Photo: Amazon

'Top Chef - The Quickfire Cookbook'
by Emily Miller with foreword by Padma Lakshmi
Chronicle Books -- 2009
Buy it on Amazon

It's Padma's world. The rest of us just cook in it -- just mostly without a gigantic LED countdown clock, a dozen cleaver-wielding competitors jockeying for prep space and a mandate to make haute nibbles from the contents of a 7-Eleven's snack aisle. But if that's what cremes your brulee and you haven't the tats, 'tude and temerity to audition for competitive reality TV, you can live vicariously through this book.

Or you can just go online and save the $29.95.

See what we tested and find out whether the book's worth buying after the jump.

Do you have what it takes to master this Top Chef quiz? Or will you be asked to pack your knives and go? Find out below.

In uncertain times, we count on simple pleasures: Home cooking, unemployment checks and the heady mix of ego, chutzpah and alcohol-fueled drama we have come to anticipate from "Top Chef."

So when Bravo announced that "Top Chef Masters," the show's latest iteration (hosted by Kelly Choi, right), would be given over to established culinary superstars, fans had reason to worry: Would decorum and professionalism win out over brash experimentation? Would upstart bickering be replaced by upper-crust camaraderie? Would the fauxhawk go the way of the dodo?

The answer after the inaugural hour is a qualified "yes." But what "Top Chef Masters" loses in amateur hour enthusiasm it gains in hyper-astute commentary. It is a knowing look at what it means to be a celebrity chef in an era when celebrity chefs are often made overnight on cable TV. Every week, by stripping four different "masters" of their sous chefs, sommeliers and Cuisinarts -- in one instance forcing them to make do with nothing more than a dorm room's toaster oven, microwave and hot plate -- it resets the bar for gourmet ingenuity.

Read on to learn about the Girl Scout mafia's dessert tastes and prosciutto-popcorn risotto.

Tomorrow night on Top Chef, Gail Simmons has a special surprise for the Chef'testants. She's throwing her girlfriend a bridal shower and they are cooking!

Creating a menu around the old maxim:

Something old, something new
Something borrowed, something blue
And a silver sixpence in her shoe.

... should be no trouble for the teams (Old, New, Borrowed, and Blue ... where's Sixpence?).

The only problem is, some of them don't look too excited to be Gail Simmons' personal chefs. Isn't this supposed to be a competition, not a service?

The episode airs tomorrow night, Wednesday, December 10th, at 10/9c on Bravo with guest judge Dana Cowin, Editor-in-Chief of Food & Wine Magazine.

So, the lesbian and two gay chef contestants on this season's Top Chef had a glass of wine and decided to call themselves "Team Rainbow."

Genius. Also genius: Bravo is selling Team Rainbow t-shirts (at right). It's $24.95 and pretty cute! Also, the word "team" is rainbow-colored, and the word "rainbow" is gray. That's unexpected. Just like Team Rainbow.

It's the kind of t-shirt where if you wear it on the street, you'll probably get shout-outs (and possibly make new friends with) people who've seen the show. Team Rainbow is about friendship. Wear the Team Rainbow t-shirt to show your support for Top Chef's Team Rainbow, for Top Chef in general, or to display your personal appreciation for rainbows.

New year, new episode of Bravo's Top Chef. The season picked up again this week with only seven of the original fifteen competitors still in the competition. At this point, the chefs have been living together for several weeks and, as in many situations where you have a group of type-A personalities, things are getting a little tense. Everyone in the group seems to oscillate back and forth between feeling compelled to act as a team trying to screw over everyone else so that they, as individuals, can get ahead. It makes things more interesting from a dramatic standpoint, but the chefs really need to get a grip on their tempers if they want to end up as Top Chef.

As the episode started out, one of the first things that we got to see was that Michael had a wisdom tooth pulled. He made it sound like he went to a less-than-reputable individual for the procedure, but seemed to be getting along fine aside from the pain and swelling. Medicated, Michael was much less feisty than usual. He noted that he hoped the challenges weren't too long and the rest of the tired-looking competitors agreed.

When you were in school and didn't get along with someone, parents and teaches probably told you that in the "real world" you have to try to get along with people you don't like because you often have to work with them no matter what your personal feelings are. Reality TV might not exactly be the "real" world, but it is becoming more clear that not all of the contestants had this lesson when they were growing up. On this week's episode of Bravo's Top Chef, the camera spent a lot of time on the personal interactions of the cooks, as well as filming the cooking itself.

This was a Thanksgiving themed episode, so it was particularly appropriate for this week despite the fact that it was probably filmed earlier this summer. For the quickfire challenge, chef Tom Colicchio served as the judge and the contestants were given only 15 minutes to create a "tasty" dish using three different canned ingredients. There was no time for anyone to utter more than one or two words of complaint as everyone got down to cooking.

Last night, instead of airing the Top Chef finale, Bravo decided to air their Top Chef reunion show. This meant that all 12 of the contestants were called into the studio where they answered questions about their experiences of the show. By taking questions from the message boards on their site, this format is a lot more interesting than simply revisiting favorite moments from the season.

There isn't too much to say about the episode, as nothing new was revealed about the contest itself. Harold and LeeAnne were extremely gracious throughout the show and Andrea, Cynthia, Brian and Lisa seemed to be doing very well for themselves. Kenneth, the first player voted off, was just as crazy as ever and seemed to scare a few people with his maniacal laughter and overtly confrontational manner. Stephen showed himself to be a genuinely charming and nice person, apologizing for anything he had done to offend people and to Candice in particular, as they had had a rather dramatic series of conflicts. Dave wanted the chance to say that he wasn't the total pushover that everyone thought he was.