Top Chef Blues

One of the joys of getting back to Mama's house is watching cable tv. I've learned that even with so many channels, there often isn't really that much on, so My Prince and I are not missing too terribly much by not subscribing to cable. There are, however, a few bright spots, and Top Chef is one of them.

I've enjoyed watching this season's Top Chef New York, and hate to miss any episodes. Happily, Bravo seems to re-run the whole season up to the current episode just before a new episode is due out, so it has been easy to catch up. I watched several episodes last week, waiting for the newest one, and enjoyed every repeated minute.

I was, however, much taken aback when I saw Episode 8's quick fire challenge. I recognize that the challenge was intended to show the intense contrast between what most of us have to work with in our kitchens (canned goods) and the elimination challenge's trip to a farm/restaurant where everything is so fresh it's still in the ground or on the hoof. There was a lot of "we want to cook with the freshest ingredients" yadda yadda, but what really startled me was the contestants' agony with the quick fire: they were simply appalled with having to work with canned goods.

Like they were too good for canned food. Like they never opened a can of beans at home. Like they would rather die than suffer the taste. Like it was okay for a mere housewife to use this stuff, but not they.

Hmmm.

Well, yes, I like cooking fresh vegetables. Now that I've started making Mystery Stir Fry, I use a lot more fresh vegetables than I ever have before. The vegetable crisper is no longer the place where good food goes to die at my home. I like to fill it up with good things and nosh on raw veggies at every available opportunity. (Like now. Yummy carrots.) The taste, the fiber, the vitamins--it's all so much better when we are using fresh.

The contestants only had 15 minutes to come up with something to impress their judges. Some of them seemed to flounder badly, and their dishes seemed as uninspired as their groaning and moaning suggested that they would be. And then young Jeff comes up with conch fritters. And the Stefan (nasty man!) won with bean and spam soup with grilled cheese. And Fabio came up with mac and cheese with artichoke (which I fully intend to try out on My Prince).

While I'm no fan of spam (or Stefan), there were some creative dishes produced for the quick fire. I'm more concerned that the potential of these commercially produced/processed ingredients was presented as something unappealing, to be disdained, not worthy of a chef's attention. I wonder if that also applies to the people who use canned goods on a daily basis.