I Need To Cook

They say your'e innocent when you dream, and last night I was dreaming about barbecue. Yes, I dream about barbecue. It was a strange dream, but this is what a remember.

Apparently I was a contestant for Top Chef, which was taking place at a campground. I was alone in the campsite and was making burnt ends, the succulent twice smoked cubes of brisket, out of pork shoulder cubes when I realized that I didn't have anything for the elimination challenge that night.

I left my burnt ends smoking and headed to the local supermarket, which is someplace I've been to in real life but I don't remember the name, but I'm pretty sure it's a market somewhere in New Hampshire, to buy ingredients for the elimination challenge. I needed lamb, and the supermarket only had one small boneless leg. I bought that and asked for more. The store was closing and the cashier kept calling me by name to the register while the butcher searched for more lamb, eventually delivering me a frozen solid prime rib of beef all the while claiming that it was lamb.

I purchased those meats, along with some strange Korean labeled honey and a lot of baby bok choy and left the store confident that I would win the challenge even though I had slept through the quick fire challenge and had no idea what the elimination challenge was.

Then came the realization that I was asleep and this was all a dream. I need to cook.

Top Chef? NOT

When the hell will these "food elites" recognize that they don't know shit about barbecue?

On last night's episode the challenge was to create a "champagne barbecue" or as it's latter referred to an "upscale barbecue." Of course it was also called by one of the sponsor's name, "the Kingsford barbecue challenge."

The blatant commercials in this show just crack me up. I wonder how GE feels since the chef's dissed the stoves and torches on this episode? How's that product placement working for you GE? But let's save all that for another post.

The "chefs" were given two hours to prepare and two hours to cook. The prep time seems adequate, but the cook time is far from it, at least for traditional barbeque foods. Ok - interesting challenge here can you find foods that can cook "low and slow" in the time allowed? We'll never know because no one created barbeque.

Barbecue is by definition meat slow cooked over a wood fire. That's it. Now, I'll admit that I can allow some wiggle room in the definition. You can barbecue seafood. You can use charcoal. You can even barbecue vegetables. But the essence of barbecue is "low and slow." Hell, even guest judge Chef Van Aken admitted as much during the final critique.

Ultimately, Sandee was sent home because as Padma puts it "since she did not actually grill anything," since she poached her lobster the night before.

On another reality cooking show, one "chef" was ridiculed because she mistakenly called her flank steak, skirt steak during her presentation. The way the "judges" reacted you would have thought she called out the wrong name when making love. Why is it OK to call grilled food, barbeque?

These "judges" confuse grilling with barbecue and throw around the terms interchangeably. This was not a "barbecue" contest, it was a grilling contest. I would hope that these "foodies" would know the difference. Here on "Top" Chef cooking methods are identified incorrectly and no one seems to care.

The really sad part of all this is that Sandee was sent home for not "serving something that wasn’t actually grilled or barbecued."

This was supposed to be a "barbecue" contest, and by that definition all the "chefs" failed miserably and everyone the "chefs," "judges" and the rest of the production staff ALL need to go home.

Damn.