Let us pause now to reflect upon Jeffrey Steingarten, award-winning writer, fearless gastronomist and utterly irascible judge of "The Next Iron Chef." Every cooking competition show needs its Simon Cowell, after all, a grumpy, hard-to-please, perpetually underwhelmed quipster whose general lack of enthusiasm makes for great, nasty sound bites. But Steingarten is in another class entirely: He's so disaffected, it's hard to tell if he's got a pulse half of the time.

Week after week, Steingarten regards the Iron Chef hopefuls in the same way a crusty professor might deal with a snot-nosed student who happened to stop by his office outside of office hours. The man may certainly have his cheerful side, but by now we've gotten the feeling that every week, the "TNIC" editors decide to save up and splice together all of his best "You got me out of bed for this?" looks, and parse them out over the course of the last 15 minutes of each show.

When in doubt, they zoom in on one of his particularly befuddled stares -- no doubt there are plenty to choose from -- and try to give it some sort of significance, as if the man can't believe what he's hearing. You imagine that a Steingarten comment like "my flan is a little curdled" was probably delivered politely, gingerly to chef Jose Garces -- but when the tribal drums of failure are added to the soundtrack, man, does it take on a sting.

For a foodie, thrift is all well and good, but the primary concern usually is quality. After all, there is something of the sybarite in a true food lover and, as nice as it may be to save a buck or two, the most important thing is that food be delicious and enjoyable.

Even so, there is something interesting about trying to eat for only pennies a day. Jeffrey Steingarten tried it in The Man Who Ate Everything, where he spent a chapter exploring subsistence cooking, even going so far as to try MFK Fisher's recipe for "Sludge," a ground beef-based Depression era meatloaf. For that matter, urban locavores and "freegans" have explored the wonders of harvesting free, if somewhat wilted, produce from backlots and dumpsters.

Even so, attempts at extremely low-cost eating have usually been characterized by an impressive lack of culinary savoir faire. For example, in One Dollar Diet Project, a blog in which two California high school teachers documented their month-long attempt to eat for only $1 a day, the focus was on subsistence living, with oatmeal and PB & J's occupying center stage.

With that in mind, Rebecca Currie's attempt at thrift, documented in her blog, Less Is Enough, is particularly interesting. Normally a frugal shopper (she spends an average of $80 a month at the grocery store), Currie has only spent an average of $1 per day on food for the last few weeks.

Currie's blog is interesting reading, and it demonstrates that a $1 a day diet doesn't necessarily have to translate into uninspired or unhealthy food choices. Over the last sixteen days, Currie has prepared a broad selection of meals, including pasta with spinach and marinara, chicken fried rice, and black beans with rice and jalapeno. While her diet has skewed heavily toward high-protein legumes, whole grains, and eggs, it has also displayed a reasonable amount of flavor, a tendency toward fresh, healthy ingredients, and a pretty impressive amount of flavor. In short, while it may not be an ideal diet for everyone, Currie has shown that most of us probably have a lot of room to reduce our food expenditures!

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.

Lutefisk is one traditional Christmas food that often gets short shrift during a season when visions of gingerbread and fruitcake dance in the heads of foodies and nonfoodies alike. And perhaps with good reason. Who on earth would eat preserved fish that has a jelly-like consistency, much less reserve it for a holiday treat?

Norwegians and other Scandinavians, that's who. Lutefisk takes its name not from the Medieval stringed instrument, but from lye. Honest, it translates to "lye fish." This venerable holiday "treat" is prepared by adding lye to air-dried cod or other white fish. After the fish has been steeped in a noxious brew of cold water and lye it is actually caustic and must be soaked in several changes of water for almost a week to render it edible. Fans of the movie Fight Club will be intrigued to learn that if it soaks too long in the lye, the fats in the fish will render it into soap. Now, there's an item for a holiday gift basket, homemade fish soap.

Ed Levine, of Ed Levine Eats, is hosting a great contest that gives food-lovers the chance to dine with two of the most famous foodies in NYC: Ed Levine and Jeffrey Steingarten. All you have to do is write 100 words or less about who your favorite restaurant critic is and why. The contest will be judged by Steingarten, David Kamp (author of the United States of Arugula) and Ed Levine, so there is no point to picking Ruth Reichel because, for example, you think she's beautiful or charming. Flattery only works when those being flattered have a say in the results. Instead, try to consider what you find appealing about the work of the critics. Is their writing compelling? Are they trustworthy? Do they show a well-rounded appreciation of food or do they stick to fancy french restaurants for all their meals?

The contest will not be closed until there are at least 50 entries, so you have plenty of time to enter if you live in NY (or willing to travel there).

[via the food section]

Imagine that you are considering dining at a restaurant you have never been to before. If all your friends like it and the professional critics like it, chances are reasonably good that so will you. When it comes down to it, though, your friends are not professional food critics. Whose advice do you place more weight on -- the friend's or the word of the person who gets paid to eat?

It is a difficult decision, because most people are inclined to trust the professional, the expert. As Sarah alluded to earlier, Jeffrey Steingarten said that he felt obligated to let go of his personal food preferences and hang-ups when he became a food critic. In order to see things from his perspective, to take from his reviews what he does, do we have to let go of our food preferences? Of course not. Everyone likes different things. The question is really why you would choose to take the "professional" recommendation. Their palate is likely to be different from your own, so why should it be a reliable source of advice for you?

Monosodium glutamate (MSG) is a flavor enhancer that has been used in a wide variety of food products over the years. It is a sodium salt of glutamic acid, an amino acid. Resembling salt or sugar in appearance when it is isolated from a food, MSG does not have a distinctly recognizable taste. It triggers the taste buds newly classified as being sensitive to "umami", a savory taste and loanword borrowed from Japanese.

Chefs, even before giving a name to umami, have been using ingredients with a naturally high glutamate content to enhance the flavor of dishes. It is found in large quantities in ingredients such as tomatoes, mushrooms, corn, parmesan cheese and soy sauce, in addition to occuring in meats, like beef and chicken. It is the perception of MSG as a food additive - rather than as a naturally occurring flavoring - that has given it a bad name.

Cassoulet is my nemesis. I long to try this classicly famous slow-cooked French country dish. In the winter, nothing sounds more satisfying and delectably fattening than a cassoulet. But more than the time to cook (between three and six hours, depending on your recipe) is the list of ingredients: 1/2 pound unsmoked bacon, fresh pork rind or fatback, confit duck legs, veal demi-glace, duck and Armagnac sausages, rendered duck fat.

Most of it has to do with my general fear of duck. It was only last month - and only for the good of the slashforce - that I had the guts to roast that fearfully fatty poultry. And I never had the cojones to use the duck fat (despite your encouragement and wonderful words). It was partly Jeffrey Steingarten's fault, with his exhaustive search for the perfect interpretation of the dish. How could something accessible be such a pinnacle of one of Steingarten's epic quests?

So I'm considering staring down my demons, and attempting the fearful dish, with all its duck parts and renderings and demi-glaces before you even get started on putting the dish together. Do you have any kind words as I approach my doppelganger? Do you have any tales of facing your own culinary fears?

[Photo Butter Pig]