On last night's Top Chef, each chef was tasked with creating a dish inspired by a particular casino. Early favorite, Jen C., drew Excalibur. After watching some sort of Medeival Times-type performance, she was still stuck for inspiration, so she ended up serving a "stone"-like hunk of meat topped with red wine sauce. Kind of boring.
In his Bravo blog, Tom Colicchio talks a little about her dish and what she could've done to make it more medieval-y. Namely, add spices, which would've covered the flavor of decaying meat. Interestingly, even though comments on TV blogs are usually semi-illiterate, the comments on this one are kind of amazing.
Several food historians and medieval experts stop by to slap Colicchio down, explaining that a) there was plenty of non-rancid meat available to the nobility during medieval times and b) spices, back then, were damn expensive. A few commenters offer counter suggestions and they're really pretty good. Rarely do you find so much actual information in a comments section. And on food history of all things!
[As a side note, for Cooper's 29th birthday and Discovery Doug's 50th or something like that, we went to Medieval Times with a bunch of people. It was fun, but what a mess. Bill had to head to the lobby, after discovering that he is completely allergic to horses. Every single thing we did cost a million dollars. And everybody else celebrating a birthday was under ten. Plus, I don't like eating with my hands. But we do have about 15 plastic Medieval Times mugs now. And a commemorative keychain. So worth it, I guess.]
1 comment:
Collichio's spice comment was false and stupid and he delivered it in a condescending pretentious manner.
Glad to hear food historians are slapping him.
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