TV Audition

So I completed my audition tape for Grill It! with Bobby Flay. Let me just say that it was an unbelievable learning experience. I am usually the one off camera, so it took me a while to get my game face on. And I now have a greater knowledge of sound, editing, the speed I talk at, having enough buffer space at the beginning and end of each take, and the importance of walking through what I am going to do before filming, even if it is done inside my head.

If I could, I would shoot the whole thing over again. Like life, we all wish for re-do's. It is totally second guessing yourself, except unlike real life, here you have options for fixing things. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy with what I have, I just think it could be that much better. The video is supposed to be 3 minutes. I cut a grilled desert peaches recipe out and mine is still 3 1/2. In real time, my recipes take about 45 minutes, and editing that down to a comprehensible 3 minutes was a real challenge. Especially since I have only used iMovie once before, with minimal editing.

What recipe steps do you cut out? I could have made removing the leeks from the grill much faster, huh? I know you noticed the voice over. Should i have included the grilled peaches desert instead of the leeks? And anyone with any kitchen sanitation knowledge will notice when i break a cardinal rule. The trauma of self analysis. I now know why every TV host(ess) I have ever worked with is neurotic.

Special thanks to J., Eri, Erin(sorry I had to cut your work), Gail, and Alex(for wrangling the kids).

So here it is.

Birthday cake

I made a birthday cake for Eri this past weekend. I love cooking in a foreign (i.e. not my) kitchen because it makes me think about tools and ingredients differently. Using measuring cups or an oven I'm not used to makes me re-evaluate my own tools. And things like vanilla or flour that aren't the style I use make me think about food chemistry. Do I need to change a recipe to make it work well or not?

On a side note, I spoke with a producer at The Food Network a little while ago, through various contacts, about the show Grill It! with Bobby Flay, to be on an episode. We spent the weekend filming my audition tape as well. To keep yourself entertained until I post my audition tape, please look at my competition.  

Photo courtesey of Erin.

Miracle Fruit

Enough Said. I'm obsessed. I want to eat incredibly awful foods, like the Swedish rotten fish in a can. I want to eat bags and bags of Sour Patch Kids. I want to suck on a whole lemon. Give it to me, baby.

Jury Duty

I had jury duty yesterday and today. I was called for a case, but long story short, they didn't like me. So I spent two days doing NY Times crossword puzzles and reading The Gastronaut.

The weird thing about jury duty is lunch. You are in the land of suits, surrounded by the courts, City Hall, Wall Street, and the southern tip of chinatown. So rather than eat in weird corporate delis, sports bars, or McDonalds, I headed east into chinatown.

One of the nice things about New York City is ethnic restaurants. If there are a bunch of Chinese people eating at a chinese restaurant, I feel good about it. Same as take out curry with Indian cab drivers lined up outside. They should know their own food, right? Especially since I had researched jury duty lunches on Chowhound the night before and then forgotten my notes.

To vastly generalize, Asian cultures have a much vaster base of vegetarian cooking in their history, from India to China to southeast asia to Japan. Much of this can be based on accommodating the Toaist, Hindu, and Buddist religions. Look at me be racist.

Yesterday I ate at a place with a sign saying Shanghai Style, and I'm still not sure if it was the name of the restaurant or just the style of food. I ate Shanghai Style Tofu in Hot Pork Sauce. The pork was used just as a flavoring, and it was delicious. And there were a million things on the menu J. could have eaten. And today I went to a Thai place and had Pho, which is rice noodles in broth with endless possible additions. I had the beef mix, which had about five different cuts of meat, including tripe, which I've never had before. It was good.

The funny part is that at both restaurants I sat at a big, communal table, half filled with other jurors, all doing the same neighborhood lunch tour this week.

Magical Food Scientists

For anyone who doesn't know, they found the source of the mystery maple syrup smell that randomly appears in New York City. It turns out that a food additive/processing company in New Jersey was processing fenugreek seeds and making the smell, which drifted across the Hudson in the right weather conditions. And I can tell you that fenugreek smells nothing like maple syrup.

I know there are a bunch of food chemistry plants in Jersey, and I am fascinated by jobs where you have assignments like refining a sour cream and onion flavor profile for a potato chip company. I once read an interview with one of them that took place in a grocery store. The food scientist sampled packaged foods and was guessing who developed the taste, leading to quotes like "Yeah, those Doritos sure do taste like Jackie." I never get to say things like that at work. And I love that they are all master chemists who argue about what "onion" tastes like.

I love the whole idea of food science and chemistry. According to the FDA, anything made from another food item is natural flavoring. So maybe you can make a maple syrup flavor from fenugreek. I know that vanilla flavor can be extracted from wood, usually waste from the paper industry. But this is easier to understand, because you can get notes of vanilla flavors in wine and bourbon, both of which age in a wood barrel.

Dinner Parties

The one nice thing about meat is serving multiple people. Having people over to eat, A simple roast chicken, pork loin, flank steak, Leg of lamb can fill up a big portion of the meal. And there is no vegetarian alternative. Sure, I can make a veggie pot pie, but that is significantly more work and has nowhere near the presence on the table as a roast. And no, I'm not going to make a tofurkey.

There is the Quorn Turk'y Roast, but I'm scared of Quorn and all the reviews say it tastes exacly like turkey, whick J. won't eat and I hate the idea of. Why on earth would you ever make a vegetarian product taste like meat?

I'm thinking about trying a meatloaf style presentation out of my current veggie burger recipe, with some extra roast veggies and maybe with a rich mushroom gravy.