peak of Sunny Anderson’s new road show — Yes, after a mere six episodes of her cooking show, she’s given a second show! That has to be a new record! — How’d That Get On My Plate? which is basically yet another new version of The Secret Life Of … and Unwrapped as far as I’m concerned. The premiere episode has to do with “honey”. That sneak peak is at 11pm Sunday or you can see it Monday night at 9:30pm (after two episodes of, ahem, Unwrapped).
Speaking of Monday …. Nope. Wait. Almost skipped over something. On PBS, at least for me … you see PBS local stations all do what they want when they want, some follow a logical pattern, some don’t, so what’s airing for me might be in 200 other markets the same day. On a different day what’s airing for me is no where else but in my area. Maybe it’s been shown two weeks ago elsewhere. Maybe it’s going to be shown elsewhere next week. It’s the whole insanity of PBS local station autonomy being both a strength and a weakness, but nationally always a confusion. In short, for me, but maybe or maybe not for you, on Sunday, Sara’s Weeknight Meals with Sara Moulton is showcasing Greek dishes and she has on as guest NYC celeb chef Michael Psilakis. They should have called this the Greek Y show. Why? Because they’re making Braised Lamb Yiouvesti, Yiouvarlakia and Vegetarian Yemista. That’s Y.
Ah, at last, on Monday … There’s been all this “flutter” I’ll call it about Emeril Live moving from the Food Network over to it’s sibling channel, the Fine Living channel. On the one hand, yeah, I get it, Emeril Live has always been a FN staple. But then, you see I found out just the other day that while, yeah, Emeril Live would be on FL at night, in fact at the exact time slot, 7pm Eastern it has been on on FN for a decade. Turns out that Emeril Live was not completely leaving Food Network, only “Food Network at night”. Huh? Yeah, reruns of Emeril Live are being shown everyday at 2pm now on FN. And then you have him again on Fine Living at night. So, as Bugs Bunny would ask, what’s all the hub-bub, bub? And my answer is. Dunno, seems much ado about nothing. (And you thought I couldn’t get Bugs, Emeril and Shakespeare into the same paragraph, didntcha?)
Anyhow last year, cleverly, chef Emeril Lagasse made between 50 and 70 new Emeril Live episodes at the very end of 2007. Food Network has been doling those out at a one-a-week pace since New Years, meaning you would get one new one amidst four reruns every week. So with it’s “move” to the Fine Living channel, this week, there’s all new Emeril’s. That’s right, never before seen one’s in other words. They’re burning through a month or two in a sense to showcase the new move. Then we assume FL will do what sister channel FN did and do a once a week new one with six (they’re putting Emeril Live on seven nights a week, not just five) old shows mixed in. Yeah, Emeril is gone but between the seven nights and now two networks there’s a whole lot more Emeril around … not that he’s gone. Wonderful and yet so very confusing at the same time.
And not to be outdone, over on the Travel Channel, Monday at 10pm it’s a brand new season of No Reservations with globetrotting philosopher and foodie extraordinare Anthony Bourdain at 10pm. First episode up, a visit to Laos. Is that enough of a wild and crazy food show week for you? If not, Tuesday night is the season finale of Hell’s Kitchen on Fox.
And so the third month, another four weeks, has rolled by already and it’s time to do a monthly recap — the last one — on Top Chef. Pssst, here’s the first and the second monthly recaps we did in case you want to recall what happened from the beginning.
Top Chef, Season 4. The standings at the end of Week 12.
Super quick Top Chef recap of the past month:
Week 9: This is the one where the Quick Fire was the prep relay and Dale throws a tantrum. What we remember most about this ep is it’s the one where Padma says there are no restaurant wars this year, instead it’s Wedding Wars. In the end, Nikki who was handed the reigns basically by nature of what the groom wanted decided not to take responsibility, and that blew up in her face. Natch, as it was a wedding, there were also two cakes, which made pastry chef Gale Gand the perfect guest judge. Week 10: Salads and lunches. In the QF Spike won and Antonio came in second for making salads. The Elimination was to follow a set of guidelines to make better lunches, in this case for Chicago’s Police Officers. Andrew got clever and stupid at the same time and lost out. Guest judge was a TC Season Two favorite, Sam Talbot. Week 11: So what’s more surprising then ditching Restaurant Wars this year for Wedding Wars? By then doubling-back and having Restaurant Wars after all! That’s right with basically only three people left on each time (though eliminated members Nikki and Jennifer came back for several hours to lend a hand). With Antonia, Stephanie and Richard on one side and Dale, Spike and Lisa on the other, it came down to many flaws on the latter team and Dale not taking responsibility as exec chef. Dale exits. Anthony Bourdain is back at the judges table for this one. Week 12: After deboning half a steer into steaks for the QuickFire, it’s off to Rick Tramonto’s steak house for the Elmination Challenge. In the episode that has taught everyone never to use frozen scallops when featuring them as the main course, Spike finallys gets his.
And this leaves four challengers left and only the two big final shows. Next week two of the four will be axed. The week after the remaining two chefs go head to head in the finality. In the best and most promising season for women yet — a woman has not won the Top Chef honors in the previous three seasons — right now one male is left, Richard, and three women, Antonia, Stephanie and Lisa.
As today is Mother’s Day where better to go for a delicious and appropriate article than Epicurious …
That’s right recipes for Jamie Oliver’s mum’s Rhubarb Daisy Cake, Spain’s Jose Andres‘ delicious Beef with Cabrales “Mama Marisa”. Anthony Bourdain’s mom never taught him to eat those strange things, she taught him good stuff like Coquilles St.-Jacques. And there’s more, again just click the article link above.
And while we’re talking about Mom’s, there’s some good cookbooks out there that follow this line of thinking, such as: Behind Every Great Chef, There’s A Mom - More Than 125 Treasured Recipes From The Mothers Of Our Top Chefs which includes, Art Smith’s mom’s Pear and Cranberry Cobbler, Sara Moulton’s mom’s Meatball Stroganoff, Nigella Lawson’s mother’s Italian Sausages with Lentils, and Jacques Pepin’s mother’s Potato Lace to name just a few.
So why haven’t I talked about Top Chef more? Wny not give a weekly recap or review? You see, if you have a show like Hell’s Kitchen or Last Restaurant Standing or some of the others, you get one chance of seeing what you missed the following week. With Top Chef, however, let’s admit it, Bravo gives you three more chances the very night; you heard me, within the first six hours of the first episode of that week you have no less than three more chances. And then, over the course of the week before the next episode? Dunno, something crazy like it’s on 27 or something more times? … That said, hey, a month has passed, so here’s a little TCB “What’s Happenin’ on Top Chef” score card for you.
Top Chef, Season 4. The standings at the end of Week 4.
Super quick Top Chef recap of the past month:
Week 1: Welcome to Chicago; Zoi and Jennifer are lesbian lovers; Nimma majorly over salted her food - First casualty. Rocco Dispirito and Anthony Bourdain guests. Week 2: “Zoo Food”: Valerie made bilinis to serve a couple hours later - Goodbye; Tom is a bear. Wylie Dufresne judges. Week 3: “Block Food”: A-hole Eric (who thinks he knows more about Mexican food than judge Rick Bayless) made corn dogs to serve several hours later. - See ya, genius! Week 4. “Film Food”: Spike came up with stupid food idea; teammate Manuel went along; the judges decide that passively going along is a worse sin than actively making a stupid decision. - So Manuel is gone. Not the best judgement they’ve ever made, not the worse either. Solomon would have cut each chef in half. Daniel Boulud is guest.
Hey! We’re smack in the middle of the big Florida Film Festival 2008 that runs from March 28th through April 6th!
Ok, well, what’s that got to do with this blog? Glad I asked. Well the theme this year is “Eat It Up!” … which has this really cool logo of a large fork and film tape lapping about the prongs of the fork as though spaghetti. And that would therefore explain why they’re selling limited-edition Andrew Bourdain T-shirts and exclusive art print posters too!
Wait wait, that’s not all, His Spicyness has also has a sold-out lecture series tomorrow night, Monday March 31st, at Carnegie Hall no less.
Wait, there’s more. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported on a special “Anthony Bourdain Experience Package” of a private reception, a meeting with Bourdain, personally signed books and seating for six in the opera box was put up on eBay after the event sold out at the top of the month, and it went for $2,247.89 on eBay. “We never expected this great a response,” said Jayne Adair, director of the Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures series.
That’s right. He is on fire! He’s hot! He just ended this season of his “if it moves I’ll eat it” program, No Reservations a couple weeks ago. He was on the first episode of this season’s Top Chef and now he’s just every where else in huge demand.
In fact, and I think this is way cool on everyone’s part … He even let the Amateur Gourmet interview him about the Food Network (which he hates) and the Food Network is (extremely cool for them!) showing the video. Which we have right here for you!
