Looking at My Cooking
Posted by Heidi McDonald on Sat, Aug 07, 2010 @ 02:15 PM
(Sections 3.3 - 3.6)
Well, not even the fedora helped with my mayonnaise. I am still incapable of making it correctly. In school, the class can’t wait for someone if there’s one thing one person can’t quite get. You might get an F on one test but an A on the next one…but the class keeps moving, and so must I, if I hope to get through 230 Top Chef University lessons in 230 days.
I do hope at some point that I can master the art of mayonnaise. Chef Beni, a friend and recent culinary school graduate, suggested I use a food processor rather than a blender. My friend Mish shared that her 76-year-old mom’s mayonnaise is still the best, thanks to good old-fashioned elbow grease. My favorite advice, though, came from my friend Ron: “Go to local grocery. Walk up and down the aisles until you find mayonnaise. Pick up jar. Proceed to checkout and purchase said jar. There you have mayonnaise.”
Going further through the Sauces unit, I made chimichurra sauce and an Asian marinade. The seared NY strip steak with chimichurra sauce turned out very well, but I do wonder how Chef Spike was able to get his plates looking so clean, when meat juices are dripping everywhere. Even after using a a big wad of paper towels (which I realize is not exactly environmentally hip, but neither is eating meat...), I finally had to clean the juice from mine up using PhotoShop.
The photo, I thought, looks really inviting. The reception on this dish was OK, but not half of what my lobster dish saw. When I made the Asian marinated flank steak, it was a winner, but looked like something out of a litter pan. I chose not to even photograph it. So my awesome looking dish was so-so, but my awe-SOME one looked aw-FUL.
In the real world, looks matter. It’s the sad truth. Celebrities get noticed, whether they just had a little work done, or whether they were a plastic surgery disaster. The prettier girl with the worse singing voice always stays longer on American Idol, and there’s something to that old quote from “Back to the Future” when Doc Brown says, “Of course your president’s an actor, he has to look good on television!”
What is it that makes food look appetizing? Is it color? Is it arrangement? Is it garnish? Because the greater lesson I learned over the past couple of days is that presentation is important, but not everything. You can have the most beautiful dish in the world but if it tastes really gross, it’s a failure.
I have a new appreciation for chefs like Carla Hall, Spike Mendelsohn and (the King of the Kitchen) Kevin Gillespie who have to balance taste with appearance. And I will now have to be more mindful of that balance. I never thought about garnishes at all until I started Top Chef University, but when I remember how delighted my daughter was with that simple little toastie I put on the edge of the chicken noodle soup, I can’t imagine ever making that dish again without it!
Right now, it’s been 34 days and I’ve been through 35 lessons in Top Chef University. The only reason I didn’t do the last Sauce lesson yet, which is a Mole sauce, is because I have finally reached a point where I have to be a bit of a detective in order to secure some more exotic ingredients that my local store doesn’t carry.
In Pittsburgh, we have a place called The Strip District, where you can find literally any ingredient you’d ever want to buy. I figured at some point during this journey I would visit the Strip District, but didn’t think it would be this soon. No matter! Next, I will visit the Strip District to find different types of hot peppers, and Mexican chocolate…see you then!
Hungrily yours,
Heidi in Pittsburgh
ps. A few people have asked me what the original photo of the meat dish looked like, before I cleaned up all the meat juice from the photo, using PhotoShop....here you go...
