Analyze This Bee-havior

August 06, 2007

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In true Whitesnake fashion “Here I go again on my own, going down the only road I’ve ever known, like a drifter I was born to walk alone!” The new theme song for Chef Hung -- that’s it. Period. We’ll revisit this later but let’s move onto the business at hand -- the Quickfire Challenge -- a culinary bee. Oooh … bzzz*

The first thing I will say is what the hell, Joey? You’re my boy, and you know I love you, but talk about a brain fart! I’ll leave it at that. Secondly, bow tie pasta? C’mon! Of course, you can figure out what it is Casey, and I will give you credit for the fish paste, mmm, delicious … NOT! Ok, so this is one of those fun challenges where the academic chefs seemed excited to participate but the faces on our lovely “practical” cheftestants told a different story. As Chefs we know how important it is to constantly seek information, to search near and far for fabulous new ingredients but more importantly educate ourselves on everything culinary. This was that challenge. Some did better than others, some got nervous at the hand of Rocco’s sultry stare and some, well … some just. So Casey congrats, I suppose. I wish the bee had been a little more challenging but there’s always next season ;)

Did everyone listen when Rocco explained the 8.6 billion dollar frozen food business? I hope so because 8.6 billion dollars is a lot of money! Don’t get me wrong I’m not really a frozen food kind of girl BUUUUUT I do have a small frozen pizza roll weakness, along with tater tots, and I’m a sucker for green tea mochi ball ice cream. In my professional kitchen though, it is sometimes useful to use frozen products such as the pastry shells that made their appearance in a previous episode. Fries, for instance, have made many scientific advances including flavor, texture and appearance and some chefs will use freezing as a technique to execute many culinary presentations. Honestly, these days any chef can confidently look to use frozen products to assist them in consistency and quality control measures. In a recent article, even Chef Thomas Keller “fesses up to using frozen fries” from Sysco. So you be the judge. The next time you're dining out, try to determine what is frozen and what is not.

Watching this episode I could not stop thinking about how much I miss Miami! Unfortunately, behind the nostalgia loomed the adolescent behavior that gets exposed around this time every season thus far. I guess the honeymoon is over! NO surprise -- 2 tickets to Italy for grabs, an elimination on the horizon and well, quite frankly, it’s a damn competition and these chefs are here to win, not make friends! That was apparent with Howie and Sara M. and I have to say both had valid arguments in regards to each other. I mean, I agree with Howie when it comes to teamwork -- looking at your partner and saying “let’s go win these tickets to Italy” means you have to let certain feelings go and allow the professional to show up.

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