Next Iron Chef: My Money Was On the Wrong Guy

So, my wife and son have been visiting family in Miami. Other guys may do other things when their family is out of town, but I see it as opportunity to watch a lot of football and braise a lot of meat. It also means I had to come to terms with the Next Iron Chef verdict in monk-like solitude. Congratulations are in order. I'll even withhold the lengthy judgement I nearly published a few minutes ago. Still, it does feel like the big game reserve of the Food Network, where they kept a certain old toothless lion, is now also home to something more domesticated. I quote:

"A dream," says Alex Trebek to the doctor with circumflex brows. "I have this dream where I'm standing smiling over a lectern on a little hill in the middle of a field. The field, which is verdant and clovered, is covered with rabbits. They sit and look at me. There must be several million rabbits in that field. They all sit and look at me. Some of them lower their little heads to eat clove. But their eyes never leave me. They sit there and look at me, a million bunny rabbits, and I look back."

Buffalo osso bucco with butternut squash hash and beet greens.

I'm gonna take a sip of a certain hard to come by zinfandel from dry creek valley, and assure my friends and loved ones that I'm keeping it all in perspective. We're talking about a Food Network show which featured a bunch of successful chefs, one of whom has over 300 people working for him, in a made-for-TV contest to see who will get the full weight of the Food Network's marketing machine pushing their culinary point of view on a willing consumer public.

Next Iron Chef: My Money's On Besh

I'll probably update this after I see the episode, but here goes...

Some of you know that I'm a big fan of Iron Chef America, Top Chef, and (to a lesser extent) Next Food Network Star. I've enjoyed moments of Next Iron Chef, which is drawing to a close tonight. Apparently some wiki has already spoiled the conclusion, but I haven't looked. Honest. And my money is on John Besh. This is an optimistic bet, based on the fact that I think he's cooking on a very different level from other show participants. This is not a bet based on who I think Food Network will want us to see and see again.

Each episode of Top Chef is supported by blogs from the judges, hosts, and food world notables. Next Iron Chef doesn't host blogs for the participants, and I've only enjoyed the entries from Michael Ruhlman.

I posted my take on the Next Iron Chef match-up in the comments of Ruhlman's blog, I'll quote myself here:

Coming to this conversation late, but I can't be the only one that thought the very likable Symon got his backside handed to him by Morimoto. Morimoto hamming it up and laughing that Symon didn't deserve to make sushi rice in a kitchen with him was it? Besh and Batali seemed close, even though the ingredient was right in Besh's wheel house.

Symon's mutant ability --everyone has one after all-- seems to be making good reads on situations. Cooking rather than warming his salmon with airplane oven, serving a drink with his plate of grilled birds. That knack will serve him less well in a show where the format doesn't change.

Based on the recent coverage, I'd say Besh's mutant ability is entrepreneurial. That's not necessarily a bad thing. It's certainly something he has in common with Bobby Flay and Mario Batali.

An Apple You Can't Get Anywhere Else

Just days after our last haul from Hillview Farms, Amy came home with a bag full of apples from our friend Penny's tree. I'd had one of her apples before and remembered it being very good, but didn't recall what variety they were. Under normal circumstances I'd have been worried about us getting through all of them, but we've been eating 5 to 7 apples a day ever since.


Under normal circumstances I would also tell you what type of apples these are, but I can't. Penny did ask a bona fide Chez Panisse forager, but he wasn't sure. I'm guessing something in the Arkansas Black family.

Looking for Apples In the East Bay?

If apples are your thing, head to the Jack London Square Farmers' Market and find Joe Stabile's Hillview Farms stand. Tell them whether you're looking for a tart or sweet apple, a cooking apple or out of hand apple, and then take their advice. They grow 200 varieties, many of the heirloom or antique, and I've been blown away by the 6 I've tried. I say this as a life-long citrus fan.

As a child, my lunchtime fruit was almost always some type of orange. Oranges were not necessarily a choice, I went shopping with my mother infrequently once school started. But, I had a preference for them over apples - the other school yard fruit option. It's worth pointing out that we're talking about conventional, grocery store fruit here. Purchased at the nearest Ralph's, available year round and with very little positive variation in taste.

During college I began to like Fuji Apples. They were the first apple I encountered that was not a red delicious, yellow delicious, granny smith, or pippin. Over the last couple of years, I've been exposed to a lot more apple varieties. I picked up my first Arkansas Black at Berkeley Bowl, Sun Downer and Pink Lady too. I'm always happy to see Crimson Gold when they start showing up, but I have not looked forward to them.

Last month we wound up at the Jack London Square market by accident. There were a lot of prepared food stands, some farmers that we shopped from at the Grand Lake market, and then there was the Hill View farms apple stand.

These apples were immediately recognizable as things that grew in a real place with weather, and most of them had names I'd never seen before. He had Thomas Jefferson's apple of choice the Esopus Spitenzberg, red-fleshed apples like the Hidden Rose and Pink Pearl. Last week I grabbed some Jonathans and Winesaps. Less exotic than the red-fleshed Hidden Rose, but more complex and delicious than any apple I'd ever eaten.

So, all things being equal, given the choice between an apple and an orange - I'll go with the orange. But my conversion to a seasonal produce shopper means there are at least two months where that's a choice I don't have to make.

Photo credit: Len Vaughn-Lahman / Mercury News