"celebrity chef" news and stories

Several things I did not know about Bobby Flay before our brief, but amusing phone chat last week:

1. He has a trademark* on the term "crunchify" -- which means to add potato or tortilla chips to a sandwich or burger for the express purpose of introducing a textural element.

2. He's Churchill Downs' official Kentucky Derby Party Host. Though actually that puts to rest the nagging questions I'd had as to why a born and bred New Yorker would put a Hot Brown sandwich (it's a Bluegrass State thing) on his menu at Bar Americain.

3. Chips, dips and burgers for the Superbowl celebration chez Flay? Nope -- he's a paella man for big parties.

4. Holy heck, is he an entertaining radio host.

Bobby Flay Radio is a limited run series wherein the titular host waxes authoritative on subjects ranging from football, personal style, dating, and oh yeah -- food. While an audio-only cooking show might seems a tad spare, Flay manages to demo a Sandwich of the Week, conduct on-air taste tests (consisting largely of potato chip bags being opened loudly in front of open microphones) and dispense hardcore cooking advice to callers in a manner appealing enough to make one want to ratchet up the caliber of one's lunch plans once the show wraps at noon.

Bonus -- occasionally his wife, actress Stephanie March, shares mike duties and misses not a single chance to rebut his claims or bust his chops. A Burns & Allen in the making? Dunno -- how 'bout giving 'em more than five weeks to find out, Sirius?


Bobby Flay Radio airs on Sirius / XM Channel 108 from 10-12 on Thursdays (replaying Saturday and Sunday from 3-5) through February 5th. Don't subscribe? Sign up for a free online trial.

Bobby Flay Radio on Sirius


*Thank you to eagle-eyed poster Matt who pointed out that it's a trademark rather than a copyright, as I'd previously written.

.000001%* of the population will be paid actual cash money to step foot into the on deck circle at Yankee Stadium. Still, that doesn't stop hordes of fans from TiVoing Inside Baseball, poring over box scores and suiting up in team regalia on game day. For some of us, food holds an equally compelling balance of gut-level devotion and wonkish stat-based compulsion. A reservation at elBulli is akin to scoring home team dugout seats for the seventh game of the World Series. Food fans -- here's your program.

It's said that 2,000,000 requests a year come in for just 8000 seats at Ferran Adrià's Spanish temple of molecular gastronomy. The closest many of us will come is grazing through this brand new 528 page play-by-play, A Day at elBulli An insight into the the ideas, methods and creativity of Ferran Adrià. It's not so much the common parlance's "food porn" as it is a post-millennial culinary junkie's process orgy, documenting each staff motion and motivation, every microgram of alginate and liquid nitrogen, and fetishistically breaking down quantity and custom and customer/server semiotics.

The proverbial sausage has never been so obsessively, graphically made for public consumption, and rarely has it been so deliciously presented. There are pleasing pictures and recipes, to be sure (Hazelnut praline air, anyone? Perhaps some Garrapi-nitro pine nuts?), but sans easy access to an Isomalt-R-Us, it's a fever-dream cookbook. It is, however, a deeply heartening food-ifesto.

If you're prone to chef crushes, you could do a lot worse than Matthew Kenney -- and that's solely on the basis of his food. Though Kenney is now a primary practioner of the raw food movement, foodies who found themselves in SoHo during the late 1990s/early 2000s will remember him for Canteen, a restaurant that emphasized the fusion influences that pre-date his raw food conversion and are the highlight of Big City Cooking. But don't be intimidated: Kenney's magic is in revealing the essence of a flavor, an ingredient, or a technique, and thus, though it is essentially a restaurant cookbook, Big City Cooking is very easy to understand and use -- always with delicious results.

The thesis of the book is that the abundance of ingredients and mash of cultures in a city can be the inspiration for a cook's creativity. That's a great idea, and a true one, but I don't believe that fusion influences are specifically urban -- in this day of super supermarkets, including those online, one doesn't have to live in a big city to have za'aatar in one's spice cabinet or, accordingly, on one's flatbread. (In fact, most of those "urban" ingredients or techniques originated with indigenous cuisines.)

The strength of this cookbook is the dishes themselves, which are organized by technique and which highlight a diversity of ingredients. Thus there are sections on raw and steam cooking, sauteeing, grilling, roasting, and stewing. Within each are recipes from appetizers and salads straight through to desert, all of them accessible to the home cook.

I was watching Food Network on Saturday night (yes, I have a very thrilling social life) and I saw an ad for their All-Star Thanksgiving special that starts airing on November 18. Is that the special from last year or the year before and not a new special? I ask because Sara Moulton is featured on the show, and I'm not sure if this is a new special or a special from the last couple of years.

I used to love Cooking Live every night and think it was a bad move to cancel that show. Moulton went on to another show, Sara's Secrets.

Nicole reported last year that Moulton was leaving the network, so are these Sara Secrets episodes repeats? I can't tell from the schedule at the site. When I saw the ad for the Thanksgiving special, it made me cringe a bit, because I know that she's basically not doing much for the network anymore, unless the episodes of her show that are on every morning are new and not repeats? To be honest, I didn't even know the show was still on anymore, and I usually don't watch Food Network that early in the AM, so I'm not sure if they're new or repeats.

How can you tell when a celebrity is doing something just for the money? It is easy when they don't even attempt to conceal the fact that they dislike the product that bears their name. Gordon Ramsay, for example, doesn't seem to think that his new line of chocolates, called Just Desserts, are anything special. He said "I don't think you are going to be blown away at £3.99-odd for a box."

While it is true that price can be an indicator of quality, shouldn't Ramsey have tried to get the product to be a really superior one for its price range? A random chocolate from a relatively inexpensive box obviously wouldn't stand up to a single, carefully-crafted truffle that costs as much as that whole box, but with an endorsement from Ramsay, consumers are at least expecting to get something worth what they paid.

The chocolates, if you are interested, are available in the UK at various major retailers, including Sainsbury's.

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