Last night's episode was an exception and showed what a truly great cooking competition this could be. Last night was about Classic French cooking and the Top Chef producers decided to bring out the big guns for judging. I was giddy the entire episode. Upon seeing Andre Soltner, I thought I was going to cry! This chef is a star, a hero, if you will, to cooks all around the world.
In New York city, contestants had to cook for Sirio Maccioni, the owner of the legendary Le Cirque restaurant. He served the five contestants a signature dish- Sea Bass Paupiette. Chef Daniel Boulud, another NYC heavyweight, created this dish when he was the executive chef at Le Cirque. The wannabe Top Chefs had to recreate this dish so that it matched the one that has been served to VIPs at Le Cirque for over 20 years.
I had made a couple of poor attempts at making this dish at home. Once again, I decided to give it a go. Tonight I used salmon. This is what it looked like:
Honestly, it looked pretty good, and it tasted delicious...but it really made me appreciate how tricky it is to cook this simple dish. Even though the potato was finely sliced, it wasn't the kind of crispy goodness that I had wanted. And if you really want a four-star result, you CANNOT take short cuts(I tried on the sauce and it really didn't have that rich luxurious texture you would imagine with great stocks and, perhaps, better wine.It's amazing how important technique is to ensure a refined end product. I take my hat off to all those contestants tonight. Almost all of them nailed it.
Chef Daniel Boulud's recipe for Crisp Paupiette of Sea Bass in Barolo Sauce if you want to try it yourself.
Anyway, Top Chef really shined last tonight. And I am so glad that my fellow yellow person won both challenges! Go Hung!
2 comments:
Mannnn I didn't know you had a blog! I thought you were just making comments.Go fig.Food is cool!
You write very well.
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