Prix Fixe

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From the mind of Chef Grant Achatz and the gang at Crucial Detail.

 The man is a evil genius. Just sayin'. 

Chef Jose Andres on 60 Minutes

Last Sunday on 60 Minutes, Anderson Cooper did a piece of Chef Jose Andres. He's the Chef and owner of 6 restaurants including The Bazaar by Jose Andres - if the name of that particular restaurant rings a bell, it should if you're a Top Chef Fan. Season 7 winner Micheal Voltaggio is his chef de cuisine.

Chef Andres is know for his avant garde approach to food. He's a lot like his fellow Spaniard Ferran Adria, so much in fact they will both be teaching "Culinary Physics" at Harvard. It'll be a 13 week course, though I hate the title of the article the Washington Post did on it "Foam 101?".

Maybe some other time we'll talk about molecular gastronomy, misconceptions and the like. Lets just that "Foam" really does get a bad rap, and I do understand why.

Again, for another time. For now, enjoy this 60 Minutes piece on Chef Andres.    

Chef's Gone Wild?

Really quickly I'd like to say congrats to the 3 Portland Chef's that were nominated for James Beard Awards (though PDX was shut out of the JBF's last night.). The 3 chefs were, Naomi Pomeroy (Chef/Proprietor of Beast), Andy Ricker (Chef/Proprietor of Pok Pok) and Kathy Whims (Executive Chef of Nostrana). 

What was really fun, well fun if you're at home and really had nothing better to do, was to follow the #jbfa hash tag on Twitter. While the live tweeting of the awards was fun and all, what happened at the after parties - that's where all the fun was to be had my friends. No, really. 

This was a recipe for fun: chefs + alcohol + NYC = what could go wrong?

Well nothing went wrong (technically) though from the sounds of it, it was turning into "Chefs Gone Wild" ( I could be on to something there...) the biggest part of the night from what I had gathered over Twitter is that Chef Daniel Boulud sprayed after-party goers with champagne.

Those among the ones getting sprayed? 

The crew from Beast.

So if you really want to be entertained, even the day after as hangovers ensue look up the #jbfa hash tag. Trust me, you wont be sorry you did, things get really rolling after the awards (natch).

I guess this is the part where I go off into some sort of rant about Portland cuisine, being over looked and of course the always present (guess this isn't just a sports thing either) east coast bias. I'm not going to take anything away from the award winners from last night as all of them were/are deserving.

But where's the Portland love?

...I have a feeling I'm preaching to the choir.

NFTL: A different line, a different time.

If you're fairly recent to this blog, then you might not know that when I served my exernship for school, I did it at the now shuttered Carlyle, under the direction of Chef Jake Martin. He's moved on to Fenouil now as the Executive Chef, where he's been for like a month now (I think?).Anyways, long story short - he made a TV appearance - which I thought was a bit out of character. 

Why? Well when he had to fill out my final eval for my externship, there was space to write a summary if he so chose.

Jake: Do I need to actually write something here?

Me: Well you don't have to, if you don't want to.

Jake: Yeah, I'm not good with words.

So imagine my surprise when Jake shows up on "Keeling It Local", the same show that my current Chef was on as well. At one point in the following video he mentions that he's particular about his shallots, something that will stick with me for ever. I'm pretty OCD when it comes to bruniose of shallot.

Below is the video please, by all means enjoy.

Bourdain Meets His Match...

I laughed pretty good at this one, Anthony Bourdain gets schooled by a 10 year-old. 

Team Oregon. The Video.

More messing around with Animoto. Now I'm able to do full length videos, so as I'm sure you've guessed there will be a lot more video going on around here.

Endless Possibilities

Found this new site (or at least new to me) Animoto, I checked it out after seeing Micheal Ruhlman mention it in passing about the Food Blogger camp he was apart of down in Mexico this past week. This video (outside of rendering - even though it's fast too) took 5 minutes to put together. 

Just point click, choose some music and off you go. You can even hit remix and no one video will ever be the same, I'm going to upgrade to the $30 a year option so I can produce full length videos with the free membership you can produce a 30 sec vid only though you can upgrade a video for like $3 a video. Here's one I did as a test, it features pictures from our Prix Fixe Menu on Christmas Eve at Scratch.

Feisty!

Before I knew of Food Network, my mother and I would watch "Great Chef's of the World" on the Discovery channel. What I always thought was great, is the fact that most of the chefs that made appearances on the show liked or knew how to be in front of a camera.

I was doing some searching around and came up with this gem. Just watch and see if you can catch what's so feisty.

Video: Cookie Covered Ice Cream Balls

Of course, done Wylie Dufresne style..

Wylie Dufresne, Liquid Nitrogen, and Frozen Ice Cream Cookie Balls from Gizmodo on Vimeo.

Wylie Dufresne of WD-50 shows Adam Frucci of Gizmodo how he and his pastry chef use liquid nitrogen to create ice cream balls perfectly encased in chocolate cookie crumbs. Mmmm, delicious!

Video: Gnocchi with Thomas Keller

Hat tip to the Amateur Gourmet for posting this. As you'll learn I'm a big fan of Thomas Keller. This was posted at AG today, and I couldn't resist posting it here. Oh, voting for Foodie Fight #8 came out today, the winner wasn't me. So please enjoy some Thomas Keller.