utenzi

There's a new show on Food Network named Secrets of a Restaurant Chef and it had its first episode today. It's running once a week (Sunday mornings) with no repeats during the week, at least not at first, which is unusual for Food Network. The Chef that hosts the show is Anne Burrell, seen over there to the left. Does she remind you of a young  Sharon Gless ?  Maybe I just have Gless on my mind due to the imminent start of season two of Burn Notice on July 10th. In any case, Secrets of a Restaurant Chef is a very good show. I plan on watching it every week. Burrell plays it over the top, which is a far cry from how she appears when she works as Mario Batali's sous chef on Iron Chef America, but I suspect this is her real personality. There's no denying that she has enthusiasm! Burrell is now the Executive Chef at Centro Vinoteca in New York City, near 7th Ave and Bleecker Street. The restaurant's been open for a year now to fairly good reviews. What I really like a...

I just vegetated this weekend. Chris had some stuff she needed to do so I was on my own and I just chose to do nothing. Nada. I watched a few movies, watched some television, and did some cooking and baking. Nothing that involved going out into that damn heat. The weather folk had promised us a few "cool days" in the mid 80s but it was over 90 both days. Phooey! I happened to catch a lot of Alton Brown this weekend. There was his Feasting on Asphalt show, which is in its second season, as well as a couple of his Good Eats shows that I'd not seen before, and I also watched an episode of Iron Chef America in which Alton Brown was sorta flirting with the visiting chef, Alexandra Guarnaschelli . She had cut her finger and Brown was making the situation quite dramatic--and Alexandra was working with him on the shtick . The theme of this episode of Iron Chef America wasn't any one food but rather used a bunch of foods that could be garnered at a farmer's market. G...

Does anyone else watch those Iron Chef shows? I used to a few years back. They were so campy and fun but eventually I tired of them--and so when The Food Network started an "American" version this past year I watched the first few episodes. They were good but not good enough to watch every time so after the first 3 or 4 episodes I stopped watching. Fortunately the other day I noticed that Iron Chef America was having a special episode in which the format was extended to 90 minutes and two guest "chefs" were added to accompany the Iron Chefs. The pairing? Bobby Flay and Giada De Laurentiis vs. Mario Batali and Rachel Ray. I loved the show. It was funny as Hell. It started showing on Nov 13th but I didn't see it listed until Wednesday the 22nd. It's on the schedule for another month so there's plenty of time to catch it if you'd like to see it. After I saw the competition I read a review of the show on another blog and it's hilarious. Supposedly ...