Photo of the Week – February 23, 2011 – Artful Teapot
My parents gave me this charming tea-for-one set. It comes from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the design is thanks to Swiss-born, French artist Theophile-Alexandre Steinlen (1859-1923). His art clearly showcases his love for cats. You can see why this was such a suitable gift for me, since there’s nothing I do during the day that isn’t accompanied by a cat at my heels, tripping me, begging for food, and looking to play fetch.
It’s All Antoinette’s Fault!
I blame last night’s dinner entirely on my sister-in-law Antoinette. Over the weekend she posted photos on Facebook of meatballs frying. That was it for me. Once I saw those meatballs, I just had to make my own – as soon as possible! These were good, but I think I would have liked them even better just plain fried as they were in her photo. That’s what the photo really made me crave. But I think the rest of the family wouldn’t have understood.
I’m really the advertiser’s dream. If they show me a food or drink I like, I’ll want to have it as soon as possible. I’ll watch movies with actors sipping a scotch, and I’ll want to pour myself a drink. If I see a delicious plate of pasta – it makes its way onto my week’s menu. A nice juicy steak? Done, I’m buying one the next time I go shopping. Funny how celery and beets just don’t have the same effect on me though.
What images of food drive you straight into the kitchen?
When Good Recipes Go Bad
Dale cut his cookies into rounds, but that seemed too wasteful to me.
I’m a big fan of the Top Chef series on Bravo, it’s probably my favorite cooking show at this point. The contestants are engaging and the challenges are always different. And they really put the contestants through their paces such as the middle of the night Target challenge they had last week. I was exhausted watching them run through a giant Target and create a makeshift kitchen and prepare a meal to feed 100 employees, all in three hours!
I also loved the Quick Fire challenge this week where they had to create a cookie for Sesame Street characters, including the Cookie Monster himself. Awesome! Over many seasons of watching this series, I’ve managed to convince Joe to watch along with me. That’s where I made my first mistake this week. The winning cookie was created by chef Dale Talde, one of the more aggressive competitors. He admitted his lack of cookie skills, but that didn’t stop him. He created a shortbread base using potato chips and pretzels which was topped with a chocolate ganache. Joe immediately told me that I had to get the recipe and make it.
Dutifully I went to the store on Thursday and purchased the necessary ingredients. I decided to make only a half of the recipe because it was so high in calories and low in nutrition (2 bags of potato chips, 2 pounds of butter, 2 pounds of chocolate and 2 quarts of cream among other ingredients.) I’m so glad I did. Even half of a recipe made a huge sheet of cookies. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
I’ve concluded that the Bravo site manager must have cornered Dale right after the challenge and asked him for the recipe. Dale spouted out the ingredients and process without any attention to detail. It would have been nice if they told me how big the potato chip and pretzel bags should be or how I should caramelize the sugar. It’s not an everyday kitchen task for most people. How about telling me there should be some water added to the sugar to caramelize it? I was left to go with my instincts from previous experience in caramelizing sugar, but it was far from correct. Finally, as instructed, I added cream and chocolate to make the ganache. The proportions were completely wrong and it wasn’t thick enough. It made a tasty drinking chocolate but not a thick chocolate cookie topping. I ended up putting the mixture into my AGA’s baking oven (350 degrees) to let it cook down for a few hours until it was thick enough to spread without running. The end result wasn’t the correct texture for a ganache. But with the hungry hordes asking me when the cookies would be ready, it was time to go with what we had.
The recipe turned out okay, and it is addictive in a butter, sugar, salt combination kind of way. But it wasn’t a winning recipe. I just hope that Bravo is more careful the next time they post a cookie recipe so I don’t have to waste the time I did in trying to make this bad recipe work. I was very tempted to toss the whole thing out, but the hordes would have been so disappointed, and it would have been a pretty expensive mistake.