Way back last October I had the distinct privilege of attending a taping of Iron Chef America with my fellow blogger, Jonathan. The challenger that day in Kitchen Stadium was cowboy chef, Tim Love. This was well before Chef Love was ridden out of Manhattan on a rail out after a wave of negative reviews of his restaurant, Lonesome Dove. Frank Bruni slammed the New York City outpost of Chef Love's much acclaimed restaurant in Fort Worth. The Brunster didn't even dole out any stars. He was reduced to a kindergarten sort of rating system, citing the Dove as "satisfactory."

In the interest of fairness, I must admit that I never ate any of the dishes such as "bony, dry antelope ribs," which caused my man Frank such dismay. I did, however, get to sample the Prairie Butter, which caused the Village Voice's Sietsema to wax rhapsodic. After what seemed like an eternity watching the taping, this signature appetizer proved quite the pick-me-up when Jonathan and I chowed down on it afterwards at Lonesome Dove. The jalapeño margarita and ice-cold shot of Tuaca, and Italian liqueur flavored with vanilla and citrus, also helped shake off the fatigue and the remnants of a raging hangover. I'm not quite sure what Tuaca has to do with cowboy cuisine, but Love seems to like it quite a bit. And just what is Prairie Butter? Well let's just say that any cowboy who gets city folk to belly up to the bar and chow down on split buffalo femurs and the gloriously greasy marrow therein can't be all bad.

But enough of the trials and tribulations of the New York City restaurant scene, as they say in Kitchen Stadium, "Allez cuisine!" By now you're probably wondering why this is being written so far after the actual battle took place. Two reasons: It just aired last week, and more important, due to ICA's strict privacy restrictions no one can reveal the secret ingredient or winner of the battle until after the episode airs. So if you haven't seen Morimoto vs. Love, I advise you not to read the jump.

I'd love to think this method for cooking up miniature flapcracks, sorry, I meant flapjacks, in a teaspoon over a Zippo was inspired by an avante garde pastry chef. Somehow, I'm not so sure.

I've heard tell of my alter ego Joey Deckle using syringes during the extreme stress of cooking 'cue – but only to inject marinade into a 200-pound hawg.

For what it's worth, I never pass up good silver-dollar pancakes. But I might have to give teaspoon pancakes a long, hard think before I try 'em. As you probably guessed from the headline, this pictorial recipe involves drawing the ingredients through one or more syringes, and then expressing them into the teaspoon to be cooked à la minute over the heat source of your choice, be it Zippo or crack lighter.
[via: Boing Boing]

Here's an interesting item for the next time all you hepcats and kittens host a dinner party: retro plastic dinnerware emblazoned with carcass maps. For the noncarnivores out there, a carcass map is one of those endlessy fascinating diagrams that hangs in butcher shops.

My meat and fire-loving alter ego Joey Deckle tipped me off to Food for Thought plates, which are the brainchild of designer Charles S. Anderson. You probably can't read the text, but the piggy plate shown here is labeled swine.

If you have an inkling that the word "swine" implies some sort of tongue-in-cheek value judgment about meat eaters you're not far off the mark. The other three plates in the set are steer, lamb and mutt, which in this case is not short for mutton, but simply denotes dog. Sure they're a far cry from Williams-Sonoma's elegant Je demande du boeuf carcass map platter, but I still wouldn't mine having a set in my cupboard.

I just received this glamour shot from my meat-and-fire-loving alter ego Joey Deckle. He had the privilege of cooking with Big Island Bar-B-Que at the Best of the Best cookoff a couple of weeks ago in Douglas, Ga. He's only just now emerging from a fat-and-protein-induced hibernation.

But back to that decadent cake. What exactly does it have to do with barbeque? Glad y'all asked. They say there's no hospitality like Southern hospitality. This luscious wedge was served at the hospitality suite that the contest's organizers kindly provided. It had been baked that morning and was still warm.

I'm told that the caramel layers had an intense toffee flavor and oozed into the delicate cake with each forkfull, instantly creating cavities, but in a good way. The killer cake also proved to be a top-notch hangover tonic. As for the cookoff results, let's just say that Robbie Richter and the boys from New York City brought some skills and made some jaws drop.

Non-U.S. TV commercials often make me howl with laughter. The latest spot from Canada's Boston Pizza sounds equally hilarious from the description I just read in Nation's Restaurant News. Unfortunately I couldn't find a clip of it anywhere.

Here's how it goes. The voiceover says that the Clarks have gargantuan hands. Soon we see that such appendages aren't exactly, um, handy. Mr. Clark slams his grotesque finger with a hammer as he tries to put together a birdhouse and Mrs. Clark can't seem to put in her contact lens. And poor junior can't put any of his hard-earned coins into his piggy bank.

The solution for their woes is of course heading to Boston Pizza where those hands prove to be more useful. While noone would blame you for thinking that spot shows them eating pizza with their gigantic mitts, that's not the case. Seems their oversized meathooks prove perfect for holding a full rack of ribs.

And just what are ribs doing in a place named Boston Pizza? I'm not sure, but my meat-and-fire-loving alter ego, Joey Deckle, wouldn't set foot in such a place with 10-foot hands.

As we get further into spring, my meat-and-fire loving alter ego, Joey Deckle, comes to life ravenously craving barbecue. Specifically: cooking, eating and competing. Of course Joey and I aren't alone in our seasonal 'cue cravings.

USA Today recently asked Karen Adler, author of The BBQ Queens' Big Book of Barbecue, to select 10 of America's top barbecue joints. The most difficult thing about coming up with the list was narrowing it down to 10, she says. The roster ranges from such roadhouses as Dreamland Drive-In Bar-B-Cue (pictured), which limits its menu to ribs and white bread, to huge operations like Kreuz Market that specializes in shoulder clod and serves up its delicacies on butcher paper. For the most part, the list is made up of old-school Southern or Kansas City barbecue eateries. There is one notable exception: R.U.B., in New York City. Well shoot, seems like we Yankees can make good barbecue.

Here's the full lineup: Dreamland Drive-In Bar-B-Cue, Tuscaloosa, Ala.; Big Bob Gibson Bar-B-Q, Decatur, Ala.; Hickory Hollow BBQ, Ellenton, Fla.; R.U.B., New York; Wilber's Barbecue, Goldsboro, N.C.; Goode Co. Bar.B.Q., Houston; Kreuz Market, Lockhart, Texas; The Bar-B-Q Shop, Memphis; Fiorella's Jack Stack Barbecue, Kansas City, Mo.; and  BB's Lawnside Bar-B-Q, Kansas City, Mo.

[photo: Southern Living]