Chef Report

Cameron Cuisinier’s dreams of a catering career led him to culinary school. Now he’s unemployed and $43,000 in debt, and he’s not alone.

From TV chefs to reality shows where the winners get their own restaurants, it’s a hot time to be in the kitchen. Record numbers of would-be chefs are enrolling in culinary schools, some of which charge $20,000 a year or more. But the restaurant business has always been a tough way to make a living, and many graduates find themselves saddled with debt and working long hours at low-paying, entry-level jobs.

“When they’re trying to get you enrolled in these programs, they tell you you’re going to come out making top dollar,” said Cuisinier, a recent graduate of the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco. “I’ve just been way disappointed.”

Industry observers say celebrity chefs like Rachael Ray and Emeril Lagasse — with his trademark exclamation, “Bam!” — helped launch the craze. The rising popularity of cable TV’s The Food Network and reality shows like “Top Chef” and “Hell’s Kitchen” are fueling it.

“It looks really fun on TV,” said Tim Ryan, president of the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., one of the country’s premier training grounds for chefs. “You’ve got an audience adoring you. You say, ‘Bam!’ and throw some stuff on a plate and everyone goes nuts.

“That’s not what happens,” he said. “The work is long and hard. There’s a lot of pressure.”

more…

Cameron Cuisiner poses for a photo at home in Monterey, Calif., Tuesday, Dec. 19, 2006. Cuisinier is $43,000 in debt. And it wasn’t a fancy car or credit cards that got the 24-year-old there, it was dreams of a catering career. Cuisiner spent the money on culinary school. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

SEOUL, Dec. 20 (Yonhap) — U.S. restaurant chain Hooters will open its first restaurant in South Korea next month, the company’s local unit said Wednesday.

Hooters, known for its brand image of waitresses with tight shorts and low-cut T-shirts, is scheduled to open its first restaurant in Seoul on Jan. 18, Hooters of Korea Inc. said in a statement. full story…

It was a lunch that would horrify a dietitian: a bag of Tropical Skittles, a Jones soda, two Little Debbie marshmallow treats, a deep-fried pizza stick and a bottle of sweetened iced tea.

The high-calorie, sugar-packed treats are standard fare for Cleveland High School freshman Tikisha Spires, who travels off campus for lunch each day.

It’s certainly not what the Seattle School Board had in mind two years ago when it adopted a rigorous nutrition policy and canceled a lucrative vending contract with Coca-Cola. Chips and cookies were replaced in vending machines with granola bars and trail mix; sugary drinks are no longer sold in schools. Cleveland fell into line with other schools, offering healthier foods in its cafeteria and vending machines.

more…

CHICAGO, Nov. 29 PRNewswire — Five-star chef Charlie Trotter will bring his superlative-culinary experience to the Elysian Hotel and Private Residences, flagship of a new ultra-luxury brand, under construction at 11 East Walton Street and scheduled to open in 2008. The venture marks Trotter’s first collaboration in the U.S. and the latest success for the Gold Coast development.

“We talked with some of the nation’s foremost chefs about creating a restaurant truly attuned to the quality and character of the Elysian. In Charlie, we found the ideal partner, whose standards of excellence equal our own,” said David Pisor, founding partner and chief executive officer of the property’s developer, Elysian Worldwide. “Widely regarded as one of America’s finest chefs, Charlie is an icon and true innovator in the worlds of food and service. We couldn’t be more thrilled about our association with him.” more…

MIAMI BEACH, Fla. — A south Florida couple was happy to not be sharing their home with millions of bees. Jesus Molina said he and his girlfriend were ready to buzz off after a swarm of bees invaded the kitchen wall of their Miami Beach apartment.

Molina said the bees were there for at least two and a half years. The couple finally had enough and called in the professionals.

“So we’re trying to, like, get rid of most of them, but without professional help we can’t. So now we almost … They’re biting me!’” Molina screamed, running from the home during an interview with reporters.Beekeepers removed more than 3 million bees from the apartment. They also extracted nearly 60 pounds of honey. more…

Rachael Ray is everywhere. She’s on TV, on bookshelves and now you can even buy the Food Network personality’s cookware.

To Lansing resident Misty Lane, it’s too much, and through a Web site she has created she has found out she is not alone.
Originally conceived as a joke, Lane started the “Rachael Ray Sucks Community” (http://community.livejournal.com/rachael_ray_sux/) in 2003 half expecting others to share her disdain for Ray.
“I got really fed up watching her show,” Lane said. “I really didn’t think anybody would join.”
The online group dedicated to Ray-bashing existed under the radar for about two years, until web magazine Slate.com ran a piece in defense of Ray in July of 2005 with a link to the site. Now 1,332 members strong, Lane, who has never met Ray, said the community receives about 300,000 hits every month. more…

Celebrity Chef Daniel Boulud screamed vicious obscenities at Hispanic workers and promoted unqualified white workers who fit the upscale image of his four-star French eatery Daniel, a lawsuit claims.Seven Latino and Bangladeshi busboys and runners who worked at Daniel sued Boulud in Manhattan Federal Court yesterday, accusing the award-winning chef of racial and ethnic discrimination.

“They don’t want to see anyone who is a captain who is Bengali or Latino,” said Mir Kadir Mamun, 30, a Bangladeshi busboy from Queens who says he was fired in May after airing complaints with federal officials. “They are never going to promote us.”

The workers say they were also forced to remain in back-breaking, low-paying jobs that require lifting heavy trays of food. more…

Christina Bayens — 26 and born with cystic fibrosis — needed a double lung transplant but she and her middle-class Louisville parents faced a dilemma.

How would they pay thousands of dollars of bills not covered by insurance?

Sitting on a hotel bed in St. Louis after visiting doctors in January — laughing and crying at the prospect of raising money — Christina and her mother, Linda, saw a television news report.

Twelve men from a New York Moose Lodge had posed partially nude for a calendar to raise money for a children’s charity.

“Naked chefs,” Linda blurted out.

Thus was born the “Louisville Chefs’ Best Kept Secrets” calendar — featuring male and female chefs from the city’s top tables, showing off their ingredients — which is now on sale at various local restaurants. more…

While luminous Yanks like Michelle Pfeiffer continue storming our restaurants — she was at Opus in Toronto the other night, FYI — an admirable Canadian has just taken up the task of feeding Americans.

Gabriel Aubry, who has a bedroom smile but is also adept in the kitchen and known best, of course, as the beau of one Halle Berry, just opened a restaurant in New York City. The theme is Cuban, and the locale is the East Village. Cafe Fuego is what they’re calling it.

Two years have passed since the French-Canadian Versace model and the Oscar-anointed Catwoman became an item, and things seem to be in that calm, settle-down place for both. Last week, at a party sponsored by Hennessy Cognac at Gabriel’s new spot, Halle even made an appearance and gave the restaurant the best, highest-wattage shot of publicity it could ever ask for.

“I was a cook before I was a model,” the tousled-haired hunk told InStyle magazine’s Party Hopper column. “I have a metabolism, so I can eat anything,” he boasted when the question of models-who-eat naturally came up. more…

Gabriel Aubry and erstwhile Catwoman Halle Berry

The first orders Walter Scheib III remembers receiving from Laura Bush’s new social secretary, Lea Berman, still ring in his ears: “We need to stop serving this country-club food.” Scheib, who was then the White House executive chef, was speechless for several moments before he finally blurted out, “We are not serving what we want; we are serving what the first family wants to have.”Within two months of Berman’s arrival, in December 2004, Scheib was asked by the chief usher, Gary Walters, who is in charge of White House operations, to hand in his resignation. Scheib agreed to stay on until his replacement was found, but the next day he told The New York Times that he had been fired. As soon as the article was published the White House asked him to clear out immediately.

Quite a comedown, he admitted in a recent interview, from his days in the previous administration, when Hillary Clinton had charged this fiercely competitive, meticulously organized chef with bringing “what’s best about American food, wine and entertaining to the White House.” His sophisticated contemporary food was generally considered some of the best ever served there.

But he was quick to say he would only talk about his difficulties as long as it was clear that he has no complaints about Laura Bush. more…

A Florida woman has told the National Enquirer that she carried on a five-year affair with TV cook Rachael Ray’s husband.

Rachael Ray is the talk show circuit’s newest darling, so you can see why Jeannine Walz would pick now to cash in on her dirt. Why Rachael Ray, the mouse-voiced spaz attack who laughs at her own jokes, is popular, though, is still a secret.

Walz says she did drugs with John Cusimano, Ray’s husband and a lawyer, and then the two got their freak on. Maybe Ray has some recipes for food to slather on your lover’s body she can share?

In any case, Cusimano’s sexual requests aren’t sugary, but they sure are spicy. Walz says he shelled out cash for her to spit in his face and rub her bare feet on his face, amongst other things.

“Sometimes he’d be naked. I always kept my clothes on,” Walz says. “John paid me up to $500 for a session. We’d often have sessions at least twice a month … I virtually supported myself by spitting on him. But there was never any normal sex involved. He once offered to pay me $1,200 to perform a kinky sex act with him, but I refused.” more…

Jeri Ryan’s chef fiancé thrills her in the bedroom because he’s the first man she has met who really appreciates her lacy lingerie. The actress, who was previously married to politician Jack Ryan, insists her French lover Christophe Eme is a cut above most men because he makes her feel extra special when she wears sexy undies for him. more…

Homeless Philadelphians, Chef Foo may soon be teaching you the finer points of cooking.

Thanks to a deal reached with prosecutors, Susanna Foo, a nationally acclaimed chef and restaurateur, is to teach cooking to the city’s poor and homeless instead of facing trial for allegedly striking a Parking Authority ticket writer.

Foo, 63, of Villanova, was to have had a hearing yesterday in Municipal Court on assault charges arising from the Sept. 29 incident. Instead, prosecution and defense attorneys told Judge Francis Cosgrove that they had agreed to drop a simple-assault charge if Foo stays out of trouble for six months and devotes 50 hours to community service.

She will perform that community service for Project HOME, whose cofounder, Sister Mary Scullion, said she was excited to learn of the idea yesterday from the law firm defending Foo. “We have different programs that could utilize her expertise,” Sister Mary said in a telephone interview. “She’s such a phenomenal restaurant person.” more…

Follow up to this story

Fiance: Officer Miscarries After Fight With Chef

Susanna Foo’s alleged victim has miscarriage

London, Nov 19 (ANI): She may be making millions of dollars now that she’s a A-List movie star, but for actress Renee Zellweger, her life had never been happier than when she was just a waitress. more…

A restaurant in the southwestern US state of Arizona that proudly admits to trying to finish off its customers has introduced a new item on its menu — the “quadruple bypass burger”.

The burger at the “Heart Attack Grill” restaurant is stacked with four beef patties, cheese, onions, tomatoes and fried bacon, and weighs in at only 8,000 calories, more than three times what the human body needs in one day.

Patrons who have no appetite for the “quadruple bypass burger” can opt for the “triple” or “double-bypass”.

“It’s not good for one’s health but it’s only a joke,” John Basso, who opened the restaurant 10 months ago, told AFP.

Customers who have room for more can also order French fries “fried in pure lard” and can purchase cigarettes off the menu. As a courtesy, the restaurant offers its “best customers” a wheelchair service to their cars by waitresses dressed in slinky nurses’ outfits.

The idea, however, has not gone down well with the Arizona State Board of Nursing which has expressed concern that some patrons may confuse the waitresses with real nurses. more…

Heart Attack Grill

JACKSON TOWNSHIP, N.J. (AP) — An Ocean County woman who police say tried to poison her live-in sister and her sister’s boyfriend by putting rat poison in their sandwiches has been charged with two counts of attempted murder.

Dana Simons, 43, was arrested Friday after her sister called police to report finding rat poison pellets in the couple’s sandwiches on two separate occasions.

The sister, 51, and boyfriend, 50, did not eat the sandwiches and were unharmed.
The first time Simons’ sister noticed something odd was earlier in the week, when Simons brought home sandwiches for the couple that appeared to have a blue-green pellets mixed in with the chicken. more…

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay opened his first U.S. restaurant on Thursday, with an assurance he would not try to push New Yorkers into their own kitchens as he did British women.

Ramsay said he would not interfere with the “fascinating scenario” in restaurant-loving New York, even though his television crusade for home cooking struck a chord in Britain, where he said young women had become a lazy “chardonnay and Pringle (potato chip) brigade.”

New Yorkers eat out at least four times a week, with the trend growing every year, a Zagat dining survey released last month showed.

Ramsay’s new restaurant, with formal dining for 45 people and a bar for more casual dining for up to 70, already is booked for the first two months. The menu feature dishes such as his signature Cappuccino of White Beans and lobster ravioli.

“I’m not here telling New Yorkers they have got to get into their kitchens,” Ramsay told Reuters as he stood in the sparkling $6.5 million kitchen of “Gordon Ramsay at the London” in the new luxury London NYC hotel. more…

A dead man had one final earthly act before moving on.

Fire officials said the six-hundred pound man was in being cremated when his body fluids were too much for the oven.

The body fluids seeped out onto the floor and ignited causing a fire at the Garner Funeral Home in Salt Lake City.

“Those fluids can be very flammable,” said Scott Freitag of the Salt Lake City fire department. “Sort of like a grease fire.”

An employee used an extinguisher to put out the fire. (more….)

We are closing in on another Thanksgiving Holiday and I was sent this video.  I figure I would post it here for all to enjoy. 

Video: How To Choose a Butterball Turkey

 Eric - TheSubReport.com

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Chicken’s most familiar face is about to get a new look. 

Kentucky Fried Chicken is unveiling a new logo today for Colonel Sanders. He’s shedding his white suit jacket for a red cook’s apron. (More….)

AP) NEW MILFORD, Conn. Police were trying to determine who tossed a beer keg into an open fire at an outdoor party early Sunday, causing an explosion that sent shards of shrapnel slicing through a crowd of partygoers, killing one.

The explosion, which could be heard miles away, killed Sean M. Caselli, 22, of New Milford. Police say seven other people were taken to New Milford and Danbury hospitals.

Caselli, who lived with his family about a mile away from where the party was being held, died after being struck by a piece of flying metal in the neck, police said.

Sgt. Lee Grabner said investigators focused on taking measurements and gathering evidence. Interviews with witnesses to determine who threw the keg in the fire, and whether criminal charges would be filed, “is something we’re going to start working on,” Grabner said. (more……)

Chef Edouardo Jordan started his culinary career at an early age in the kitchens of his mother and grandmother in St. Petersburg, Florida. As a top graduate of his high school, Edouardo had a decision to make: culinary school or college. He chose college. After graduating from the University of Florida with degrees in Business Administration and Sports Management, Edouardo, determined to apply his degrees, started an online restaurant guide for his hometown. His love for food and restaurants drove him to indulge his self in food. Spending nearly a year researching recipes, visiting restaurants, managing the website and critiquing food, Edouardo decided to follow his passion, he enrolled into culinary school. As a student at Le Cordon Bleu’s Orlando Culinary Academy, Edouardo excelled in the classroom and the kitchen, managing to graduate top of his class. Edouardo has studied under some of the greatest minds in the industry, spending time under pastry chef Ewald Notter in Orlando, Florida; Chef Marty Blitz at Mise en Place in Tampa, Florida; Chef Thomas Keller at the French Laundry in Yountville, California and a stint at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California. Chef Jordan is currently working under Chef Jerry Traunfeld at the Herbfarm restaurant in Woodinville, Washington and spends his days off catering to his magnificent clients in the King County and surrounding areas.

Thank you for your interest in Nouvelle Personal Chef Service. If you have any questions or would like to set-up an interview please contact Chef Jordan.

Ejordan@nouvellechef.com

Phone: 425-489-4127

HYDE PARK, N.Y., Nov. 6 /PRNewswire/ — Reinforcing its prominent role as an innovator in foodservice research, The Culinary Institute of America’s (CIA) President Dr. Tim Ryan, today announced the establishment of a unique program — The Menu R&D and Flavor Discovery Initiative — a program dedicated to the science of food research and development for the foodservice industry.The initiative will begin with four founding partners, The Coca-Cola Company, Campbell Soup Company, Tyson Foods, Inc., and Ventura Foods. Each has pledged $250,000 to directly support three key areas of applied research, student scholarships, and curriculum development. The partnership also will buttress the expansion of menu research & development as a critical foodservice industry discipline and professional career endeavor. more…

PARIS - So much for Tang. The crew of the international space station will be dining upscale.

Top chef Alain Ducasse whipped up a little something for them to eat that’s worthy of his award-winning restaurants.

Meals cooked up by Ducasse were on board a Progress M-58 cargo ship that blasted off Monday for the international space station, France’s National Center for Space Studies said Wednesday.

The menu includes caponata, a Sicilian dish made of peppers, tomatoes and zucchini; roasted quails in a wine sauce from France’s Madiran region; smooth celery root puree with nutmeg; and rice pudding with preserved fruit.

Cooking for space isn’t like cooking in a restaurant. So the French space center says Ducasse had to do a fair bit of experimenting before the dishes were ready to go.

Ducasse, who has award-winning restaurants in Paris, New York and Monaco, and chefs from ADF, his consultancy and training department, developed recipes to meet the difficult requirements of dining in space, including zero bacteria. more…

Related article:

Station Crew to ‘Kick It Up a Notch’ With Chef Emeril Lagasse

The popular franchise will soon be serving a portobello mushroom sandwich created by competitor Betty Fraser. Check out the recipe:

more…

Martha Stewart threw rival talk-show diva Rachael Ray into her wicker-and-jute ring this morning, and, in her inimitably patrician way, gave her a verbal smackdown for daring to air her show with Barry Manilow at exactly the same time Her Martha-ness did.

At 10 am in New York, both Martha (on NBC) and Rachael’s (on ABC) shows featured the ageless crooner Manilow as a musical guest, and Martha was none too pleased. “I’ve never actually met Rachael Ray,” said Martha during her opening monologue, with a rather unmistakable chortle. “I think she’s very fun…lively…uh…young woman,” continued the domestic queen, racking her brain for adjectival possibilities. “She has Barry on her show today … Now that’s kinda weird.” more…

Video 

Yahoo! has a site up for nearly every interest–pets, astrology, finance and cars are all well-represented. Yet until Thursday, the Internet portal didn’t have a home for food lovers.Now it does. Yahoo! Food will feature recipes, videos and restaurant reviews, says Deanna Brown, general manager of lifestyles at Yahoo! (nasdaq: YHOO - news - people ). The site will cull videos and recipes from several food content brands, such as Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (nyse: MSO - news - people ), as well as posts from 13 food bloggers and one new Web-based cooking show.

Brown has been working with food for most of the Internet’s history. She claims she put the first recipe online in 1995 while launching Conde Nast’s Epicurious.com. In 2002, she revamped AOL Food. Now she’s hand picking chocolate chip cookie recipes, among other things, for Yahoo!.

Yahoo! media and entertainment head Lloyd Braun hired Brown because “[Braun] identified ‘food’ as something he wanted to do. He saw the food marketplace as under-served,” says Brown. more…

Yahoo!Food 

http://food.yahoo.com/

A diet containing curry may help protect the aging brain, according a study of elderly Asians in which increased curry consumption was associated with better cognitive performance on standard tests.

Curcumin, found in the curry spice turmeric, possesses potent antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties.

It’s known that long-term users of anti-inflammatory drugs have a reduced risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease, although these agents can have harmful effects in the stomach, liver and kidney, limiting their use in the elderly.

Antioxidants, such as vitamin E, have been shown to protect neurons in lab experiments but have had limited success in alleviating cognitive decline in patients with mild-to-moderate dementia.

Curry is used widely by people in India and “interestingly,” the prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease among India’s elderly ranks is fourfold less than that seen in the United States. more…

BAGHDAD, Oct. 9 — Hundreds of Iraqi army and police officers became violently ill after breaking their Ramadan fast Sunday evening at a base in southern Iraq, in what authorities are investigating as a possible mass poisoning attack.

At least 10 people died and 1,200 were sickened at a base in Numaniyah after eating a chicken dinner that may have been laced with cyanide, according to recruits and an army colonel with knowledge of the investigation. He said the food was undergoing laboratory tests.

Brig. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, a spokesman for the Iraqi armed forces, said the head of the base’s mess hall and several other employees there had been arrested. But he said that only 350 to 400 people fell ill, that four had to be treated at a hospital and that none died. more…

PEARL HARBOR, HI–Three cast members from the ABC drama “Lost” all agreed Naval Submarine Support Command was the winner of the sixth Pearl Harbor Naval Submarine Support Command’s (NSSC) Culinary competition, Saturday, Oct. 14.

Cast-Away cuisine was the theme for this competition. NSSC along with six submarines competed using dishes made with only ingredients that could only be acquired if they were stranded on an island. Dishes ranged from kalua (earth-cooked) pork, macadamia nut-crusted chicken to blackened shark. The winning dish was goat cheese-stuffed pork tenderloin prepared by Culinary Specialist 2nd Class (SS) Kelly Mathis.

The four judges were Terry O’Quinn (John Locke), Jorge Garcia (Hugo “Hurley” Reyes), Dominic Monaghan (Charlie Pace) and Nigel a friend of Monaghan. NSSC and COMSUBPAC staff members approached O’Quinn weeks earlier when a relative of O’Quinn was frocked to chief petty officer at the COMSUBPAC Chief Petty Officer pinning ceremony.

“I met Mr. O’Quinn at the Chief Pinning ceremony at Sharkey Theatre,” said Chief Culinary Specialist (SS) Juan Hernandez, competition organizer. “I thought getting him and some of his friends from the show to judge the competition would be great.”

Locke agreed and word spread quickly. Mathis, a native of Social Circle, Ga. and a fan of the ABC show said he was ecstatic and motivated to win.

“When I heard they were coming, I was beside myself,” he said. “I knew I had to do something extraordinary. I decided on a dish I saw on a television show, but of course I had to add my own touch.” more…

Golfer John Daly is now a restaurateur.The doors swung open Wednesday to John Daly’s Restaurant and Bar at the former East End Grill site in Olive Branch near Kroger.

The space was closed for 17 days for renovations. Workers painted the walls an appropriate shade of “golfer’s green” and hung framed pictures of everything Daly and everything golf on the walls and along beams.

Christian Georgi, who owns the East End name, went in 50-50 with Daly to open the restaurant. Georgi still is operating the two other East Ends in Memphis, and he runs the Daly restaurant as well. Daly, a sometimes Memphian, will pop in at his restaurant from time to time. more…

British TV chef Gordon Ramsay has revealed George Clooney and Brad Pitt kicked up a fuss after they were evacuated from his restaurant when the kitchen caught fire.

The stars were enjoying dinner at Ramsay’s top London eatery Claridge’s, during a break from filming ‘Ocean’s Twelve’, when a fire broke out in the kitchen.

All diners were evacuated, however, Ramsay did not get much cooperation from his Hollywood clientele. more…

A new dish is now appearing on menus across the United States: the $40 entree. Such prices used to be the stuff of four-star, white-tablecloth meals, the kind that ended with a diamond ring on the petit four tray. But now entrees over $40 can be found in restaurants that are merely upscale or even chains, where diners wear jeans and tote children. In geographic terms, New York and Las Vegas have led the charge, and in culinary ones, steak and lobster were first and are still most prevalent. But the $40 entree is migrating: to restaurants in Philadelphia, Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and Denver, and to ingredients such as fish and even pasta.NOT THE CHEFS’ CHOICE?

Restaurateurs say rising rents, ever more elaborate interior decoration and the increasing cost of premium ingredients — especially beef and fish — leave them little choice. “Forty is the new 30,” said Richard Coraine, of Union Square Hospitality Group, which recently began charging $42 for a 1¾-ounce appetizer portion of lobster for lunch at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art. Bobby Flay, who recently crossed the $40 mark in his Las Vegas and Atlantic City outposts, says he intentionally loses money on many other entrees to keep prices reasonable.

Padma Lakshmi had a confession to make.

“At the end of the day, it’s about the skills,” Lakshmi said. “I think it’s very compelling seeing someone trying to be really good at their job.” more…

NEW LONDON, Conn. — The most important person on a movie set isn’t always the director, writer, producer, cameraman, sound technician or even the star.

Sometimes, the most important person on a movie set is the chef. This makes Roger Poirier the big man on campus during the filming of the ESPN miniseries “The Bronx Is Burning,” which is taking place at Dodd Stadium.

On a recent Tuesday, Poirier made breakfast and lunch for 190 people. He turned out both meals from a restaurant-quality kitchen housed in a vehicle the size of a UPS delivery truck. Salads, vegetables, starches, chicken, beef and fish were all prepped and cooked in Poirier’s truck and served on a buffet line by his three assistants.

The cooks have been at the stadium since Sept. 23. They all work for Hanna Brothers Catering of Slidell, La., an eight-year-old company that specializes in catering film- and television-production locations. “The Army runs on its stomach, they say, and I think there is some truth to that in the film business as well,” said Jim Hanna, a co-owner of the company. Poirier, 43, has worked for Hanna for seven years, but he has been feeding crews on the sets of commercials, movies and TV shows since his father bought a catering truck when he was a teenager. He is a self-taught cook who keeps all his recipes in his head.

It is almost literally a life on the road. Poirier, who is married with two children, figures he is home in Missouri about two months a year. He has worked TV shows ranging from “Cheers” and “Dynasty” to “Star Trek: Next Generation” and “LA Law.” He has worked just as many movies, ranging from the current “The Guardian,” starring Kevin Costner and Ashton Kutcher to the upcoming “The Good Shepherd,” starring Al Pacino and Angelina Jolie. more…

JACKSON, Miss. - Delta State University’s “Fighting Okra” mascot has landed a leading role on an episode of The Food Network’s “Good Eats,” a family cooking show starring Alton Brown.

The episode, Okraphobia, will premiere at 9 p.m. Wednesday with additional air dates at midnight Thursday, 9 p.m. Friday, 1 a.m. Saturday and 6 p.m. Oct. 6.

Delta State’s official mascot is the Statesman. The Fighting Okra is its popular unofficial mascot.

The Fighting Okra’s original 1998 costume was handsewn from a green sleeping bag. The okra got a new costume for the TV gig. more…

MADRID, Spain Millions of anchovies — a protected species in the European Union — died in northern Spain after an unexplained mass beaching, officials said Friday.

The fish, all juveniles, were found stranded along large stretches of Colunga beach, 60 kilometers (37 miles) east of the port city of Gijon, a normally pristine seaside landscape in the province of Asturias.

Anchovies, known as “bocartes” in northern Spain and considered a culinary delicacy, cannot be fished along northern Spanish and French coasts due to an EU protection order meant to allow fish stocks to recover from “absolute decline,” said Luis Laria, chief coordinator of a marine protection unit working with the government.

“It’s a bit of a disaster,” Laria said. “We can’t fish them because they’re so rare, and now they’ve killed themselves.”

“More than 3 tons have been found so far, and our main — untested — hypothesis at the moment is that they tried to flee from predators and accidentally beached,” Laria said. Had the fish grown to maturity, they would have represented more than 100 tons, he said. more…

A Mill Creek woman gave the competition the spatula smackdown Saturday, winning a national burger contest and $10,000.Elizabeth Bennett, a 36-year-old event planner, won first place in the non-beef category of Sutter Home’s Build a Better Burger contest.

“I think I just stood there in shock,” she said after her win was announced. “Five or six TV cameras were in my face, and they handed me an oversized check.”

In front of a live audience, Bennett grilled against four other finalists in a pressure-filled cook-off. She prepared her original recipe for Opa! Burgers, which beat out nearly 9,000 other entries in August to win a finalist spot in the competition in California’s Napa Valley.

Bennett’s burger, named for the Greek expression of celebration, features a Mediterranean-inspired lamb patty on rustic bolo rolls.

She created 18 burgers in three hours for a panel of celebrity chefs. After sampling the hot burgers, the judges grilled Bennett on stage in front of an audience. more…

Elizabeth Bennett

UZHHOROD, Ukraine - Valentyn Shtefano’s pastries were known for attracting stares and giggles as well as lip-smacking murmurs. But even his fiancee was surprised when Shtefano told her he was making her wedding dress — out of flour, eggs, sugar and caramel.

The dress — made of 1,500 cream puffs and weighing 20 pounds — took the 28-year-old baker two months to make, and by the end of the wedding reception, bride Viktoriya said she didn’t want to take it off. more…

For those who would like an authentic touch of Dracula’s homeland at a Halloween party, consider preparing some of the dishes of Romania. Although Romania has never been known as a culinary hotbed, the cuisine is coming of age, much as Ireland’s did, as chefs reinterpret the basics.

No longer part of the Soviet bloc, Romania is attracting interest as a tourist destination, which means the foods will become more inventive and well-known as time goes on.
(more…..)

Dinner at the Count’s

I went scavenging for a beer in my father’s fridge the other day and made a shocking discovery. The man had a free-range chicken sitting there, right next to the arugula. This is a man who grew up in small-town North Carolina thinking gizzards are gourmet, who even today takes his lunch to work in an empty bread bag (the same empty bread bag)–a lunch most often consisting of a half-gnawed pork chop and a biscuit pilfered from Mama Dip’s. But he knows his arugula from his radicchio. How did this happen?

You’ve got to wonder how professional chefs can compete when the gourmet food world is closing in on us. Weekly farmers’ markets throughout the Triangle boast heirloom tomatoes and just-stretched mozzarella; the local Teeter carries sashimi-grade tuna; you can’t drive five miles without running into an Asian or Hispanic specialty market; and we all know someone who can quote from Kitchen Confidential. Of course, the restaurants know we’re learning their secrets. So they up the ante. I’ll see your six-burner gas-top range and raise you a thousand-pound wood-burning grill. Hmm. With a warming drawer, you say? Well … how about this laboratory-grade water bath? Or some liquid nitrogen? Try that at home.

When every other kitchen in Brier Creek is installing a custom-color Wolf range, when your dad can sear a pork belly just as well as the next guy, why go out at all? (more….)

In the video game, Cooking Mama, the player learns how to cook various meals using the Nintendo DS’s touch screen to interact with the ingredients. This gameplay structure, with the player completing a series of short mini-games, is similar to the WarioWare series. Following the instructions of the titular “Mama”, the player uses the stylus to chop vegetables, slice meat, flip food in pans and arrange the final items on the plate. The game features over 76 dishes to complete.

Official Website

A parking authority officer allegedly attacked by a celebrity chef has miscarried, says the officer’s fiance.Parking authority officer Juanita Lewis is recovering in her West Philadelphia home. In Monday, NBC 10 spoke with her fiance, Phillip Rhedrick.”She’s not doing good emotionally. Devastated. Shocked. Terrified. She’s under a lot of pressure,” said Phillip Rhedrick.Rhedrick says Lewis is having a tough time. Since Friday, the parking authority officer has been recuperating from what police are calling a beating by Susanna Lan, also known as Susanna Foo. Foo was later arrested by police.Rhedrick also told NBC 10 over the weekend that Lewis, a mother of five children, was two months pregnant and miscarried after the confrontation.Witnesses tell police that Lewis was issuing a parking ticket to a deliveryman outside Foo’s restaurant near 15th and Walnut when Foo started swinging.Rhedrick says Lewis had not had any problems with her pregnancy before she was attackedNow, the couple has hired an attorney. more…

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There is an uncanny resemblance between Sara [Horowitz] from “Hell’s Kitchen 2″ and porn star Eva Angelina.

It might just be the glasses.

Sara Horowitz

Eva Angelina

If you have better pictures of Sara, please send to admin@chefreport.com

In 2001, both E! and the Style Network began airing Nigella Bites, the first stateside TV outlet for the British sensualist Nigella Lawson. Nigella Feasts finds the hostess up to the same old tricks: She prepares hearty food without fuss; she alternates coy smiles with confidential grins; verbal and voluptuary, she reinvents the double-entendre. This sex bomb is aimed, I think, at housewives. Buford, explaining why the Food Network’s offerings are called “food porn,” insisted, “It’s not erotic … It’s just unreal.” He obviously hadn’t seen Lawson make guacamole.

Or even heard her say “guacamole.” In the first episode of Nigella Feasts, working on a side dish for her cornbread-topped chili con carne, she endowed the word with illicit implications, pronouncing it with the roundest O imaginable, as if the sound itself might ripen the fruit. O, avocados! Having scooped them into a bowl, Lawson first reflected on the succulence of their flesh, then got down to business “massacring the avocados with [her] masher.” She mashed without pity. “Hmm—disturbingly satisfying!” she moaned. You want me to put my chips in that? more…

In a dynamic documentary style, “Gourmet’s Diary Of A Foodie” pastes together a whirlwind tour of China from Beijing to Shanghai and rural villages in between. Food on television is dominated by eye candy, silly prattle, and 30-minute meals, and some say offers nothing for real cooks. So this new series, produced by WGBH-TV, may fill the void for a more demanding audience. “The show is meant to appeal to serious foodies,” says co-executive producer Michael Selditch. “We went out the door with that crowd in mind and tried to bring back stories that hadn’t been done before.”

As such, the viewer goes down the old alleyways of Beijing, where chef Li Qun demonstrates fruitwood-roasted Peking duck. In the village of Xi Tang, which is on the water and famous for its snacks, we get a close look at zongzi dumplings, lean and fatty meats with sticky rice, wrapped in aromatic reed leaves. In Shanghai, we are whisked into the kitchen of chef Jereme Leung , who specializes in what he calls new-Shanghai cuisine for the emerging middle class (a riff on the traditional drunken chicken served in a martini glass with a granité on top), and in Daxing, outside of Beijing, we go to the house of Dr. Du, the village doctor, where lunch is being prepared in side a rustic kitchen in a giant iron wok over a wood fire.

Gourmet’s editor-in-chief , Ruth Reichl , thinks of the show as a “magazine on the air. ” “ It’s so graphically rich in the same way that the magazine is,” she says by phone from New York. Behind the camera is Zero Point Zero Productions, the New York-based team responsible for “Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations” and other popular shows. The filming style is fast and unpredictable. With plenty of close - ups, stylish cropping, and moody natural lighting, everything is slick. “We were trying to achieve a look that could match the elegant photography in Gourmet magazine,” says Selditch.

The show really moves. Each 30-minute episode (there are 20 this season) has a theme, with local food journalists serving as translators and reporting on what they know best. Lydia Tenaglia, co-executive producer and director of “Diary of a Foodie,” was already connected to an international network of food people from her work on Bourdain’s shows. “We ended up talking to a lot of the same people and going deeper into stories that we had begun to explore on other series,” she says. more…

Gordon Ramsay and Alex Ferguson have topped a list of bosses people would least like to work for. 

The TV chef and the Manchester United manager were joined by Alan Sugar - originally known for his PC production but now thriving as leading “baddie” in The Apprentice show. (more….)

Celebrity chefs and fancy wine lists are being snatched up by aviation executives as the latest airline accessory in the realm of plush leather seats and personal televisions.As carriers have begun to rebound from the post-9-11 slump, they are clamoring to win loyalty among customers, especially from those passengers willing to pay for premium-class services.

And though airline food is not a meal most travelers look forward to, it has fast become an easy and rapidly changing vehicle for legacy and low-cost carriers alike to set themselves apart.

‘Now that they’re getting so incredibly competitive, everybody’s got to pull a rabbit out of the hat and come up with something,’ said Michelle Bernstein, the celebrity chef of Food Network fame who has been hired by Delta Air Lines to develop entrees for its new international BusinessElite class. (more…..)

FORT WORTH, Texas — As guilty pleasures go, it’s hard to top the corn dog (or corny dog, as it’s still called at the State Fair of Texas).

A wiener on a stick, cloaked in a sizzling-hot coating of deep-fried cornmeal batter, slathered with bright-yellow mustard — doesn’t that puffy dark-brown crust look tempting, glistening in the lurid lights of the fair midway or the yellow glare from a divey drive-in’s canopy?

Those settings are the corn dog’s natural habitat. You wouldn’t eat it at a table, much less a table set with Yves Delorme linen napkins instead of the flimsy paper kind. Or would you?

Turns out you would. On trendy tables from Texas to L.A., corn dogs are going upscale. (more…..)

A chef at a restaurant in the Westin Copley Place hotel pleaded not guilty to a murder charge this morning after prosecutors and police said he stabbed a bartender Friday night during an argument at work.

The chef, Ivan Sosa, 37, appeared in Boston Municipal Court this morning in a white jumpsuit. He kept his head bowed and said little during the brief proceeding as his mother and sister looked on. A judge ordered the Dorchester man held without bail until his next court appearance scheduled for Oct. 17.

More than 50 friends and relatives of the victim, Carlos E. Borrero, Jr., 30, packed the courtroom. Borrero’s mother and wife were overcome by grief during and had to be carried outside.

According to police and prosecutors, Sosa and Borrero got into an argument early Friday night at Turner Fisheries, the hotel’s popular seafood restaurant. The pair tussled in an employee-only area and then police say Sosa grabbed a knife. He is charged with stabbing Borrero four times, including once in the chest, which punctured his lung and heart.

Police responded to a report of a stabbing at 4:27 p.m. at the Back Bay hotel and found a Borrero bleeding from a knife wound. more…