Chef Report

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…

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…

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

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……)

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

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…

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…

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

HUNTINGTON — About 25 minutes into eating his cheeseburger, David Francke’s eyes glazed over and he pushed back from the table. “There’s no way,” Francke said. “I’m giving up on it. If I don’t, it would be everywhere.”

“It” is the brand new Bubba’s Big Bad Single Wide Burger at the almost-famous restaurant, Hillbilly Hotdogs that gives new meaning to the phrase “Biggie Size.”

Weighing in at 5 pounds, with seven pieces of cheese on 31/2 pounds of fresh meat from Logan’s on a custom-baked bun from Brunetti’s, The Single Wide got a grand introduction Friday afternoon as the restaurant, just a couple of blocks from Marshall’s campus, filled with students cheering on Francke, a 25-year-old med school student at Marshall from Charleston.

Francke earned the chance to be the first customer to take on a Single Wide since he holds the record (4 minutes) for eating Hillbilly Hotdog’s massive Homewrecker, a 15-inch hotdog with ALL the trimmings — the equivalent to eating 10 hotdogs.

Francke, who disposed of the Homewrecker in record time, said he was pretty confident about taking on the Single Wide, since he was still a bit hungry after knocking out a Homewrecker. more…

Food Network and Guinness World Records will team up on special four-night primetime event Food Network Challenge: Guinness World Record Breakers Week starting Monday, Oct. 9 at 9 p.m. (EST/PST).

During the special, competitors will attempt to set or break 10 Guinness World Records, including crafting the tallest sugar sculpture, throwing the highest pizza toss, making the most pancakes in one hour and building the largest popcorn sculpture. more…

Ingredients:

1 whole chicken (weight is dependent on how many servings are required)
1 large lemon, cut into halves
sprig of rosemary
salt and pepper to taste
butter or olive oil, whichever you prefer

Heat oven to 350 degrees

Rub butter or oil over the skin of the chicken until it is completely coated.

Take a knife and gently separate the skin from the breast meat; slide lemon halves under the skin with the peel side up. This way the juice from the lemon will coat the breast.
Season skin of chicken to your preference; place sprig of rosemary into the chicken.

Cover and place in oven for 30-45 minutes. Remove cover and continue to roast until juices run clear, basting every 15-20 minutes, depending on size of the bird.

If you’ve followed these steps correctly, your chicken should look like the one in the picture. Bon Appetit!

SAVANNAH, Ga. Paula Deen, the Food Network’s queen of Southern cuisine, is celebrating the birth of her first grandchild. The proud parents are Deen’s older son, Jamie Deen, and his wife, Brooke. Nancy Assuncao, Deen’s publicist, says Jack Deen weighed six pounds, nine ounces when he was born yesterday. Deen, hostess of “Paula’s Home Cooking” and the upcoming “Paula’s Party,” was in Nashville, Tennessee, when her daughter-in-law went into labor. Deen hired a car and driver to rush her 500 miles back to Savannah so she could be there for the birth. more…

FOUNTAIN VALLEY, Calif. (AP) - Workers at a chocolate company have discovered a 2-inch-tall (5-centimeter-tall) column of chocolate drippings that they believe bears a striking resemblance to traditional depictions of the Virgin Mary.

Since the discovery of the drippings under a vat on Monday, employees of Bodega Chocolates have spent much of their time hovering over the tiny figure, praying and placing rose petals and candles around it.

“I was raised to believe in the Virgin Mary, but this still gives me the chills,” company co-owner Martucci Angiano said as she balanced the dark brown figure in her hand during an interview Thursday. “Everyone should see this.”

Kitchen worker Cruz Jacinto was the first to spot the lump of melted chocolate when she began her shift Monday cleaning up drippings that had accumulated under a large vat of dark chocolate.

Chocolate drippings usually harden in thin, flat strips on wax paper. But Jacinto said she froze when she noticed the unusual shape of this cast-off: It looked just like the Virgin Mary on the prayer card she always carries in her right pocket. more…

KENOSHA, Wisconsin (AP) — It might sound like a chocoholic’s dream, but stepping into a vat of viscous chocolate became a two-hour nightmare for a 21-year-old man Friday morning.

Darmin Garcia, an employee of a company that supplies chocolate ingredients, said he was pushing the chocolate down into the vat at Debelis Corp. because it was stuck. But it became loose and he slid into the hopper.

“It was in my hair, in my ears, my mouth, everywhere,” said Garcia, who has worked at the company for two years. “I felt like I weighed 900 pounds. I couldn’t move.”

The chocolate was 110 degrees Fahrenheit, hotter than a hot tub, said Capt. Greg Sinnen of the Kenosha Fire Department.

Co-workers, police and firefighters tried to free the man but could not get him loose until the chocolate was thinned out with cocoa butter. more…

In today’s fashionable homes — if appliance makers have their way — everything from refrigerators to faucets will be supersized.

We’ve written about Anthony Bourdain’s recent experience in Beirut— the globe-trotting chef was there taping an episode of his show No Reservations when fighting broke out. (He was safely evacuated.) At the time, he wasn’t sure whether the episode would ever air. Now comes word that it will indeed be broadcast on the Travel Channel Monday, Aug. 21 at 10 p.m. ET/PT. more…

A bar waitress checking to see if a customer was legally old enough to drink looked down to see a familiar photo.

It was her own.

The 22-year-old waitress, whose name was not released, called police last week and said she had been handed her own stolen driver’s license by a woman trying to prove she was 21.

The woman, who became suspicious of the delay as the waitress went to call police, fled the Moosehead Saloon, but her companion provided her name.

Maria Bergan, 23, of Lakewood, was charged Sunday night with identity theft and receiving stolen property. She was arrested at her home in suburban Cleveland. more…

Maria Bergan

I don’t know about you, but when I hire a personal chef, I have three requirements:

They must be friendly. They must whip up bourbon and honey-glazed pork chops to die for. And they must live to pulverize would-be tacklers.

“I’ve got to be honest,” one prospect confided to me the other day. “There are times I can cut the corner and get into the end zone. Instead, I’ll square up and run over somebody - just because I can. And then I’ll smile.”

Um, people? Say hello to my new personal chef, the next time my delicate palate demands a personal chef: Rachelle Pecovsky.

Yes, that Rachelle Pecovsky. N o. 44 for the D.C. Divas. One of the best running backs - yes, running backs - in all of women’s tackle football - yes, women’s tackle football.

Don’t know Pecovsky? Not quite down with the Divas? Allow me.

The 31-year-old Pecovsky is the culinary temptress behind her Traveling Kitchen chef service (www.thetravelingkitchen.com). She lives in Newport News but, as her handle suggests, Pecovsky stands eager and ready to take her Greek Stuffed Chicken on the road. more…

#44 Rachelle Pecovsky, Running Back, Personal Chef

Find out what’s behind 15 impassioned expressions

A TOPLESS waitress from New Jersey faced criminal charges after police found a severed hand and six human skulls in her home.

Linda Kay, 31, was due to be arraigned for improper disposition of human remains. Police said she was arrested on Friday.Officers responded to a report of a man wanting to kill himself with a hammer, but instead discovered a hand inside a jar filled with formaldehyde on a dresser in a bedroom. Six human skulls were found in an upstairs bedroom, South Plainfield Police Captain Paul Brembt said.

“The Middlesex County medical examiner responded to the scene and determined that the hand and all the skulls were from humans,” Capt Brembt said. more…

Also…

Woman in Severed-Hand Case a Court No-Show

Stripper’s home ‘cult-like’

It’s a lesson in pop art these Fort Lauderdale students won’t forget - seventeen-feet of tasty popcorn in the shape of a giant Mickey Mouse.

Seven students from the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale are trying to take the title of world’s largest popcorn sculpture. The group started creating the mega-Mickey sculpture yesterday for an episode of Food Network Challenge, which will air in October. more…

Also…

Popcorn Mickey Mouse to Break World Record

(CBS) CHICAGO President Bush’s two-day visit to the Windy City has given some Chicagoans a glimpse into the more casual side of the commander-in-chief.

As CBS 2’s Sylvia Gomez reports, diners at one popular Chicago hang-out got more than their usual cup of morning coffee.

President Bush leaned in like an old buddy at Lou Mitchell’s Friday morning. Charm is one of the president’s great strengths.

“I’ll tell you, he’s a very good looking man. When you meet him in person, he’s a very nice man. Very polite,” owner Nick Thanas said.

As he stumped through Lou Mitchell’s diner, a Chicago favorite, the president worked the room for a crowd that didn’t expect to be meeting the leader of the free world.

“We just came by for a Belgian waffle, then they patted us down and checked our purses,” said Erica Swerdlow. more…

A Queens couple convicted of nearly starving their baby girl to death could be freed later this month after the state’s highest court threw out their felony convictions yesterday.Lawyers for Joseph and Silva Swinton, both 35, were ecstatic after the unanimous decision found the evidence against them was “legally insufficient” to prove they assaulted the baby with “depraved indifference.”

The little girl, Ice Swinton, now 6, and her younger brother, born to the Queens Village couple after their arrests in 2002, have been living with relatives.

“This was a loving mother. She was no monster,” said defense lawyer Kevin Costello. “She sends me pictures all the time. They are such nice-looking children. It’s hard to believe they were once sick.”

Ice was fed what prosecutors called a bizarre diet of mostly vegetables, fruits and nuts. At 16 months, she weighed just 10 pounds, had a distended belly and brittle bones, authorities said. more…

What if the next burger you ate was created in a warm, nutrient-enriched soup swirling within a bioreactor?

Edible, lab-grown ground chuck that smells and tastes just like the real thing might take a place next to Quorn at supermarkets in just a few years, thanks to some determined meat researchers. Scientists routinely grow small quantities of muscle cells in petri dishes for experiments, but now for the first time a concentrated effort is under way to mass-produce meat in this manner.

Henk Haagsman, a professor of meat sciences at Utrecht University, and his Dutch colleagues are working on growing artificial pork meat out of pig stem cells. They hope to grow a form of minced meat suitable for burgers, sausages and pizza toppings within the next few years. more…

A sample of muscle grown without an artificial scaffold.

Wildfires are big-time trouble for lots of people, and bad news for taxpayers because of the firefighting expenses. But they are great news for the bottom line of a Utah restaurant owner and his family.

You know how hard it is to plan a menu for a family meal? Imagine doing it for 300 people, and then suddenly cranking it up to a thousand on a few hours notice. That’s what the Houston family of Kanab does every summer.

When firefighters have to pack in the protein and cram those carbs, they know it’s available. Three squares a day. Nobody counting calories.

Beau Jackson/ Firefighter: “I love the food. I think it’s really well done.”

Well, yeah! 400 pounds of steak! And that’s just one breakfast, when you throw in 3600 eggs and 550 pounds of hashbrowns. more…

Cancellation of 8th-grade ceremony touches off firestorm in Region 12

A decision to cancel the eighth-grade graduation in Region 12 is causing turmoil in Washington, Bridgewater and Roxbury.
The controversy over whether the decision was warranted has been the talk of the district since the annual Shepaug Valley Middle School graduation ceremony was called off following a food fight involving eighth-graders at the school.
Parental furor over the principal’s decision to cancel the June 22 ceremony was so intense that Region 12’s superintendent had a state trooper posted outside the school’s front door that day.
Principal Lorrie Rodrigue canceled the planned ceremony after a food fight in the cafeteria June 21, which she said was planned by eighth-graders, damaged property and posed a hazard to fellow students and faculty. more…

WASHINGTON, Conn. — A raucous food fight among eighth-graders Wednesday at Shepaug Valley Middle School prompted the principal to punish the class by canceling Thursday’s graduation ceremonies.The disciplinary reaction infuriated some parents, who thought the response was too harsh for the deed, particularly for those not involved.

Administrators, though, are holding the entire class accountable because the fight was so destructive and disruptive, and the majority of students knew what was planned. more…

Zaha Hadid, known around the world for her dramatic architectural projects, has now turned her visionary approach to the kitchen. The futuristic “Z. Island by DuPont Corian” creates an “intelligent” environment that responds to the desires of the senses, while meeting a variety of conventional and innovative functional kitchen needs. The project envelops multimedia equipment, sound actuators and LEDs within a flowing shell of Corian - the original solid surface from DuPont - enabling users to surf the internet, listen to music or create a particular ambience by means of a centralized touch-control panel. more…

Would you trust a computer hacker to cook your dinner? What if the menu included dishes baked with lasers or served up in laboratory test tubes? A high-tech brand of haute cuisine called “molecular gastronomy” is gaining more than a few fans from the pocket-protector set, who have taken to experimenting at home in their kitchens and coming up with some extraordinary recipes and unexpected flavor combinations.

Geek gourmet began with experiments by professional chefs at high-end restaurants like el Bulli in Spain and the Fat Duck in England, where steam baths, centrifuges and microscopes share counter space with more traditional cooking tools. more…

I remember the host on a program about animal rights saying, “Please take care of our animals. It will be good for everyone.” However, some Chinese don’t think about the animals when eating meat. They dare to eat anything but aren’t aware that what they are eating may actually be harmful to them.

Ah Chang, who has worked in the restaurant industry for many years in China, has witnessed the use of all kinds of tricks used to fool the public into buying inferior meat. The following is his experience as a kitchen helper in a restaurant in Guangdong Province.  (more…..)

‘If it flies in the air or walks on the land then it must be good to eat’

Police are searching for a prisoner who escaped from a Nottinghamshire prison in a shipment of chef hats. 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…