Competition

Last night, I made some rice pudding, mostly to use up the milk I bought a few weeks ago (one of the advantages of the ultrapasturized stuff is that it lasts forfuckingever). I used brown rice instead of white, and I sliced some fresh ginger in it while it cooked. I increased the amount of rice, to make it have more texture and chewiness. I used honey instead of sugar (you saw that coming, I'm sure), and, if I'd have any, I would have thrown in some orange rind. If I take it to work as a breakfast item, I'll throw in some dried fruit; if I were making it as a dessert, I might make a quick peach compote (or how about figs?) and swirl that in. In any case, it came out really well; next time I'll reduce the amount of honey a bit and possibly increase the rice even more. Maple syrup instead of honey would be an option as well. It's quite tasty. It would not win a competition, but it wouldn't end up at the bottom, either.

And speaking of vegetable-based cuisine, a couple of weeks ago I stopped at a local bakery that specializes in organic stuff, and includes vegan offerings as well. The cakes and cupcakes I've had were pretty good; the laminated doughs don't look like much. So I order a cupcake, and take a taste of this sample square sitting there. I asked the counter person what it is, and he says it's "vegan cheesecake." I point out that if it's actually vegan, then, no, it is NOT cheesecake. Oh, yes, he enthuses, it's made with silken tofu! (Which would explain why it tasted like ass, perhaps.) Look, people: if you want to be vegan, go ahead. But you can't call it "cheese" cake. Go ahead and call it tofu-cake, or even silken-tofu cake, but you can only call it cheesecake if there is yummy delicious cheese in it. (Similarly, you shouldn't call Pringles "potato chips." Go ahead and call them dried-potato-with-wheat-starch-and-maltodextrin wafers, or something like that, but they aren't potato chips in any real sense.)

An additional disadvantage I'd have on one of the competition shows is what happens when they put an unusual ingredient in front of me: snails, frogs' legs, cactus, a pork belly. Those are not, in general, the type of ingredient that shows up in your grocery store (cactus does, if you're in a hispanic neighborhood), and I am not sufficiently interested in learning how to cook them that I'd try to hunt them down. I don't know how to butcher anything, and, while I like the concept of using the whole animal, and am even willing to eat a lot of a given animal, if you put a beef tongue in front of me, I'd have no fucking clue what to do with it. I'd probably try to slow cook it in some way, because I can't imagine it's as tender as, say a tenderloin, but I am not going to be able to do anything creative or interesting with it, and there's a good chance I'd completely fuck it up.

One of the more interesting comments, from a couple of weeks ago, was Laurine's comment, on getting sent home, that she'd realized something about herself, i.e., that she really doesn't want to compete with people. I actually rather admired her for that; it's an important realization. I also suspect that she realized that, while she may be quite good at what she does, she doesn't have the skills that the Volts, Jen, or Kevin have. (I think the rest of them, even if they're still in the mix, don't have that skill set, either. Eli occasionally shows flashes, but he's not there, and his ego may prevent him from ever getting there.) Sometimes that can be very freeing, and really enable you to learn: when i was in pastry school, for example, it was clear pretty quickly that I simply did not have the skills or experience of several other people in the class (the Brazen Tart, for one, and her first partner, for another, immediately come to mind). But that didn't matter to me: I was there to learn, and it wasn't a competition. It was an opportunity to learn a whole lot of stuff that, had i actually been able to open a bakery, would have been necessary, and that even stood me in good stead in the job I got. I didn't care that others were a lot better than I was, and I rather liked the opportunity to fuck up, because I learned a great deal from that, without the danger of losing a competition, or failing out, or even screwing up something for my boss.

I've done a lot of stuff in my life, and it's one of the few times I've been able to engage in that kind of risk-free learning. Right now, for example, I'm basically managing all of the budgets for my organization, with no help, and it's making me very nervous. I talk things through with my boss, and he is really getting up to speed in the overall bits, but what I really need is someone with an accounting eye AND a program-oriented eye to review the whole thing and see what I'm missing. Instead, I have to deal with a controller who doesn't provide any assistance at all--who gets in the way, actually, and seems completely disinclined to learn about the program side of it. (And who is also acting like a complete tool, but that's another story.) There have been several occasions where I realized--rather late in the game--that I missed a big expenditure, or didn't take something into account when I was calculating productivity and revenue. This makes me very, very nervous, especially because the pressures put on me from above (including above my boss) simply are not concerned with messy, complex details. Some things cannot be made simple, and no amount of insisting otherwise is going to change that, but some people are completely impervious to that. Which just adds to the pressure.

Which--in my mind, anyway--leads to one of my biggest beefs with Top Chef: I really, really, really hate that they use up precious time with dramatic music and swirly camera shots before someone gets sent packing. I don't mind some of the outside-the-kitchen drama, because it helps illustrate people's personalities (up to a point, anyway), but we KNOW someone is getting sent home; just do it, already. I also don't like about half of the interviews--yes, we know, you're Still In It! And you Know a Few Things! And you're Here To Win! (Quick; someone come up with a Top Chef bingo card . . .) Sometimes it's useful--like showing Mike I. talking about how his mom was vegan and so he knows all about cooking vegetarian, and then he serves up that slop. Dude, you may be able to run a restaurant, but I could come up with a better vegetarian meal using what's in my kitchen right now (as opposed to the kitchens at Craftsteak, where they all were), than that mess.

Point being, the complexity of the show comes not from the attempts to add drama, but from what the chefs actually produce and how they do it (or how they fail). But the editors want to show the simple story lines--Robin is a pain; Mike I. is an asshole; the Brothers V. are competitive and tense, as well as talented; Jen is falling apart (which I wish she would stop; she's so talented, and she's just tying herself in knots; relax, dude!). Yes, fine, those are useful things to know, but give us more of the food, more of the cooking, more of how they think about and produce the food they produce. I don't want to see how Mike I. produces an undercooked leek that's supposed to mimic a scallop (thereby forgetting Fabio's Dictum: it's Top Chef, not Top Scallop), except in passing, I want to see more of the dishes that worked.

Anyway.

Let's see if I can manage to do anything today other than work out and take a shower (which I haven't done yet, so that's not a done deal, either).