Rachel Ray is like Emeril. None of the record she shows are here. They are created for her by other, better, chefs.
As a result, you can sometimes get decent ideas.
Emeril used to make me furious. My folks liked watching him, and I can see the allure I guess because he’s such a carnival barker, but what would drive me crazy is that he’d make what looked like a decent dish, and then he’d dump a bunch of extra shit all over it. I was always like, “Dude! The dish is complete! You don’t need to drown it in that extra sauce and throw your shitty “essence” on it as well!”
My dad always found my frustration with this amusing.
-xtien
Emeril had a good show on The Cooking Channel, Fast Food Fresh, after all the mania around him started dying down. There was no studio audience, no playing up the BAM! or Essence (though he did use it for rubs and such). It was usually simpler dishes, like weeknight dinner type dishes with simple prep. And he was much more personal. It made me completely change my opinion on him and I definitely learned a few things.
For me Emeril jumped the shark when he started the show with the in house band. A cooking show with a band? He won back a modicum of respect with what he did during and after Katrina in New Orleans.
I used to like her a lot actually, used to. Then I watched her 40 dollars a day. I believe she came here and saved money by ordering a bagel for breakfast, went to a subpar tourist trap for lunch and then skimped on dinner. At one point it seemed like she had a half-dozen shows, a magazine, boxes of food, cookware… everything, complete over exposure and the recipes underwhelmed.
I got way too annoyed about the math of tipping to be able to watch that more than a couple of times.
-xtien
I actually watched Ray’s original show way back when. Then her dog Boo died. She would talk about him constantly. I understand mourning the loss of a beloved pet, I’ve done it. But she seemed… out of sorts. It was painful to watch, so I stopped.
Emeril had an interesting interview on America’s Test Kitchen where he talked about the difficulties of maintaining a restaurant empire and the pressure to expand.
Basically, if you’re trying to be loyal to your staff, you basically have to keep expanding in order to keep creating senior chef positions for the people that you’re training up through the ranks. And the bigger the empire gets, the faster you’re discovering new talent that you want to keep. Eventually, you’re more CEO than chef, whether you want it that way or not. Cookbooks, spice mixes, etc all just feed that beast.
By most accounts that I’ve seen, Emeril’s original restaurant was quite good, but it’s hard to maintain quality and consistency across an increasing number of restaurants.
Just for fun I sometimes watch Asian street cooking from Thailand, China, & Vietnam. When you watch them cook they have a squirt bottle full of oil they administer when the stir-fry they’re making is getting dry or needs lubrication. Any idea what kind of oil they’re using?
If it’s street food, my guess would be the cheapest oil available, typically just standard vegetable oil.
I suppose that if you’re being real specific, the actual vegetable blend may vary with things like palm oil possibly being more common in SE Asia, but an Asian grocery who carries Asian brands of oil will probably be the same product.
Sometimes it is water or broth that is squirted on during cooking to reduce smoke.
I’m getting better at making pizza!
Nice! I made pizza yesterday. I was cursing the dough for being too tough while I was spreading it but the crust came out better than it ever has. All the time cursing the dough gave the oven/baking steel an extra 15 minutes to preheat (which I think helped the most). I wish I took a picture.
Since we were talking about food shows above, I thought I’d share this here. My son gave me these for my birthday and we’re going together this evening. I’m pretty excited.
-xtien
What is the seasoning you’re using on the peirogies? The chunkiness of the white, grey, and black bits looks very appetizing.
It’s just freshly ground black pepper out of my pepper mill :)
That’s really cool. I wish I could go to something like that!
Wow, I was expecting garlic salt and onion flakes as part of that. Do you buy the pepper balls yourself or is the pepper mill store bought with peppers already inside? I’ve never had that much whites and greys in any I’ve ever bought.
It’s like, whatever the cheapest whole black peppercorns at the time I bought them (at Giant Eagle) combined with a pepper mill I found in the utensil aisle at the same store. I’d tried a few of those ones where it’s like a plastic pepper mill that comes pre-filled and the grinder would always break before I used up half of it. So one night I was making something that needed black pepper and I said to hell with it and bought what was available.
It was cheapish, is adjustable, and the side that the pepper comes out of doesn’t sit on the counter top and leave behind bits of pepper. Had it for about a year now and it’s still working just fine. Much better than those crappy plastic ones but not fancy by any means. I’ve got a pretty tiny kitchen in my apartment so I don’t need a big full size one :)