Chef Paul Prudhomme was setting up his tent at the Zurich Classic (golf) in New Orleans when he felt something on his arm and thought he was stung by a bee.

When he opened his shirt sleeve, a .22 calibre bullet fell to the ground!

Fortunately for Chef Prudhomme, the bullet was apparently not aimed at him, but had simply fallen, probably shot from somewhere within a mile-and-a-half radius of the golf course.The chef's shirt was torn and his skin was cut, but he was back to cooking within five minutes.

So he wasn't shot at, but I still like to think that chefs, given what they do in their tiny restaurant kitchens, are invincible.

One of my Food Network guilty pleasures is Dinner: Impossible. I like the challenges, I really enjoy the creativity required to pull it off and I love Robert Irvine. The accent combined with those intense food skills really set my heart afluttering. Knowing all this, you'll understand just how tickled I was when I discovered earlier today that Food for Thought, the behind-the-scenes blog over at Food Network Canada currently has a post up about Chef Irvine, along with a brief interview. Fun fact I learned from the post? Chef Irvine is excited about stone-ground mustard and rice wine vinegar these days. A man who can get excited about mustard is definitely a man after my own heart.

It seems just about everyone has been transformed into a foodie thanks to such media phenomena as Top Chef and the Food Network. These days the gourmet brigade includes astronauts.

USA Today reports that NASA has figured out how important food is to astronauts living on the International Space Station who spend six months at a time in an environment devoid of fresh air and flora. Not only has the space agency realized that eating unsatisfying grub can have detrimental effects on morale, it's allowing the astronauts a ration of treats. Crewmembers are allowed to have a shoebox filled with shelf-stable treats. USA Today reports that a Madrid-born astronaut brought a "special Spanish ham." Shoot, sign me up. I'd travel to outer space for some jamon pata negra.

In addition to their shoeboxes of treats, the astronauts have enjoyed meals created by celebrity chefs. Back in August the crew of the International Space Station enjoyed dishes created by Emeril Lagasse. Last week they dined on a menu created by Alain Ducasse. The bill of fare included such stellar fare as red tuna with candied Menton lemon (pictured) and quails roasted in wine. Just in case anyone from NASA is reading this, I am not at all prone to motion sickness or claustrophobia, for that matter.

Before we go any further, I have a confession to make. I like my local Applebee's, but not for the food. I've been there hundreds of times, yet I can count the number of meals I've eaten there on one hand. With the sole exception of the burger, I usually regret ordering anything there.

The real reason I go is simple: there are hardly any watering holes in Rego Park, Queens. Lest any of my fellow Slashfoodies, or God forbid my legions of fans, think me anything less than hip for bending my elbow at a chain restaurant, please be aware that such celebs as Joey Ramone's mother have been known to eat at the very same place. Really, it's true she hails from nearby Forest Hills.

So it certainly wasn't the Huge Flavor campaign involving Food Network star Tyler Florence that drew me to Applebee's last month. Although I must admit that that hearing that two dear friends of mine had sampled some items from the new menu sparked a torrent of conflicting emotions: sympathy, jealousy, Schadenfreude, and a sense of professional envy. Hovering above all of this was a lingering dread, since as a fellow gourmand and food writer I knew I would have to take one for the team.

If you happen to be in the Los Angeles area this coming weekend and are looking for something to do besides the usual beach, pool, and shopping, the inaugural Los Angeles Wine and Food Festival will be taking place at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

On the food front, Iron Chef Cat Cora and celebrity chef David Lawrence will be serving up food demonstrations and their favorite cooking tips. Gourmet food vendors will also showcase a diverse sampling of their goods. For the oenophiles, there will be wine tastings from over 100 wineries, including Vinissimo, Stacked Stone Cellars, Cambria Estate Winery, Saint Helena Road Winery, Bridelwood Estate Winery & E'cluse Wines, as well as discussions on the latest wine trends like the recent popularity of Australian wines, the rise of rosé, and boxed wines and screwcap bottles versus traditional corking.

Tickets cost $65 per person, or $120 for a couple, and are available for purchase online.

Given that the chef already has a penchant for the camera, it's no surprise that Gordon Ramsay is opening a restaurant in Hollywood, and not just one restaurant, but two new restaurants and a bar in the Bel Age Hotel.

The Bel Age will undergo a remodel and will be re-branded as the London LA Hotel in Spring 2007, and that is when Ramsay's restaurants are set to open. This is not his first foray into the US. Ramsay is preparing to open his first US restaurant in New York this fall, and another Italian-themed restaurant in the Boca Raton Resort and Club in Florida in November.

As much as I thought Rocco DiSpirito was hot, and as much as I religiously watched the show "The Restaurant," I didn't think Rocco would ever have the balls to return to television after it turned out to be a complete fiasco.

I guess I was wrong. Rocco has balls. He is filming a pilot for a new reality tv show called "Rocco." In the show, Chef DiSpirito "will reportedly act as a culinary therapist on the new series, solving ordinary people's problems through the use of food."

Well, you didn't think he was going to actually cook, did you?

You've got every cookbook ever put out there by a famous chef - from Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook to Tyler Florence's Eat This Book (oops, maybe that's just me). The chef's face is on the cover, he's wearing a spotless chef's jacket, and inside, the recipes are amazing.

But did the chef really write that book? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. It depends on the chef. The Financial Times looks at the relationship between chefs and the "ghostwriters" behind them who polish the prose, whether or not the writer's name appears alongside the chef's name on the book's cover.

Do you think it's right for a chef to leave the ghostwriter's name off even if he or she did most of the writing?

If you are into extreme cuisine, how does you top eating the still-beating heart of a cobra? Or what about going right up to Korea's DMZ and fishing for your lunch?

If you're Tony Bourdain, you party in war-ravaged Beirut while airports are bombed and all ports are blockaded.

Bourdain flew to Beirut a week ago to do an episode on the local cuisine of Lebanon for his Travel channel show, No Reservations. He and his crew ate and partied Monday and Tuesday, but were holed up in their hotels after the bombings started, waiting for instructions on evacuation. I haven't seen any more news recently if Bourdain and his crew have left yet, but according to the New York Post, he's "not getting a show out of this . . . I just wanna hang out and drink at the bar. The mojitos here are great."

Sure, sure, Tony. We know you're a tough guy. Get home safely.

We're a blog, and you're a blog reader, so neither of us has to say these names out loud: Daniel Boulud, Ruth Reichl, and the one that I call "that French guy Zhon-Zhorzh," Jean-Georges Vongerichten.

But when there comes the time in regular conversation when you just might have to pronounce these famous food people's names out loud, the Gentleman Gourmand has a handy list of how to pronounce them. Some of them, we hear enough on TV, like Mario Batali, but others, not so much.

• Jacques Pepin is not "Jack Peppin?!??!" No, my friends, it is "Zhog pep-ANNE."
• Daniel Boulud is not like my brother, as sung by Elton John. It is "dan-YELL," emphasis on the second syllable. His last name is "boo-LOO," silent on the "d."
• Grant Achatz of Chicago's Alinea, he of the trapeze bacon, is not "AH-shots," rather, "ACK-etz." In case you're wondering, bacon is "bacon."

And since Gentleman Gourmand's post is a couple of year's young, it doesn't include some of the newer faces on the scene.

• Be not thrown off by the "AE." Her name is Rachael, and amazingly, it sounds just like "Rachel."
• Giada de Laurentiis is "Zhee-AH-dah de law-REN-teess."
• Sandra Lee is simple. "Seh-my home-mayd."

[via: Megnut]

Despite all the hype about celebrity chefs - whether they're on TV or simply known because they're good at what they do - and their cookbooks, the best selling ones are still the same type of cookbooks that have always been popular: basic, all-around cookbooks with tried-and-true recipes. But how could books from Phyllis Pellman Good's Fix it and Forget it series outsell books from the likes of Rachael Ray, whose name alone is definitely a household word?

The answer is simple and lies just underneath the surface of current cooking trends. Right now, both slow food and "30-minute meals" are popular, as are organic ingredients, exotic flavors and learning to cook as a pastime, the premise that reinvented the Food Network. The fact is that, no matter what the trends are, most people already know how to cook something and have been cooking longer than the Food Network has been telling them how to do it.  Recipes were passed around and improved over time. It may not have been organic or gourmet, but food had to be cooked and whatever it was usually tasted pretty good to everyone in the family.

 

Time Magazine has named their Top 100 Most Influential People. There are scientists, academics, leaders, and revolutionaries like Steven Levitt (economist), Oprah Winfrey, and Bill & Melinda Gates. And there among the group of Artists & Entertainers, which also includes Ang Lee, Howard Stern and Meryl Streep is...

Rachael Ray.

Her feature story for Time is written by Mario Batali (whom I would have picked long before I'd ever pick Rachael Ray), who says that the 38-year-old Rachael Ray has "has radically changed the way America cooks dinner" in less than five years. Of course, this has also made her rich with millions of cookbooks sold, a magazine, and about a gazillion shows on the Food Network. Hey! Now we know how old she is.

So I would have chosen Mario Batali, but I guess the reason that she is chosen for this list is that she is influential. I mean, how many people out there call it "EVOO" now?

But you won't be able to click over and surf through his archives just yet.

The chef of Fat Duck in Britain is putting his research, notes, recipes and photographs online, using a wiki-style system. He and his two sets of staff do "research" and "experiments" in their kitchen laboratory, which Blumenthal would like to keep for posterity. He agrees with Ferran Adria of El Bulli in Spain, who told him that "they were trying to log information, because you are involved in something that is changing the face of gastronomy."

Eventually, he says he would leave the archives to the country. Perhaps a library. For now, only Blumenthal and his staff will be able to access the online files with varying levels of security.

No newspaper worth its weight in matzo doesn't have a story related to Passover. The San Francisco Chronicle dishes out some artichokes and fiery horseradish sauce. To change up the sweets filled with matzo, potato starch makes a sponge cake covered with berries.

It started with the Ferry Building Marketplace at Embarcadero, and now gourmet "food malls" are sprouting up all over the Bay Area.

The CIA at Greystone has expanded its program to include a full-fledged culinary program, just like its New York headquarters.

On the dining scene, watch the chefs at Rogue Chefs. John Bentley's gets a re-visit and an updated review, as does Cortez.

Baseball season has kicked off, and at Bay Area stadiums, the food has kicked off, too, with offerings beyond hot dogs and peanuts.

Pan-roasting the last of winter's vegetables gets praise, with a recipe for caramelized vegetables.

Thomas Keller is building a tiny empire over in the Napa Valley

 

 

I don't love the Food Network's choices in programming. However, the network recently announced a line-up of new daytime and prime-time shows that have some promise.

Alton Brown will have a new show, Feasting on Asphalt, with a travel bent, and we already know that Paula Deen's sons, Jamie and Bobby Deen, will also have a travel-type food show called Two for the Road. Paula Deen herself will venture into live tv with Paula's Cooking Party in which she will be in front of an audience in a studio.

The biggest news is that Nigella Lawson will joining Food Network celebrity-dom. Her show, Nigella Feasts, will be a show about food, family and holidays.

A couple of shows about which I am skeptical are Throwdown With Bobby Flay, and of course whatever spin-off show that the winner of the currently running The Next Food Network Star will host.