Octopus Salad, Meat Pie, Chocolate Twinkies With Whiskey Caramel [This Week’s Weekend Eats]

Posted Apr 17, 2012 by Jeff Houck

Updated Apr 17, 2012 at 01:09 PM

The most elusive creature in the food chain isn’t Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster.

It’s the satisfying fish taco.

Invariably, something about them infuriates me.

It’s all my fault.

In my mind, I want to bite into a heroic-size portion of fish. I want it to taste like I’m chewing on a whale-size portion.

And that rarely happens.

Instead, I usually get fish bits, tiny nuggets of fish-like substance which give you a hint of fish but not nearly enough to make you overcome the thought that you’re eating a tortilla salad with fish croutons.

But the one enjoyed by my Twitter follower Susan Whelan, who goes by the handle @nolamaven, looks good enough to make me think I’ve eaten half of the Florida Aquarium.

Her photo of fish tacos with wood-grilled sheepshead, chipotle slaw and ancho-tamarind salsa was good enough to best a very stiff week of Weekend Eats competition this week. (Susan enjoyed those tacos at GW Fins in New Orleans’ French Quarter.)

I may have fallen too much in love with this photo. I started to see the face of Our Lady of Guadalupe

I know. I’m way too hungry to be looking at food photos.

What did Susan win for her efforts?

A copy of “The Perfect Ingredient” by British chef Bryn Williams. I really dug the simple elegance of the seasonal recipes inside. I’d take a crack at the beet soup if I was her.

She also enters the very esteemed confines of the Weekend Eats Hall of Fame gallery on Pinterest.

What kind of competition was the fish taco up against?

Check out this week’s Gallery of Noms. Feel free to tell me exactly why I’m wrong. It won’t hurt my feelings.

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Cajun Sea Scallops, Cheddar Bacon Scones And Roasted Leg Of Lamb [This Week’s Weekend Eats]

Posted Apr 10, 2012 by Jeff Houck

Updated Apr 10, 2012 at 01:33 PM

First, a confession: When it comes to food, I can as high-minded, snobbish and elitist as any semi-professional foodie.

I fight it. I’m not proud of it. But it’s true.

All too often, I’m infected with the strain of snooty food veneration that finds me eating looking down my nose at a plate while eating with my pinky in the air.

It’s not on purpose. It’s more a reaction to too many plates of mediocre, passionless food served over and over again like some kind of gastronomic chant.

I like great food made with good, simple ingredients. There, I said it.

But under no circumstances am I immune to the charms of a bunny shaped cake.

Which is just what I tripped over yesterday during our collection of Weekend Eats submissions from readers.

As proud parent Tom Jackson writes from Pasco County:

“[This is an] Easter Bunny visage in Duncan Hines yellow cake, butter cream frosting, festive colored sugar sprinkles. Ear cavities filled with malted milk ball robin’s eggs, the rest with jelly beans. Unremarkable except that the whole thing was conceived and executed (with the help of a cake mold) by our 12-year-old son, Christopher.

“Beyond arm’s-length supervision, no adults were involved in the baking and decorating of said cake.”

Congratulations, Christopher. Beyond the reward of not burning your house down - parents tend to frown on such events, despite your culinary talents - you also win this week’s Weekend Eats grand prize with your timely baked holiday goods:

It’s the book “Cupcakes, Cookies & Pie, Oh, My!” by Karen Tack and Alan Richardson. Looks like a fun book to get ideas from.

I expect you to have your own cake show on TV by this time next year, Christopher.

What was Christopher’s competition this week? See for yourself in this gallery. To read a description, click on each dish:

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How Exactly Does One Judge An Iron Chef? [Chef Scott Conant Talks About “Chopped All-Stars]

Posted Apr 5, 2012 by Jeff Houck

Updated Apr 5, 2012 at 05:11 PM

As a respected New York City chef, Scott Conant knows what it’s like to have your food judged by critics.

In 2008, his Italian restaurant Scarpetta in the West Village earned raves from the New York Times and New York magazine, being named by both publications as one of the 10 best new restaurants that year.

But as one of the celebrity judges on the Food Network cooking competition series “Chopped,” he has to dish out criticism to colleagues in the food industry he respects.

On Sunday night, he’ll do it again for another season of “Chopped All-Stars,” although this time, he’ll be taking aim at dishes made by “Iron Chef” superstars like Michael Symon, Mark Forgione, Cat Cora and Jose Garces.

The show’s premise: Take a handful of seemingly unrelated ingredients and turn them in a limited time frame into an appetizer, entrée and desert dish that is then judged by a three-member panel on flavor, creativity and presentation.

As if that isn’t enough pressure, the ingredients have very little apparent compatibility. It’s one thing to cook under a time constraint. Making a delicious bite using prunes, animal crackers and cream cheese or a combination of watermelon, canned sardines, pepper jack cheese and zucchini is something else.

Conant took a few minutes recently to talk to me about the show:

What is it like to sit on a panel and judge Iron Chefs? I can’t imagine the level of pressure that must go into having to find the smallest hair to split on each of their dishes.

It’s unfortunate, but it really comes down to that, looking at the smallest, most minute detail.

The most difficult part about it is, here are these chefs who are so incredibly talented that I’m not going to pretend I’m going to match their talent. So it’s really difficult to do. There’s no pretense on my end. I let them know that I’m saying these things and it’s really difficult to judge. Really difficult.

A lot of people would look at the show and think, “These are three totally random things no chef would cook with.” But it goes to the essence of chefs being able to cook under any conditions. And I saw you in February cooking at second base of the new Marlins Park in Miami during the South Beach Wine & Food Festival. I thought when would a chef think during his career that he would be making short ribs and polenta at second base?

It’s a good point. I’m a huge baseball fan, so that was a very special event for me. Just to be at second base in a professional ballpark, I’m just happy to be there. If they said, “Scott, stand on your head and do cartwheels all night long,” I would have been happy to do that, too. I was just happy to be there.

You were rocking the big baseball beard. You pulled it off.

[laughs] I had to trim it. My wife wasn’t too happy about it. [laughs]

On the first episode of “Chopped” you judge with Jeffrey Zakarian and Aaron Sanchez. How do you three whittle it down to decide who wins each step?

The interesting thing is, “Chopped” is so much different than “Iron Chef” in that there’s a lot tighter time frame, there are different ingredients they have to incorporate into each dish and you’re working in very tight conditions without a sous chef. I was actually with [chef] Michael Symon today and we were talking about the difficulty in doing “Chopped” versus “Iron Chef.” Don’t get me wrong; “Iron Chef” is very difficult, but he found “Chopped” to be more difficult. It’s difficult to sit there and tell these talented chefs what they did wrong.

It’s one thing to judge Cat Cora, Mark Forgione, Jose Garces and Michael Symon, but in episode three you’re judging Next Food Network Star contestants. Do you have to calibrate how you judge them?

No, but there is a difference between a home cook and a professional chef. So you don’t look at the finer details as much with the Stars. The problem is, they’re going to go head to head in the finals, so you have to be equally difficult on everyone. They need to step up their game to get to that level where they’re competing against an “Iron Chef.”

Has there been a time when you’ve seen contestants open a basket and thought, “There’s just no way I could do anything with that?”

Probably every time I do a show. [laughs] At least once a day.

I remember durian was one of the products one time coming out of the basket and it was so difficult to weave into a dish to make it edible. Durian is not one of my favorite products. It’s just really pungent, really assertive fruit from Asia which a lot of people consider a delicacy. But it’s really strong. Let’s put it that way. Even a little bit is too much for me.

What qualities are you looking for in a dish when things get down to the finals?

We have to judge on taste, creativity and presentation. Those are the three main categories, but if anything takes precedence over the other, it’s flavor. Taste is such an important part, clearly, that if I had to choose any particular order, taste would be at the top of my list.

I’ve seen you on shows and it seems like people lose their nerve when it comes to presenting a bowl of pasta to you. You’re like the Pasta Terminator, in a way, because you have a specific standard in mind and it’s difficult to do that in the time constraint.

It is very difficult, but there’s one thing I tell the chefs: I’m never going to sacrifice my standards. I wouldn’t do that myself and I wouldn’t want other people to do the same to me.

But it’s very difficult to do, and if there’s a way to help people create a different product, that’s what I see my role as. I’m not there to take anyone’s legs out from underneath them. That’s not a good position to be in.

How would you judge your style to the way Aaron looks at a dish or Jeffrey analyzes a plate.

It’s funny because we normally see eye-to-eye on these things. On certain dishes we find ourselves repeating the same things or saying, “That’s a great point.” That’s the good news, because if we all saw it from a different angle, it would be a mess.

Have you been looked into a basket and been tempted to get your hands dirty with it?

It happens, but it’s a very different situation when you’re behind those tables and in front of those judges. The time counting down on you, it’s a very difficult show. I’m not going to pretend that I could get back there and do what they do until I get side by side with them and do it myself.

It’s a crowded TV landscape of cooking competition shows. Why do you think “Chopped” has hit a popular vein?

I’ve done a few different shows in my career, and it’s really interesting when you catch an energy. That show, whether it be the production assistants, the producer, the director, the judges – Ted Allen is kind of the big toe, so to speak – they have such great energy. I really feel that’s the reason for the lightning in the bottle.

And viewers put themselves in the position of the chefs thinking, “I have no idea what I would do with those ingredients.”

I’ve had people stop me in airports and say exactly that to me. The best compliment I got was from a woman who says she lives in a house with four generations. Her grandmother, her parents and her children and the one thing that brings them together is watching “Chopped.” That was the best compliment I ever could have gotten. It’s really the last element left for family television.

I’m curious about how you deal with Yelp and Urban Spoon and Open Table. It seems like everyone has a microphone in the palm of their hand.

Really it’s about creating a great vision for a restaurant and hiring great people and holding feet to the fire, so to speak, and making sure the hospitality aspect is always in place. There’s no reason a customer should be mistreated inside a restaurant. There’s really no excuse for that. For me, whenever I read those Web sites and I see those mistakes made, we try to reach out to the people and navigate if there is any validity to these things. It’s a great outlet, very often, and sometimes there are just mistakes or misunderstandings from the guest’s perspective.

If someone gets a glass of water and they wanted a Coca Cola, that doesn’t necessarily make for a big deal – sometimes it’s easy to ask for the right thing. Everyone has a right to their opinion, I always say, but not everybody deserves the platform.

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Of Pastries And Chocolate And Candy And Sugar [Chef Alon Gontowski Tries To Become A “Sweet Genius”]

Posted Apr 4, 2012 by Jeff Houck

Updated Apr 4, 2012 at 04:54 PM

Alon Gontowski already is a bit of a rock star as the pastry chef at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Tampa, creating magnificent desserts, candies and cakes for the facility’s restaurants and room service.

Now he aims to be a sweet genius.

Gontowski tests his sugary skills against three other contestants on Food Network’s show “Sweet Genius” under the discerning glare of master pastry chef Ron Ben-Israel. The episode airs at 10 p.m. Thursday.

The show’s format: Throw secret ingredients at four chefs, give them an inspirational design motif and a small amount of time to finish their task. Along the way, Ben-Israel throws them a culinary curve ball by introducing a new ingredient to the mix. The one who makes it through three rounds earns that episode’s title.

Gontowski described being on the show as a “life-changing experience.”

“It was a total emotional rollercoaster [going back and forth] from the lows of saying, ‘What did I just do and why did I do that?’ to the highs of saying, ‘I nailed that plate,’” he said.

Gontowski, who has been the pastry chef for five years,. and has spent two decades creating pastries for various resorts and casinos, including the Four Seasons San Francisco and Caesar’s Atlantic City Hotel & Casino after graduating from Johnson & Wales University in Providence, R.I.

Prior to coming to the Seminole Hard Rock, Gontowski developed the menu for 29 restaurants at the Mohegan Sun Casino in Uncasville, Conn. While there he helped design and build the world’s largest wedding cake, which measured more than and weighed over 15,000 pounds.

Tackling “Sweet Genius” was an equally gigantic challenge

During a recent chat, Gontowski described what it was like to make pastries under pressure and what advice he gives to up and coming pastry artists.

How do you get ready for a show like this?

You want to hear something? This is funny. You’re going to laugh.

The night before I’m up at all hours of the night sitting up looking at my recipes spread out on my bed in the hotel room trying to cram before finals. I’m sitting here gathering all this information and thinking, “Oh my gosh, do I really need this one?” But you have to have everything ready in your arsenal because you never know what you’re going to need.

You basically have to draw on what your experiences have been throughout your career?

A lot of it was a foundation of your past experiences of what you’ve done, recipes you know are going to work and whatever ingredients you’re given. That’s the key to any good chef: having a good foundation to build on.

How did you adjust to the pressure of TV and being in that kind of spotlight? Were you able to block out the cameras and just do your thing?

It’s hard to block out the cameras when he’s following everywhere you go. No sooner would I turn around and I would bump the camera guy big time.

You go as you go. Some chefs come into their own realm and block it all out. It’s my environment. I adapt by taking in my settings and saying I’m here to do what I’ve got to do and I’ve got to do pastries. It was awkward because you didn’t know where things were, but you adapt.

The thing is, all of the contestants don’t know where everything is.

Correct. It was a dream kitchen. I have to give Food Network kudos. You have toys in that kitchen that pastry chefs don’t even have in their own shops.

Such as what?

We had this griddle that freezes things right on top as soon as you put something on it in a couple seconds. They had blast freezers, popcorn machines, cotton candy machines. It’s all fun stuff.

You didn’t happen to shoplift that griddle and bring it back to Tampa, did you?

[laughs] No.

At the Seminole Hard Rock, is there a particular kind of dessert you like to make? This is not a place with small amounts of humidity. It’s not the easiest environment for anyone in the pastry arts to work.

I just focus on trying to have fun. I incorporate a lot of the Hard Rock logo and memorabilia into a lot of things we do. It’s why I chose the Hard Rock. I came to Tampa and interviewed with two establishments and the first was great. It was posh and all that, but I went to the Hard Rock and absorbed the energy. It was so cool and energetic for me. I was, like, “This is my house. This is where I’m going to feel most comfortable.”

We do a lot of things with the guitar logos. We had our Fat Elvis for the Hard Rock Café, which was Elvis’ combination of banana and peanut butter. We added our own little twist to it by doing it as a cupcake and adding chocolate-covered bacon on top of it. There’s a lot of room to play at the Hard Rock.

You’ve worked at a lot of resorts and casinos, but it’s not like working at the Hard Rock. It gives you freedom to go outside the lines, I’m guessing.

Exactly. What chef doesn’t like to work outside the lines? You have such a wide variety of restaurants there, from our Fresh Harvest buffet to our fine dining for Council Oak. You have that whole spectrum to play with, as well as getting funky with room service amenities doing chocolate pieces and sugar work. It’s a pastry chef’s dream to have that support of the executive chef and the powers that be to go have fun with it.

What has your strength been during you career?

I’d have to say I lean more toward chocolate. Sugar is temperamental, in a sense, and being here in Florida, it’s even worse. But I have to stick to doing everything because a well-rounded pastry chef has to be – especially in a casino. In this environment, you have everything from fresh breads in our new in-house restaurant Rise. It’s going to be an ultimate place where we’ll be making all the breads and rolls fo the sandwiches we’re going to be making as well as doing a little café style to-go product. The world is open for us to create.

Is there someone in the field you try to model on who has a standard that you aim for?

That changes because the plates of the world change, the flavors change and there’s always different people out there. Sugar work from Ewald Notter over in Orlando to the older generation who inspired me when I was starting out. There’s so much out there, so much influence. You have to continually grow and learn and try. That’s how you develop your own style. Never be stagnant at what you do. I tell my staff members to stay with me for a period of time but go out and see the world – especially these young people – go out and absorb the knowledge of working under different chefs and see what they do. That’s going to help you, seeing and doing and learning.

That’s one thing my father never understood. Being a blue-collar worker back in the day, he basically raised us. He’d do his job and come home. But seeing me at a young age in the kitchen and going out and seeing the world and not having, at least in his eyes, stability because I’m only staying two years here and two years there and working holidays, what kind of life is that? That shows no stability.

But Ron [Ben-Israel] said, “He just didn’t realize the passion that you have.”

You started your career before Food Network blossomed. These days, being a chef is a profession parents can be proud of. Back then, it was people who were coming straight from trade schools or probation. It was a much different culture back then.

Right.

It also seems now that pastry chefs are finally getting their due.

That’s correct. Its great to see pastry chefs have their own show on Food Network and they are being recognized. Sometimes we’re that second fiddle within the hotel industry. A lot of times it’s about the food, the food, But the pastry is the last thing that goes out and the last thing on people’s mind and that’s an important role. We don’t always get that recognition. Food Network has been totally awesome with that exposure.

In the bad sense, they have pushed that envelope and made America aware of what we can do and, in a sense, it has pushed this generation to step up now and perform and do the things we may not have necessarily done in the past. It’s taking us out of our comfort zone. And that’s a good thing. You shouldn’t’ be afraid to get out of your comfort zone. I tell the guys that all the time. That’s the way you’re going to succeed. You’re going to find out how you do things better.

I watch these shows on TV and the one curve ball they always throw the savory chefs is to have them make a dessert. I know a lot of pastry chefs who could cook the savory side, but I don’t know many savory chefs who could do the opposite. I think you have to be more versatile to be a pastry chef.

That’s true. I just watched last night’s “Sweet Genius” and their secret ingredient was lobster.

There’s some good sweetness in lobster.

Exactly! First thing I thought of was lobster and butter. You could make a butter cake and throw that lobster in there. Somehow make it work.

Tell me how it came about that you created the world’s largest wedding cake.

That was back in 2005 and I was at the Mohegan Sun. It had a steel frame and it took months of planning. The sheet cakes all had to be stacked with buttercream in between. It was like a big jigsaw puzzle on each tier. It stood about 17 feet tall and weighed about 15,000 pounds. It was a cool experience.

It’s almost more architecture than baking.

Again, look at “Cake Boss” and Duff on “Ace of Cakes.” The things they’re doing with PVC and Rice Krispies … we didn’t do that back in the old days. We had to construct that out of edible things.

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Breakfast Lasagna, Psychedellic Cupcakes And Napa’tizers [This Week’s Weekend Eats - IT’S A TIE!]

Posted Apr 3, 2012 by Jeff Houck

Updated Apr 3, 2012 at 02:18 PM

Every so often, my mind gets blown by food.

I’ll see something - a new technique - or taste a new flavor or experience something unexpected that will redefine what I think of when I think about food.

That happened this week.

Twice.

As I do almost every Monday, I put out the call to friends and followers on Facebook and Twitter for them to submit their best dishes and drinks from the previous weekend.

And as happens almost every Monday, a flood of great food finds its way to me.

Like these dishes:

@katesawa - Grilled eggplant w/ ginger, miso cod, tempura shrimp & green tea ice cream @ Aburiya Kinnosuk in NYC

@otmdish - Cauliflower w ginger, garlic, soy & Red Boat Fish Sauce. Jeni’s I.C.: goat cheese w Cognac Figs!

@karenmcallister -  Is it aspargus season? Because my Parmesan Asparagus was delish last night.

@GingerCM - Homemade boudin (cooked the pig head ourselves) Smoked pork belly and homemade carnitas w/Ninfa’s sauce! #pigfest!

See what I mean?

Profound.

They don’t always have to be that spectacular. Sometimes, just a hint of something familiar - like an Oreo cookie embedded in chocolate chip cookie dough - is enough to get my attention.

But sometimes ... oh, baby.

Out of the blue, I got these two beauties thrown at me:

@foodpluswords - I made BBQ Pulled Pork Cinnamon Rolls, which basically changed my life completely.

@Droolius - Foie Gras and Pancakes - bacon buckwheat pancakes and maple syrup at the @SustainMIA brunch.

I immediately had the same reaction to both dishes:

I mean, how could you not?

But it caused for me a dilemma.

I’m supposed to award one winner each week. How do I do that with two dishes (and, let’s be honest here, several others as well) that are worthy of the week’s prize?

I pulled a Kobayashi Maru and decided there should be two prizes, something that has never before heretofore prior to ever ever ever happened.

My Twitter compadre @Foodpluswords will receive a copy of “The Back in the Day Bakery Cookbook,” by Cheryl Day and Griffith Day.

And the incomparable @Droolius will receive a copy of “Lard: The Lost Art of Cooking with Your Grandmother’s Secret Ingredient” from the editors of Grit Magazine.

Seemed like a better solution than tearing one book in half.

And, as is the custom, both will take their place in the Weekend Eats Hall of Fame.

How stiff was the competition this week? Dig the food in this week’s Gallery of Noms:

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