Chef Report

The American hip-hop duo, Andre 3000 and Big Boi, celebrated the release of their new album ‘Idlewild’ with a glitzy party held on a 61-foot cruise liner on Wednesday night (26.07.06).
At the bash they knocked back super-strong Absinthe, an alcoholic drink which was banned in America in 1915.
Big Boi ignored the recommended limit of just two shots and downed a staggering eight.
He said: “This stuff is illegal back home. I can’t get enough of it.” The strong green spirit - portrayed in the film ‘Moulin Rouge’ as a green fairy played by Kylie Minogue - was banned in many countries because of its dangerously addictive nature and high alcohol content. more…

Pamela Anderson, who as a People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals activist has called out fur-wearers and a fast-food giant, now stands accused of peddling the “delicacy of despair.”

“Pam Anderson is trying to have it both ways,” Andrew Porter, spokesman for the Center of Consumer Freedom said in an email Wednesday.

At issue is vegetarian Anderson’s involvement–or not–in BlackSteel, a Hollywood restaurant run by celebrity-favored chef Jason “Chef J” Harley and replete with non-vegetarian dishes.

Last week, the Center for Consumer Freedom, a PETA adversary and nonprofit group backed by restaurants and food companies, publicly accused “spokes-blonde” Anderson of being in “partnership” with BlackSteel, and “earning a second income with a menu that includes ham-hock ravioli, lamb chops, lobster tails, and the vegetarian sin-of-sins, foie gras.” more…

Also…

Large Meat Selection on the Menu at Pamela Anderson’s Restaurant

If you find Food Network’s Alton Brown to be a fascinating fountain of information as the host of Good Eats, you won’t want to miss what he’s serving next. The four-part series Feasting on Asphalt (premiering Saturday, July 29 at 9 pm/ET) seats Brown and his buds on motorcycles as they travel cross-country for what has to be the most impressive progressive dinner on record, sampling regional cuisine all along their way from Savannah, Georgia, to the California coast. Brown paid TVGuide.com a visit to recount his travels. more…

NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–July 26, 2006–The new August issue of Guideposts magazine features a cover story by Alton Brown, host of the Food Network’s Good Eats, telling readers about his personal journey to finding the many rewards of good food. Though he didn’t start out as a cook, Alton had a passion for food, a good idea and the yearning to know more that sparks any true quest. Taking a huge risk, he left his job to polish his cooking skills and make a demo tape of his show idea. The only problem: as an unknown no one even wanted to look at his demo tape. He had to go back to his old job, but Alton tells Guideposts he believes that things happen for a reason - especially the call “out of the blue” one day that got his show back on track and on TV. more…

Food Network star, Alton Brown, talks about the physical and spiritual nourishment of good food in August Guideposts magazine. (Photo: Business Wire)

The Food Network is banking on one of its most popular hosts in a campaign that aims to draw in viewers to its new show “Feasting on Asphalt.”

The show premieres this Saturday and stars Alton Brown, host of the “Good Eats” series, who travels around the country exploring American road food.

Brown and his crew travel by motorcycle “on a quest to find out what’s left to eat in America that’s not a chain or a drive thru,” according to a Food Network statement. more…

NEWCASTLE, England, July 23 (UPI) — Singer Axl Rose of the U.S. rock band Guns n’ Roses nearly started a riot in England after delaying a concert so he could first eat dinner, a report says.

The 44-year-old singer refused to perform at a reunion concert at the Metro Arena in Newcastle until he was given a roast lamb dinner, prompting fans in attendance to become very disruptive, the Sunday Mirror said.

While the singer waited and eventually dined on his demanded meal, thousands of disgruntled fans waited an hour and 15 minutes for the performance to begin, the newspaper said. more…

The county Board of Education has approved a ban on junk food, but backed off from a more stringent nutrition policy that would have banned many homemade foods from class.

The new rules that passed unanimously at a recent school board meeting forbid candy, soda and other so-called foods of minimal nutritional value from being sold or given out until the end of the school day.

But homemade sauces, meats and other food that can spoil will be allowed in the classroom after parents protested a move to ban many meals that weren’t bought in stores. more…

Also…

Rochester schools clamping down on junk food

NEW YORK - Rappers have long proclaimed their love for Cristal, frequently mentioning the high-end champagne in songs and popping the corks of the clear, gold-labeled bottles in music videos and at nightclubs.

But the makers of Cristal don’t seem to feel the same way about hip-hop — at least that’s one rapper-turned-record executive Jay-Z sees it.

Now president and chief executive officer of Def Jam Records, the multiplatinum rapper has decided to boycott his once-beloved bubbly over comments from Frederic Rouzaud, managing director of Louis Roederer, the company that produces it.

In The Economist magazine, Rouzaud said the company viewed the affection for his company’s champagne from rappers and their fans with “curiosity and serenity.”

Asked by the magazine if the association between Cristal and the “bling lifestyle” could be detrimental, Rouzaud replied:

“That’s a good question, but what can we do? We can’t forbid people from buying it. I’m sure Dom Perignon or Krug would be delighted to have their business.”

‘I view his comments as racist’
The comments left a bad taste in Jay-Z’s mouth. The rapper said he would pull Cristal from his small chain of popular sports lounges — where bottles of Cristal sell for $450 and $600 — as well as from his personal flutes. more…

With ban on delicacy set to begin, chefs and diners don’t want to let go

In a few weeks it will be illegal to sell foie gras in Chicago; but fans of the delicacy are not going quietly into the night.

On a recent evening more than 100 of them paid $150 each to dine on grilled foie gras with cherry chutney and peppercorn brioche; salt and herb cured foie gras with lamb prosciutto; ravioli of foie gras, pheasant and apple and other treats as chefs talked of overturning the ban. more…

Jeri Ryan is engaged to her boyfriend, French chef Christopher Eme. The two are partners in Ortolan, an award-winning West Hollywood, California, restaurant where Eme is the head chef. The 38-year-old star announced her engagement while promoting her new TV series “Shark” at the Television Critics Association press tour in Pasadena, California. more…

With the MLB season in full swing, fans from Seattle to St. Louis and from Philadelphia to Phoenix are enjoying delicious, healthy food choices at the ballpark this summer. PETA’s “Vegetarian-Friendly Ballparks” list examines the concessions at each of the 30 MLB stadiums and ranks them based on the variety and quality of vegetarian foods offered.Grabbing the top honor for the second year in a row is AT&T Park, home of the San Francisco Giants. Giants fans can enjoy Gardenburgers, veggie hot dogs, vegetarian sushi, edamame (boiled soybeans in the pod—a regional favorite), soup (tomato or minestrone), grilled vegetable kebabs, and a grilled veggie baguette.

Coming in second this year, Tampa Bay’s Tropicana Field offers such hits as veggie burgers, a vegetarian burrito, black beans and rice, pasta dishes, a fruit cup, and PB&J for kids. more…

Cinema’s relationship with food and drink has always been a complicated affair. Sometimes it is abusive, as Mae Clark, with her face full of grapefruit, learned from James Cagney in “The Public Enemy.” Sometimes it is unrequited, as Tony Shalhoub learned from ungrateful customers in “Big Night.” Now and then it amounts to a glorious epiphany, as in “Sideways,” when Paul Giamatti rhapsodized to Virginia Madsen about the delicate, even haunting properties of pinot noir.

A little bit of food can go a long way in the movies: Think of Sue Lyons’s lollipop in “Lolita,” the chicken salad sandwich in “Five Easy Pieces” or Diane Keaton’s pastrami on white with mayo in “Annie Hall.” And occasionally food threatens to steal the show, as in “Babette’s Feast” and “Like Water for Chocolate.”

The eating and drinking in these films are as much a reflection of character as the clothes the actors wear or the manner in which they speak. Such culinary verisimilitude has usually delighted critics but has not always translated into popularity among filmgoers: The roughly $71 million in domestic ticket sales for Alexander Payne’s “Sideways” (2004), which matched that of the Lasse Hallstrom film “Chocolat,” represents the high- water mark for movies that dwell on food and fine wine.

In the coming year, however, a wave of ambitious studio films will try to capitalize on a growing appreciation for all things epicurean. In November, 20th Century Fox is scheduled to release “A Good Year,” in which a London investment banker, played by Russell Crowe, inherits a vineyard in Provence. And Warner Brothers recently finished filming a remake of the German film “Mostly Martha” in New York, starring Catherine Zeta-Jones as a controlling chef and Aaron Eckhart as her culinary opposite, an earthy Italian-American named Nick. Also on the horizon is “The Food of Love,” based on the novel by Anthony Capella, which reimagines the Cyrano de Bergerac story as a contemporary romance set in Rome with gastronomy as the poetry of seduction. The project will combine two of the director Peter Chelsom’s passions: romance and Italian food. more…

Enid O’Leary feels her way to the bedroom of her apartment and returns to the dining room table lugging a 6-inch-thick cookbook written in Braille.

She begins to read a recipe, but instead of fluttering over the dots, her fingers bump slowly, laboriously, over each letter. Although she can write with a stylus, O’Leary never developed the fluency of someone who is born blind.

“I would starve to death before I was able to find something to eat in here,” she jokes.

At 67, O’Leary has been blind for nearly four decades, but she has never let it keep her from accomplishing whatever she wanted in the kitchen.

To set the oven temperature, O’Leary traces tactile raised dots with her fingertips. To avoid sprinkling cayenne in a dish that calls for cumin, she labels the spices with Braille tags and alphabetizes them. O’Leary has developed an ear for when water is about to boil, and she can sense when meat is rare or well-done by listening to the cadence of splattering juices in a frying pan. more…

“We are offering fast food consumers what they truly want,” announced Hardee’s last January. That’s when the fast-food chain started switching “to an entirely new menu focused on 1/3-pound, 1/2-pound, and 2/3-pound Angus beef burgers, called Thickburgers.”

“Thick” is right…and it doesn’t apply only to the burgers.

The smallest (1/3-pound) Thickburger has 740 calories and 16 grams of saturated fat. That’s roughly double what you’d get in a McDonald’s Quarter Pounder, which is missing the Thickburger’s mayo and cheese (and some of its meat).

But apparently that’s just a snack to those Hardee’s customers who “truly want” the 1,090 calories and 29 grams of sat fat in the 2/3-pound Thickburger. more…

Charles Dickens’ hungry hero, Oliver Twist, wasn’t the only individual to cry “Food, glorious food!” Cruise lines have been pandering to our palates for years. And, just when you think “what possibly could be new about food at sea?” up pops something innovative.

Here is a smorgasbord of recent news in the maritime melting pot:

Oceania Cruises (oceaniacruises.com) touts its menu. According to a spokesman, each of the line’s three small vessels offers 200 different dishes-from fusion and nouvelle cuisines to master chef Jacques Pepin’s signature recipes-that change every day. In an initiative dubbed “The Perfect Table,” Oceania now showcases the talents of its chefs and their creations every evening in each ship’s quartet of open-seating gourmet restaurants. In addition to a reprise of such classics as steak au poivre, lobster thermidor and beef tartar, the line highlights its bread makers.

Executive Corporate Chef Franck Garanger creates exceptional French breads and what the line claims are the only “authentic” baguettes at sea. Garanger uses only the finest Viron flour for the baguettes, which are baked in special ovens, notes an announcement. “Star boulangers know that the quality of your bread is dictated by your flour and ovens,” Garanger says. Oceania’s passengers enjoy the bakery’s cornucopia: poulichette, Normandy bread, brioche, bacon bread, chestnut rolls and olive bread-prepared fresh every day. more…

If Philadelphia City Councilman Jack Kelly gets his way, the city known for brotherly love will also soon be known for kindness to animals. Councilman Kelly recently proposed a bill to ban the sale of foie gras—a so-called delicacy made from the diseased livers of ducks and geese. If the bill passes, and it should, Philly will become just the second city in the nation to ban a food out of concern for animal welfare.

Chicago was the first. On April 26, the Chicago City Council voted 48 to 1 to outlaw the sale of foie gras. Foie gras production is also prohibited in Israel, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Germany, and a number of other European countries. In 2004 California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law a bill to ban the production and sale of foie gras in the state, starting in 2012. Politicians in New York, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Oregon have proposed similar legislation.

Like chickens and turkeys, ducks and geese are not covered by the federal Humane Methods of Slaughter Act, the only federal law that offers any sort of protection to farmed animals. Birds raised for foie gras are normally confined to cages and fed a high-protein, high-starch diet that is designed to promote rapid growth. Farmers begin force feeding the birds when they are between 8 and 10 weeks old. For 12 to 21 days, up to 2 pounds of grain and fat is forced down ducks and geese’ throats every day by a feeding tube, a process known as gavage.

The birds’ livers become engorged and can expand as much as 12 times their normal size, so much so that they protrude from the animals’ bellies. The birds have difficulty standing, and become so stressed that they tear out their own feathers. Many suffer from internal hemorrhaging, fungal and bacterial infections, and hepatic encephalopathy, a brain ailment caused when their livers fail. more…

NASCAR has its own style of tailgating. Celebrations often last for a week and meals include overflowing platters of homemade food, opulent decorations, and great spirit.

Lifetime Products, a manufacturer of folding tables, will name “America’s Ultimate Tailgater” at the Tailgate of a Lifetime 2006 Tailgating Championship Aug. 19 at Michigan International Speedway.

Five finalists will be selected to join the official chef of NASCAR, Mario Batali, an author and New York restaurateur, for a trip to MIS. The finalists will create their ultimate tailgate parties, including a three-course meal, over-the-top decorations, and all the trappings that make NASCAR Tailgates so unusual. The contest is judged by Batali, NASCAR legend Ernie Irvan, and Richard Hendrickson, president of Lifetime Products; the prize is $10,000 in cash. more…

When Black Enterprise Magazine hit the newsstands this week, Denny’s was listed among the nation’s 40 best companies for diversity.

The recognition came as a happy surprise to Denny’s top management, said Ray Hood, chief diversity officer of the company.

Her job is to make sure the Spartanburg-based company is doing all it can to improve its diversity track record — one she readily admits was not always something to boast about. more…

The pop diva is convinced mauve-coloured foods like red grapes and plums - known for their anti-ageing benefits - will stop her developing wrinkles.
The songstress, who devised the diet with her nutritionist, now munches purple meals three days a week.
A source is quoted in Britain’s The Sun newspaper as saying: “It sounds off-the-wall but it’s a huge injection of healthy food in one go. Purple products are nature’s best weapons in the battle against ageing. There’s a saying that ‘a plum a day keeps a facelift away’.” “Purple food can prevent breakdown of collagen and slow the wasting of muscles.” It isn’t the first time Mariah has tried a bizarre diet. more…

Hell froze over, pigs flew, the 12th of never came and now the good ol’ boys of stock car racin’ are drinking wine.

They’re making it too — legally — and NASCAR fans steeped in the beer and bourbon culture of the South are starting to break out the stemware and pop as many corks as they do burnouts.

Budweiser may be “the official beer of NASCAR,” and Coors Light, Miller Lite, Jack Daniel’s and Jim Beam sponsor cars, yet wine is slowly weaving its way through traffic and into NASCAR. more…

Fast-food chains focus on what people want to eat, not what is healthy

ST. LOUIS - In the past few months, McDonald’s Corp. announced it would push healthy meals like salads while Wendy’s International Inc. said it would fry foods in a healthier oil with less trans fats.

And what did CKE Restaurants Inc. do? The operator of Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. unveiled a jumbo-sized cheeseburger smothered in sliced steak. more…
Hardee’s turnaround has pivoted on the Thickburger. The fast-food chain’s strategy has helped it cash in on young male customers who want burgers instead of Asian salads, said analyst Mark Smith.

SONOMA - Richard Childress was quite pleased when a NASCAR Nextel Cup race was placed in Sonoma back in 1989.

Sure, it exposed the sport to an untapped market. But what really got the team owner fired up was the annual stop he’d be making in wine country.

Childress is a wine fanatic, so much so that he started up Richard Childress Vineyards in 2004. It’s based in Lexington, North Carolina.

“I got interested in it when I was a driver in the 70’s, going to Ontario and Riverside,” said Childress, who has won six Cup titles as an owner, all with the legendary Dale Earnhardt behind the wheel. “I thought if I ever get the opportunity I would love to have my own winery and vineyards. I was going to do it on a small scale. Now we’re a major player in North Carolina.” more…

Infineon Raceway, Sonoma

The vegan artist filmed a clip for the Humane Society of the United States, addressing the state of factory farming in the U.S., which he calls “an abomination.”

Moby, a vegan and self-proclaimed animal-lover has filmed a clip for the Humane Society, addressing factory farming and animal welfare. Against shots of wide-eyed cows in pens, pigs stumbling in warehouses, and chickens writhing on dirty floors, Moby implores viewers to seek out ways to help reduce the suffering of animals raised for meat, eggs, and milk. “I’m a vegan because I love animals,” Moby said. “You have to make your own choices and I’m not going to tell you how to live, but could you look a cow in the eye and say that your appetite is more important than that cow’s life?” more…

The seventh annual Washington D.C. International Wine & Food Festival, Saturday and Sunday at the Omni Shoreham Hotel, 2500 Calvert St. NW, will feature more than 280 wineries from 14 countries; demonstrations from such celebrity TV chefs as Michael Chiarello (”NapaStyle” and “Easy Entertaining”) and Ted Allen (”Queer Eye for the Straight Guy”); and seminars on the wines of Uruguay, Australia, Portugal and South Africa. more…

Premiere Date:
September 18, 2006

Genre:
Talk show

Format/Length:
Daily 60-minute talk show

Series Description:
Rachael Ray, TV’s most down-to-earth and relatable star, launches her brand new, one-hour daily syndicated series, appropriately named RACHAEL RAY on September 18. The show will be an exciting and unpredictable hour of fun that celebrates the can-do spirit in every person and gives viewers the essentials for whole-hearted living. Host Rachael Ray will present simple solutions for everyday issues-from food and travel to family and relationships to pop culture trends and “how-to” instruction-offering viewers unique, entertaining ways to squeeze just a little more out of life every day.

http://www.rachaelrayshow.com/ 

Sun, sand and … corkscrews?

Oh, I think not. In this season of road trips and outdoor concerts, trips to the shore or the woods, no corkscrew means one less item to haul. Winemakers have bent over backwards to find new alternatives to corks. Quality wine is getting as easy to open as beer.

Screwcaps, a curiosity just three years ago, are now commonplace. Caps for white wines are still more common than ones for reds, but for a quick-drinking bottle, you can find no shortage of options. more…

Nicolas Feuillatte Champagne mini bottles: Wait, is blue putting the moves on pink?

You’d say you got treated well if your waitress kept your coffee cup full or put an extra dollop of whipped cream on your pie. But how about giving you a kidney? more…

When Harold Dieterle won Bravo’s “Top Chef” title last month, he got $100,000 and a trip to the Aspen Food & Wine Classic.

On Sunday morning, he aimed his cooking guns at the festival’s closing event, the Classic Cook-off. Hundreds of people shoehorned into the ballroom of the St. Regis to watch Dieterle and his sous chef, “Top Chef” judge Tom Colicchio, bang their pots and pans against longtime TV cooker Jacques Pepin and his cooking pal Jean-Claude Szurdak and son-in-law Rollie Wesen. Ingredients included liver and Cap’n Crunch cereal.

“It’s good to flip the roles around,” said Dieterle of his judge turned assistant, Colicchio. “I told him to bring his running shoes. … This should be a lot of fun.”

Fun, yes, but they lost the contest to Pepin & Co. more…

BERKELEY, Calif. - Eric Schlosser, investigative journalist and author of “Fast Food Nation'’ - the expose of the fast-food industry and how it manipulates customers to buy food that isn’t good for them - is speaking to his latest audience: preteens and teenagers.Schlosser’s new book, “Chew on This: Everything You Don’t Want to Know About Fast Food,'’ has just come out, and he and co-author Charles Wilson are giving a presentation to 600 kids at Martin Luther King Middle School in Berkeley. more…

Beyoncé was confronted Thursday night at the swanky restaurant Nobu in New York City by two members of People For the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). The two had won an eBay auction, benefiting VH1’s Save the Music Foundation, to dine with the star. Beyoncé had no idea they were PETA members. more…

Video of the confrontation

Nobu Restaurants

Kelly Clarkson has hired a personal chef to keep her trim while on tour.

The “Because Of You” singer enlisted the services of the specialist cook so she doesn’t develop bad eating habits, and insists she is not trying to lose weight.

She told Entertainment Tonight, “She cooks anything. It’s not like a diet, it’s just good organic, energy food. If one person gets sick, the entire crew gets sick. It’s all about just staying healthy. I’m the type of person, who if I go on vacation to Italy or Greece, where they only eat bread and pastas, I’ll gain 10 pounds then lose 10.” more…

My family and I are in Dans le Noir, a new London restaurant where, as the English translation of the name suggests, you eat in the dark. By dark I don’t mean shadowy or can’t-quite-see, like being under a doona or in a forest on a moonless night. I mean where you cannot even see your hand in front of your face.

Around us people are talking and laughing as they would in any restaurant, but the hum is more intense than usual. Perhaps they’re realising, as I did, that they have never been in complete blackness before. more…

Customers craving fresh crustaceans will have to look beyond Whole Foods Market Inc. after the natural-foods grocery chain decided Thursday to stop selling live lobsters and crabs on the grounds that it’s inhumane.The Austin-based grocer, which has stores in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut, spent seven months studying the sale of live lobsters from ship to supermarket aisle. more…

New Yorker editor Bill Buford chopped carrots in Mario Batali’s restaurant and butchered pigs in Tuscany. In the end, he learned something about being human. more…

FEEDING SNOOP

When Marini was asked to prepare a menu for one of City Stages’ most highly anticipated acts, Snoop Dogg, he was quick to accept.

“I’m really excited to be a part of this year’s City Stages and since we are a bit on the edge with the food and our philosophy, it is a real honor to be asked to do some of the fun stuff,” Marini says.

For Snoop Dogg and his entourage backstage at the Miller Lite venue Saturday, the menu will be total “soul food.” It will include smoked collard greens, black-eyed pea salad, Wisconsin Cheddar macaroni and cheese and crispy fried chicken. more…

Forget “Molto Mario,” it’s time to call Mario Batali’s popular TV show “Motor Mario.”

The James Beard Award-winning chef, cookbook author and all-around face of Italian cooking in the United States has gone nutty for NASCAR. His three-year obsession with stock-car racing has led to a cookbook, “Mario Tailgates NASCAR Style,” being named the official NASCAR chef and now a spot as a judge in “The Tailgate for a Lifetime Tailgating Championship.” (more…..)

http://www.austin360.com/

This Saturday, on Father’s Day weekend, hundreds of apron-wearing black men from across the country will fire up their grills, toss seasoned meat and veggies onto an open flame and do what they do best: Cook and connect with family.

Black families from Miami to Los Angeles will participate in a unique 16-year tradition: Sampling heaping plates of delicious food prepared by black fathers, brothers, sons and uncles in the spirit of black family solidarity and charitable causes that benefit black Americans. more…

… Sports2Day found out in a recent interview that Batali, whose family owns and operates Pioneer Square’s Salumi, isn’t just a racing fan.

He loves the Seahawks, agonizes with the Mariners and has a bit of a competitive streak himself.

S2D: You coach your sons’ basketball teams, play golf. There’s the NASCAR connection. We’re betting you’re a big sports fan …

MB: I love it. As a matter of fact, I’m just sitting here right now in front of the 2006-07 Jets schedule deciding which games I want to go to. more…