Top Chef University Blog

Happy New Year from Top Chef University

  

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We hope your holiday feasts have been amazing and you have had the chance to use your cooking skills to impress your friends and family.

From our family to all of yours, have a healthy, safe and happy New Year. 

Jeff

Learning to Cook: A Tale of Two Dinner Parties

  

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I have rediscovered my love for cooking.  Nothing makes me happier than cooking at home with friends.  There's something about taking raw ingredients and working together to make and enjoy meals that makes me feel great.

Since I am definitely a novice cook, I need help - and when I'm cooking for other people (and feeling the pressure!) I prepare by watching TCU videos before I cook.  You'd think that after a long day working at Top Chef University that I'd be longing for an evening away from it all.  But it increases my confidence when I'm entertaining and results in a great meal.

Well, usually!  I was invited to a friend's cottage for a weekend of relaxing and cooking.  I was assigned the Saturday night dinner, cooking for 6.  I picked some Asian inspired dishes that were meat free (because one diner, who shall go nameless, refuses to partake in the red meat and pork).  Come on readers, tell him what he's missing!  Anyway, I never paid attention to the warning "cooking times may vary depending on the oven".  It's a very dated term, as most modern ovens are so competent and consistent.  However, the cottage had a charming, old-style oven and I served the Miso Glazed Sea Bass severly undercooked.  I started panicking and felt a lot of hungry eyes on me.  

I redeemed myself a few weeks later, when I used TCU to cook Perfect Roast Chicken and The Perfect French Fries.  A Perfect combination.  As you can see from the photo - the view, the food and the company were worth the effort 100 times over.

Here's to another week of great food!

Jeff

Don't get the screen dirty!

  

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Hi Guys,

Today I got to have a sneak peak at the Top Chef University iPad app that we're launching pretty soon.  It is amazing and I can't wait for everyone to see it.

We always knew the iPad would be an amazing way to learn how to cook.  Watching the follow along video recipes right in the kitchen, and on such a beautiful screen, is the perfect way to learn how to cook.  It's like having your mother sitting right next to you, correcting you at every step (I was lucky enough to have a mother who taught me how to cook!)

The app allows you to select exactly which courses or lessons you want to buy, with one click.  Once you have them, the interface allows you to watch the video, read the recipe(s), take notes, learn the cooking terms that are used in that lesson, see which tools are needed and then take a test to see how much you remember!  If only school was this much fun back in the day!

I'm sure you can tell that I'm excited.  I hope you will be too when it comes out.  If you want to receive an email when the app is released in the app store, visit our App website 

Here's to another week of good food!

Jeff

Good food is worth learning to cook for!

  

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The Final Course

  

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Today will not be the last you hear from me regarding Top Chef University. I did say at the beginning of this process that if I did all this and survived, I would reward myself with a trip to Chef Kevin Gillespie’s restaurant in Atlanta, GA. I have every intention of going, and every intention of reporting back after I do. Spring Break is next month.

However, today marks the end of my “230 Lessons in 230 Days” mission through Top Chef University. It has not always been easy. Sometimes I had to cook things we weren’t in the mood for, or things I wasn’t comfortable with. Sometimes I was sick or exhausted, but cooked anyway, or cooked long after most of the family had gone to bed, so that I would still be on pace. It’s been an interesting ride, frought with success, failure, experimentation, and a lot of learning.

I seriously have to give it up to my family: the husband and daughter who are both picky eaters, yet were always brave enough to at least try what I put out there, every single time; the two boys whose unfailing enthusiasm and support I appreciate; my mom, who lent me her kitchen and her toaster oven, and who I got to spend cool bonding time with, using this program as an excuse. I also seriously give it up to Mama Chef, Kevin Gillespie’s Mom, Kathy Gillespie. She is a great lady whose support in this mission has meant a lot to me. Thanks to my editor, Anthony Hoy Fong, who is one of the most reasonable guys a writer could hope to work for, and to Jeff Goldenberg, the Top Dog who agreed to let me do this for Top Chef University and for you all.

Finally, doing this is one thing, but knowing there are people out there reading, has been something else entirely. At first, you don’t know whether anyone is reading or not, so you just have fun with it. As you go on and find that people are reading, you start to feel a responsibility to those folks who have stuck with you through the journey. Thank you all sincerely for reading and I hope it’s been worthwhile and fun for you.

There are many things I’ve learned, overall, from the Top Chef University program. I didn’t previously understand the difference between different types of knives and knife cuts, or the impact of using fresh spices rather than those little McCormick bottles. I didn’t understand the concept of “flavor profiles” or how to achieve them, how to layer flavors or to compose a dish using different types of flavor like salty, sweet, sour and spicy all at once. Before this, I only used spices when recipes called for them. Now, I can’t live without Kosher salt or fresh ground black pepper, and can tell the difference between certain spices, what they add and where they’re used in flavor profiles, and how they taste together.

I now feel like I could walk into any person’s kitchen and make them something yummy based on what they have in their kitchen. I didn’t understand before that a well-balanced dish includes a protein, a sauce, a vegetable and a garnish; or the part that acid needs to play. I have so many different sauces, flavor profiles and cooking techniques in my wheelhouse now, that experimenting in the kitchen will go more successfully. I don’t think my fridge will ever again be without lemon juice, cream, fresh thyme, butter or Dijon mustard. These are things I didn’t stock regularly, which I can’t live without now. I didn’t know what a shallot was but now use those regularly, too. Pantry items I will now never be without include sliced almonds, peanuts, chick peas, chicken stock, and beef stock.

My biggest triumph, I think, was definitely that soufflé, and I was proud when I finally figured out homemade mayonnaise. I think the soupmaking unit, though, has changed our family’s eating habits for good. My biggest freakout was definitely the cow tongue, which I don’t think we’ll ever have again. And, I do still aspire to poach an egg using the spinning method. Haven’t gotten that down, yet. I have been turned on to some awesome local vendors for foreign and organic fare, who I will continue to patronize.

I have been paid to go through this program and report on it to you, however, I will not tell you that Top Chef University has value simply because they’re paying me to. It really has made an honest, tangible difference in my cooking skills and in my family’s eating habits. While it’s not healthier for us to be eating more bacon grease and butter, we are certainly eating many more fruits and vegetables than we were, and less processed, pre-prepared and fast food. So many of these recipes  will be in our regular rotation from now on. If you’re someone on the fence, wondering whether this program will be valuable to you, I have to say that it has definitely added confidence and ability to me, and value to my family’s daily life.

Thank you everyone, and I remain hungrily yours,

Heidi in Pittsburgh

ps. The bacon ice cream tasted like a Denny's Grand Slam, even when frozen. I still say keep the bacon in it.

Nothing Says "I Love You" Like Bacon Ice Cream

  

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Yep. When I showed my family the list of recipes under the Advanced Entertaining unit of Top Chef University, they unanimously voted for Bacon Ice Cream. This should not surprise anyone who's read this far. Our family loves us some bacon.

I got home from my night class at 10pm tonight, still needing to make this ice cream for the blog. I had no idea where to find dry ice at 10pm, so, was not going to have time to freeze it before I posted tonight. So, I can report on what it tastes like, frozen, tomorrow. For tonight, people had to taste it and "picture what this would taste like, frozen." Come on, admit it, you've licked the melted ice cream from the bottom of your dish before. It was kind of like that.

While we very much ARE bacon people, we aren't very much Valentine's Day people. Valentine's Day for my husband and I consisted today of me ridding the bedroom of stinkbugs (when I cut their heads off with scissors, they're dead and they don't stink), and he put five dollars down on an advance copy of Dragon Age 2. And I made everyone this ice cream, which won't be frozen until tomorrow. Ain't love grand?

I'm not sure what to make of the fact that my boys thought the stuff tasted like a Denny's Grand Slam, and my husband compared it to "what the burps taste like after you've eaten a McDonald's McGriddle sandwich." Maybe this is TMI, but I did promise off the bat to be honest with you guys about my family's reactions to these recipes. I think Richard Blais would be disappointed in us. Perhaps Kevin Gillespie would not be. He's a bacon guy.

The thing I love about bacon is the saltiness. Something about salty and sweet together makes me crazy. Chocolate-covered bacon is as much a life-changing snack as pretzels dipped in Nutella.

I put too much maple syrup in the mixture, I think, because deep down in my gut, I really wanted more "salty."  Blais has you discarding the bacon once you have spent time flavoring the mixture with it. I would love to re-do this recipe, pre-frying the bacon untit it's nearly burnt, crumbling it up into little pieces, and keeping it in the ice cream. I would have preferred the taste that way, plus, it just felt really, really wrong to throw bacon away.

As of this writing, I have fully completed Top Chef University. Unless you count that whole, "ice cream not being frozen yet" thing. It feels really strange to be finished. I made 78 recipes to report on for you, but this is actually only about 1/3 of the recipes the program has to offer. I do fully intend to try out many of the others I've missed. And what may feel like an end is actually only the beginning of my newfound kitchen prowess, which I expect our family will benefit from for a long time to come. Tomorrow, I will offer some reflection on things I have learned with this program.

Hungrily yours,

Heidi in Pittsburgh

The Top Chef University All-Star Meal

  

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My family had an extensive meeting this morning, on my daughter’s bed. We went post by post, nominating recipes for the Top Chef University All-Star Meal. Sometimes, I had to pull up the posts and re-show the pictures so that everyone would remember what recipe I was talking about. (Keep in mind, there are over 200 total recipes in Top Chef University, but I’ve only made and reported on 77 since July, though I did watch 230 lessons in 230 days.)

The selection process, itself, was interesting. So many times, at the time, people had said “I really like that,” but when asked in retrospect whether the recipe would make the All-Star list, someone admitted to maybe not having liked the recipe as much as they said they had. Other times, they couldn’t remember it at all, even when I showed them the picture. It was my daughter’s tendency to pass over recipes just for the sake of doing so, until we overruled her. When she begged me for an entire month afterward to make her more of that seared ahi tuna salad for her lunch, that deserves consideration, as does the fact that she ate four bowls of my beef barley soup.

Some recipes, like the yellow cake with buttercream frosting, were not bad recipes, but had some sort of technical flaw on my part. The chicken recipe was too spicy (which is fixable), the samosas were awesome-tasting but not shaped correctly (also fixable), the crispy-skinned salmon was really rare on the inside (fixable) and my eggs benedict was “slamming” but we hadn’t toasted the English muffin underneath.

Everyone but me had definite ideas right off the bat about what their very favorite recipe had been. My husband said hands down, Chef Kevin’s duck breast with orange glaze. My older son cited Chef Kevin’s bacon, apple and cheddar sandwich. My little guy said, definitely, for him, it was Chef Spike’s chicken noodle soup. My daughter said it was the parker house rolls, from Chef Nikki. I can’t pick just one as the overall favorite, but have to confess that my proudest moment was when, with the assistance of Chef CJ, I made that soufflé which surprisingly didn’t fall down.

I said, no, let’s go through, and vote the recipes up or down. Then I’ll categorize the ones we voted up, according to what type of recipe it is. When it’s in menu form, we’ll decide what the dream meal would be from that menu.

We voted up 31 of the 77 recipes, three of which aren’t even technically from Top Chef University, but which I made using experimentation based on what I’ve learned (pierogies, lobster ravioli and lobster bisque). Here's our family's Top Chef University All-Star Menu!

APPETIZERS

• Lobster ravioli*
• Shrimp scampi
• Seared scallops
• Indian samosas*
• Pierogies*
• Meatballs with black currant and root beer sauce*
• Pad thai

SOUPS

• Chicken noodle soup*
• Lobster bisque*
• Beef and barley soup

SALADS

• Seared ahi tuna salad*
• Potato salad

SIDES

• Eggs benedict
• Fries
• Buttermilk mashed potatoes*
• Long grain pilaf with cranberries*
• Parker House rolls*

ENTREES

• Nut-crusted lamb chops
• Butternut squash ravioli*
• Coq au vin
• Pork chops with grape/rosemary sauce*
• NY Strip steak with green peppercorn sauce*
• Bacon, apple, cheddar sandwich
• Crispy skin salmon
• Halibut en papillote
• Crispy duck breast with orange glaze*
• BBQ ribs
• Chicken mole

DESSERTS

• Vanilla orange panna cotta*
• Microwave tiramisu
• Yellow cake with buttercream frosting

The winners, or, recipes we'd eat in the Ultimate Top Chef University All-Star Meal, have asterisks. In cases where one of MY recipes won, we also elected a TCU-generated recipe in that category. We wanted to choose two sides, but the mashed potatoes tied the rice pilaf. The soup and entree categories elicited the most deliberation; with entrees, we elected one beef, one pork, one poultry, and one vegetarian selection.

It was really interesting re-visiting things this way. I imagine our family meeting would have taken way more than one hour, had I actually cooked every single recipe offered by this versatile, fun program. Speaking of cooking, only one recipe post remains. My family chose two of Richard Blais' Advanced Entertaining recipes which I will be making them for Valentine's Day tomorrow. After that, on the 15th, I will reflect overall on what this program has taught me.

Hungrily yours,

Heidi in Pittsburgh

Creamsicle Cheesecake (Vanilla Orange Panna Cotta)

  

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Today, when I asked my 13-year-old son if he wanted to help me in the kitchen, he asked what we were making.

“Panna cotta,” I said.

“Ew,” he said, screwing up his face.

“What’s the matter? Have you ever had panna cotta? Do you know what it is?”

“I’m just not in the mood for spaghetti.”

He thought panna cotta was spaghetti. Well, in his defense, it sounds Italian. And before Top Chef University, I did think that sweetbread was testicles. I was definitely out to teach him something cool.

Making a panna cotta is as easy as making Jell-O. Had I known that, I might have tried it before today. The serving suggestion on the recipe is to place some in a stemless wine glass, and garnish with a vanilla bean and some nuts. I was down with the stemless glass idea, but I was not about to waste a vanilla bean as a garnish.

The most difficult thing about making the dish was getting it into the stemless wine glass and getting it to look clean. First of all, the stuff is piping hot before it sets with refrigeration, so it steamed up the glass. Also, it was dripping on both the inside and the outside. When I tried to wipe it, I left streaks, and I knew my family would not prefer the slight taste of Windex as a garnish instead of that vanilla bean. I did the best I could, but, I do wonder how the heck chefs do it. Ladles are wide, and stemless wine glasses are not.

Anyway, here is a photo of my "award-winning" (sic) panna cotta. The best comparison I got was that it was light and springy like cheesecake, but tasted like a creamsicle. I was quite pleased with the consistency, and now that I know how to make a basic panna cotta, there’s pretty much no end to the flavors I can infuse.

That was the end of desserts, and I forgot to give some fond props to instructor Dale Levitski. I now have two food posts left before my final post on this journey. One will be something from the “Advanced and Entertaining” Unit, and I’ve decided to take a vote among my family members to find the one recipe they enjoyed the most over the past eight months, to make again, as a fond send-off. There’s already been some interesting discussion about it.

My 6-year-old, to be funny, suggested cow tongue. I don’t know what will ultimately win in our family vote-off for best recipe, but I know the cow tongue is not happening. I will also try to poach that darned egg again, using that whole swirly method, to see if I can get it right for once before saying goodbye.

Now that the end is near, I’m kind of relieved, but also kind of sad. This has been so much fun. But the whole point is, that for me and my family, the fun doesn't have to end now that I have some mad kitchen skillz. Time for some comfort food? Stay tuned!

Hungrily yours,

Fish Tanks and Road Salt, and Molecular Gastronomy

  

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The last unit of Top Chef University is about molecular gastronomy. Chefs I’ve seen on TV, such as Wylie Dufresne and Top Chef’s own Richard Blais, look like rock stars when they use science and food to create artful experiences. I have to confess…I look at this stuff and ask….huh?

As I have said before here, I can’t afford a sous vide machine, nor do I want to buy equipment I wouldn’t have common, practical use for. I have no doubt that Richard Blais finds everyday use for an NO-2 foamer, an electric smoker, a freeze-drying machine, and a blowtorch. These are items I might not use again, as well as the fact that all of these seem like accidents waiting to happen when you have a 13-year-old boy in the house. Therefore, I automatically ruled out the possibility of me, the “average housewife,” being able to pull off those specific recipes without having expensive machines. Sorry if that’s a cop-out, but, I’m a college student, and college students are always broke.

I did decide to investigate experimenting with spherification, because it looks cool. Spherification is where you gel something that isn’t traditionally a gel. This is done by mixing your ingredient with sodium alginate, then dropping small drops of the mixture into calcium chloride, and removing and straining the drops once they’ve gelled a bit.

Online, a company called Willpowder sells kits for spherification which include the chemical packets, a syringe, a squirt bottle, and a strainer spoon. I give it up to the marketing impresario who decided to name the spherification kits “Balls of Fury.” While this would be a convenient way to get everything you need to try spherification, I balked at the $10 shipping charge, and decided to research whether I could accomplish this mission for less money. When I saw the results of my internet search for “calcium chloride” under “Shopping,” I became nervous.

My daughter operates a 10 gallon freshwater fish tank. One of the things she uses in order to regulate the PH in her fish tank is a solution I have seen before but never recognized as calcium chloride. That’s right, folks…when I did an internet search to find the compound used by Richard Blais in his spherification lesson, the picture that came up was the same stuff my daughter puts in her fish tank. There’s also a version sold in bulk, at hardware stores, to salt your walk with when it’s snowing.

I decided to leave this one to the experts because it seems really easy to buy a dangerous, non-edible version of this compound if you're not including "food grade" in the search. If chefs say this is safe, I believe them, but that doesn't make me comfortable cooking this way, myself. To experience molecular gastronomy, if I ever want to, there's a restaurant close to me that offers a chance.

Blais is one of the most creative chefs I’ve ever seen, I’m rooting for him currently on Season 8 of Top Chef, and in person, he’s a heck of a nice guy (I met him). But I think that for me, and my family, we’re going to stick with less fancy stuff, less gadgetry, and more classic cooking. To be honest, every time I picture the look on my family’s faces when I’d serve them sphered cantaloupe with some kind of foam, I laugh. It just isn’t who we are.  

One thing I’ve learned is that part of being a good cook, is understanding who you are. A guy who works in a burger joint isn’t going to make filet mignon, nor is the chef at an Italian restaurant going to make the world’s greatest sushi. You know your audience, you know your strengths, and you go with that. It is true that you should try new things and take risks in the kitchen, but there are some places I don’t think I’m ready to go yet, and molecular gastronomy is one of those places.

I do still owe you guys some panna cotta, I realize. But molecular gastronomy was also still on the list, and I needed to address it. Some chefs think it's a bunch of hooey and "cooking with chemicals," others see it as a groundbreaking way to give diners an unusual, more artistic experience. Again, I'm glad to have been exposed to it, and may yet try this type of cuisine someday -- but for a family dinner, it's not the most practical way to cook unless you're having a party and want to look like a sorcerer. I'm still just the sorcerer's apprentice.

Hungrily yours,

Heidi in Pittsburgh

Meatballs!

  

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Well, we all know how the SuperBowl went. Surprisingly, most people here in Pittsburgh aren't that bitter about it -- we recognize that the Steelers just got outplayed. I was not, however, outcooked thanks to Top Chef University.

Technically speaking, I'm still in the Dessert unit. But just a few short lessons away, the Entertaining and Advanced unit offered me the perfect opportunity to serve up some SuperBowl food that would please the whole family. At game time, most people I know are into sandwich rings, crock pot dishes, wings, and other "manly fare." Therefore, I knew it wouldn't do to come into my living room at kickoff time saying, "Here are some lovely smoked salmon canape's, and caviar on blini's!" (I'm sure those will go over well at my Oscar party, at the end of the month, though!)

I've made meatballs before, and my own recipe does not differ greatly from the one offered by Richard Blais. My motivation was the "black currant and root beer" sauce. That seemed like a really interesting combination, and I was determined to try it out.

The one thing I didn't do was to thicken the sauce using Xanthan gum. I did things the old-fashioned way with butter and corn starch and a LOT of reducing time. Richard Blais has you doing some fancy presentation involving scientific cuvettes, but I just put out a big pot of meatballs, in sauce, with a ladle and told people to help themselves.

At the risk of yet another post that follows the simple, "here's what I made and it tasted really yummy" formula, these meatballs were the bright spot in an evening that was otherwise full of pain. Our hometown diva, Christina Aguilera, messed up the words to the National Anthem. The halftime show was worse than usual. And finally...the Steelers lost.

We were of course thrilled to see the Darth Vader commercial. Readers who have been following this blog for a bit may remember a time in the fall when my 6-year-old went through a Darth Vader phase for three straight days. Many of the scenes in this commercial actually happened at our house over the course of those three days. Except, as you know, our dog is a morbidly obese beagle, and we drive a Chrysler.

I will return to desserts presently, though I am now intrigued by the idea of cooking with Richard Blais. Blais is both a true kitchen rock star, and a heck of a nice guy (I met him last year on the Top Chef Bus Tour). I never would have thought to pair meatballs with berries and root beer, that's for sure!

The next recipe I aim to try is panna cotta. I need to do something to cheer up all the dejected Steeler fans around here!

Hungrily yours,

Heidi in Pittsburgh