Tag Archives: alton brown

05.13.12
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An open letter to Alton Brown

Dear Alton,

“Good Eats,” which recently wrapped production after 14 seasons, was one of the most inventive things ever seen on American television – funny, informative, and accessible. It was good for food, it was good for science, and it was just plain fun to watch. The show was, as far as I can tell, your own creation.

I knew that all good things must come to an end, and even though I was sorry to see “Good Eats” go, I looked forward eagerly to whatever your next project would be. I knew that you could do other formats. Your miniseries “Feasting on Asphalt” and “Feasting on Waves” were travelogues that, while different from “Good Eats,” were just as good.

You may still be planning something great. I hope so. But it worries me that you seem to be ramping up your participation in Food Network’s competitive cooking shows.

I will admit it – I was a fan of the original, Japanese “Iron Chef,” and I loved the first few seasons of “Iron Chef America.” They were goofy fun, and you were a perfect choice for “Iron Chef America,” bringing your wit and knowledge to a play-by-play role.

But food competition shows have become redundant, repetitive, and overblown. They’re part of the reason I rarely watch Food Network anymore, having sought refuge in Cooking Channel, which is what Food Network used to be. (It even airs “Good Eats” reruns.) And in a crowded marketplace of food competition, the only way to stand out is to try to hype and overhype the soap-opera, professional-wrestling aspects of the competition. I felt like “The Next Iron Chef” was a waste of your talents, and now you’re barging headlong into the long-standing “Food Network Star” (formerly known as “The Next Food Network Star”) franchise.

Alton, I realize you have to earn a living, but this crap is beneath you. It’s so far beneath you it’s not even funny. The promos refer to you, Bobby Flay and Giada DeLaurentis as “food icons.” Well, you didn’t become a food icon by hosting crappy “reality” shows, and if crappy “reality” shows are the future of your career, you won’t be a food icon for long.

Please figure out some way to move in another direction. We’re not waiting for the next Food Network star, prancing around the kitchen spouting Guy Fieri-style catch phrases. We’re waiting for the next “Good Eats” or “Feasting on Asphalt.”

Please, I beg you, move on – even if it means switching networks.

03.30.12
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Hello Mr. Chips

I went to our local tortilleria this morning for a story – you’ll be able to read it next week – and returned to the newspaper with a big stack of hot, freshly-made corn tortillas. If you’ve never had freshly made corn tortillas, you don’t know what you’re missing.

I shared with co-workers, but even so there were some left over at the end of the day. This particular tortilleria uses preservative-free masa for his hot-and-fresh tortillas, so I tried to figure out how I might be able to use up the remaining tortillas. I recalled Alton Brown’s recipe for homemade tortilla chips. I did not have any limes or lime juice, so I seasoned the tortilla wedges in a mix of fresh-squeezed lemon juice and Tapatio hot sauce. Instead of letting them air-dry for an hour, as in Alton’s recipe, I used my dehydrator to speed up the process. Then I deep-fried them as per Alton’s recipe.

Pretty good, if I do say so myself.

09.29.10
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Good Eats and the Good News

I am home sick. I’m supposed to be lying down – and I will be again, in a few minutes – but I had to check my e-mail.

My e-mail contained a notice of a new Twitter follower. I’m still not exactly sure who he is, but we have some Twitter contacts in common, so I went to check out his profile page.

I’m glad I did; he had a link to this article about Alton Brown. Any regular reader of this blog knows that I’m a huge fan of Alton’s – but apparently, I wasn’t a huge enough fan to know that Alton is a Christian:

When I go to New York and I tell people I am going to church tomorrow, people take a couple of steps back from me. What I’ve learned to do is go ahead and take two steps forward. But yeah, it’s tough, and there have been times when I’ve broken out in a sweat a little. I still feel a funny little tinge in my stomach when I’m out to dinner with my wife and daughter in New York. We’ll go to dinner and we’ll be sitting around the table and we’ll say Grace. You know what? People are going to stare at you. I used to feel really self-conscious. But I’ve gotten to a point where I think, nah, I’m not going to feel bad about that. I’m not going to apologize about that.

It’s a nice article, and a pleasant surprise. One thing that struck me: So many people think – falsely – that science and religion have to be at odds. I think one of the interesting things about Alton is that “Good Eats” is, in large part, a show which popularizes science.

One of the earlier episodes of “Good Eats,” the one about casseroles, took place at a little white country church – a United Methodist church, which they took pains to identify by name through an on-screen graphic. The church reminded me of a lot of the churches my father used to pastor. Of course, all that proved was that Alton had been exposed to religion, and (given that he grew up in Georgia) that wasn’t too unexpected.

So, good for Alton. Although, I have to say, I’ve gotten a little tired of “The Next Iron Chef.” Why are they doing another one so soon? Is one of the existing Iron Chefs leaving? How many Iron Chefs does one network need? I didn’t watch the last “Next Iron Chef” except for the last couple of episodes, and I really didn’t like the arrogant Jose Garces, who ended up winning the thing.

Now I’m suddenly even sadder that “The Wittenburg Door” is in limbo. At this point, I would certainly have been calling Bob Darden to try to pitch him an interview with Alton, who would have fit the magazine to a T.

03.22.10
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First time is not the charm

Well, the caramels taste great, but they are unacceptably gooey, to the point of being shapeless, and sticky. I did something wrong.

To try to salvage the situation, I’ve wrapped them individually in wax paper (and was that a chore) and I’ve put them in the freezer overnight. I’ll keep them in the fridge tomorrow at work and serve them cold.

03.22.10
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The candy man can

Well, I’m here … at home. We will have a pickup rehearsal on Thursday; I have a county meeting to cover tomorrow night, and dinner at church on Wednesday, but tonight … I’m home. Feels strange, after the intense schedule of the past two weeks, and the three-or-four-nights-a-week schedule before that.

I decided to try something fun tonight. I love to cook, as regular readers know, but one thing I’ve never tried is candy. But Alton Brown had a recipe for dark salty caramels that sounded so good I just had to try it. I broke my last deep fry/candy thermometer, so I had to buy one at the grocery store; I forgot about the cream of tartar in the recipe, but fortunately I found some way, way back in my cupboard. (I hope cream of tartar doesn’t go bad, because it’s past the date on the bottom of the tin.)

From Drop Box

The recipe seems to have gone well. It’s cooling now; I’ll cut it into pieces just before going to bed tonight. The little taste I scraped from the sides of the saucepan is delicious. It has just a tiny hint of bitterness, but Alton said on “Good Eats” that it was supposed to be there — the soy sauce in the recipe, and the kosher salt which I will sprinkle on top of the candies in about a half an hour, is supposed to overcome the bitterness. (Alton actually called for sea salt, but I don’t have any.)

02.06.10
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Something fishy going on here

All right, Alton Brown, this is the craziest thing you’ve ever inspired me to do. By far.

I just had a late lunch involving sardines.

It was not exactly according to Alton’s recipe for sherried sardine toast. I didn’t have sherry vinegar, so I just used the juice from the lemon I was zesting anyway. I also added some onion and diced jalapeno to the avocado, and I used fresh hot bread out of my bread machine rather than toasting it.

But I ate … sardines. And enjoyed it, sort of.

On the episode of “Good Eats” on which Alton presented this recipe, he got around most of our reactions to sardines by referring to them as “brisling,” the actual name of the fish in question. The gag was that at one point, the paper label fell off his can of brisling to reveal the real “sardines” label underneath. Then, the POV camera bolted for the door and Alton had to try to talk the viewer down.

The recipe called for brisling sardines packed in olive oil, more expensive than some types of sardines. You drain off some of the oil and mix it with lemon zest, parsley and sherry vinegar (or in my case, lemon juice) to make a dressing, which the sardines marinate in for a little while. In Alton’s original recipe, a little more of the sardine oil is brushed on slices of bread before toasting them.

The toast is slathered with mashed avocado, then a few of the sardines are placed on top, topped with a little bit of the marinade and a sprinkle of salt. (I didn’t have sea salt either, another part of the original recipe.)

It frankly wasn’t that bad. I love avocado, and it actually offset some of the fishy taste of the sardines.

Alton is the only TV chef I trust enough to get me to eat sardines.

03.08.09
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Real men do eat quiche, after all

I have quiche, prepared according to Alton Brown’s recipe, in the oven. It has leftover roast chicken, goat cheese and sun-dried tomatoes, plus (even though Alton didn’t call for this) a little minced garlic.

Unfortunately, they didn’t have the dry, vacuum-sealed sun-dried tomatoes at the store today, only the oil-packed. But I spent the extra money.

Alton’s recipe is terrific, by the way, and I’ve made it numerous times over the years. Bet you didn’t figure I was the kind who’d quiche and tell, but apparently I am.

I skipped lunch because I had plenty to eat at men’s club breakfast this morning. By the time this quiche finishes cooking and cools down, it will be a very early supper, but our internal clocks are all off today anyway.

ADDENDUM: Looking back over this, I realize I failed to clarify something. Alton has a basic quiche custard recipe — which is what I meant when I said I’d made his recipe many times — followed by a long list of suggested filling combinations. This is actually the first time I’ve ever made the chicken / goat cheese / sun-dried tomato quiche before. In fact, I think it’s the first time I’ve ever bought goat cheese.

08.25.08
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Golden brown and delicious

I made Alton Brown’s macaroni and cheese over the weekend — and I’d done that before. It’s delicious.

What I hadn’t done before, and what I did this evening, was to make the next-day fried mac and cheese, which turned out terrific as well. You cut the refrigerated leftovers into inch-thick slices, dust them in flour, coat them in beaten egg and then roll them in panko bread crumbs (which weren’t available here the first time I made Alton’s mac-and-cheese recipe). Then you deep fry them until done (or until “GBD,” as Alton says: golden brown and delicious). They turned out great.

04.19.08
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Rescue the Rescue Chef

Food Network recently introduced “Rescue Chef with Danny Boome,” which is, for all intents and purposes, a remake of Tyler Florence’s old show “Food 911.” A viewer writes in with a food-related difficulty, and Boome visits them at home to teach them a new recipe or technique.

It’s a pretty good show — but Boome got it wrong today. He was making a salad with his pupil today and was teaching her to use a salad spinner to dry the greens. “Let the power of gravity work for you,” he said.

BZZZZZT!

As Alton Brown could have told Danny, a salad spinner works by centrifugal force, NOT by gravity. Gravity comes into place when you drain something in a colander, for example, but gravity wouldn’t work on salad greens because there are so many surfaces for the water to cling to and hide in. The reason you need a salad spinner is because gravity doesn’t work in this particular situation.

01.19.08
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Good weather for stew

I am making Alton Brown’s beef stew recipe, which is delicious. I don’t know whether I’ll try to finish it tonight and eat a late supper or whether I’ll hold the short ribs in the fridge overnight and finish the stew tomorrow (which is what I did the first time around).

I may not be able to wait.

I got an about-to-expire discount (which I don’t mind at all, especially for a dish like this) on the short ribs.