Live Blogging Top Chef, Week 4
Multitalented — that's one of many qualities I like about the crowd that gathers here each Wednesday night to comment on Top Chef (starting at 10 Eastern.) They can drink. They can tell jokes. They can … presumably do something for a living. And many can cook! And cook fancy stuff, even! So tonight, my "highlights from last week" involve the culinary feats performed not by "cheftestants," but by my fellow commenters. The fact that it was Thanksgiving Eve likely played a role, but everyone seemed to be cooking something special while they were live-blogging last week. Here's a sampling:
- Lizawithazee: Brussels sprouts with brown butter and pecans, chipotle stuffin' muffins, goat cheese and onion tart, cranberries with candied grapefruit peel, antipasto tray, and buttermilk chive biscuits.
- Lillyblue: Oyster dressing, spiced giblet gravy and shrimp remoulade
- minou: Creamy spinach gratin, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce and brownies
- TristaButterfly: Fresh-baked bread
- Strehle: Something involving cranberries and heavy cream
- JLynRedux: Five kinds of pie — apple, pumpkin, three-berry, chocolate cream and ricotta
And as for me? Well, I don't mean to brag, but I can heat up a mean frozen pizza. In fact, I've got one bubbling in the microwave now. Before I fetch it, allow me to suggest a few "things to watch for" as we live-blog tonight:
- Expectoration! Watch for the Today Show's Kathie Lee Gifford to become the latest woman on Top Chef to gag and spit something out. (I planned to make a junior prom joke here, but I decided to spare you. Call it an early holiday present.)
- Eggs'n'bacon! The quickfire challenge will be to make a "breakfast amuse-bouche." My French is a little rusty, but I think that means "breakfast funny mouth." Which means … they'll make smiley-face pancakes? If so, you heard it here first.
- Expatriation! Fabio will opine that guest judge Rocco DiSpirito is "not a real Italian." This is ironic because, in one of his great Top Chef recaps on Gawker, Josh Stein theorized that Fabio himself may be as genuinely Italian as Chico Marx. Next, someone will try to tell me Chef Boyardee wasn't a real Italian either. (He was, by the way — his real name was Ettore Boiardi. And I just decided to give Fabio the new nickname "Chef Boyardee" in his honor.)
Well it's almost 10 o'clock, and the microwave is beeping. Let's get ready to gab, gastronomes!