If you think you have the cooking chops to make the cut, here’s your chance to audition for season five of Bravo TV’s popular, “Top Chef” show.
An open call will be held in the Bay Area, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. April 21, at Postrio restaurant, 545 Post St. in San Francisco. Both self-taught and professionally trained cooks are eligible. Just download an application here.
Hope to see you in the next ”Quick Fire” challenge.
A disciple of molecular gastronomy pioneer Ferran Adria, Jose Andres is a culinary innovator with loads of charm and a bigger-than-life personality. And he uses those skills to great effect in his new public television show, “Made In Spain.”
On each episode, the Spanish chef, who owns four restaurants in the Washington, DC area, takes you on a tour of a different region of Spain, highlighting specific wines, cheeses, produce or other integral ingredients. Then in his own U.S. kitchen, he shows how to make simple dishes using those products to bring a taste of Spain into your own home. It can be as straightforward as taking jarred piquillo peppers, stuffing them with triangles of Spanish cheese, sauteeing them until just browned, then drizzling on a sherry vinegar-olive oil-shallot dressing.
It’ll leave you hungry for the food and for visiting Spain.
Tune in next at 2 p.m. April 5 on KQED-TV, when Andres explores the wonders of hard cider, hearty bean stew with sausages, and his mother’s favorite blue cheese known as Cabrales.
There are top toques, and there are “Top Chefs.”
And all of them, and just about everyone else in-between, were at this past weekend’s first annual Pebble Beach Food & Wine spectacle, where foodies and vino lovers forked over hundreds to thousands of dollars to sip rare wines and to mingle with today’s hottest celebrities: chefs, of course.
Thomas Keller of the French Laundry in Yountville? Check. David Kinch of Manresa in Los Gatos? Check. Ming Tsai of Blue Ginger in Wellesley, Mass.? Check. The legendary Jacques Pepin? Bien sur.
Masaharu Morimoto (below) of “Iron Chef America” fame delighted a lunch crowd with his sophisticated rendition of a classic Asian comfort dish: grilled Kobe beef atop congee. He was so pleased with the results, he couldn’t resist scarfing down a bowl of it, himself.
If at times it seemed like a reunion of Bravo TV’s popular “Top Chef” program, that was only natural since American Express Publishing, which oversees Food & Wine magazine (a sponsor of the TV show), was also one of the biggest sponsors of the Pebble Beach event.
“Top Chef” judge Gail Simmons, who is also in charge of special projects for Food & Wine magazine, was there to moderate a couple cooking demos. She is much prettier in person, by the way.
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Lead judge Tom Colicchio (left) sliced slivers of hamachi crudo as he chatted up Joey Altman (right), host of KRON’s “Bay Cafe.” Colicchio, more standoffish in person, said he never expected the show to take off the way it has. With filming for the show taking only one month a year, Colicchio says it hasn’t changed his life much, except that he’s now more recognizable.
Altman was excited that his new cookbook, “Without Reservations: How to Make Bold, Creative, Flavorful Food At Home” (Wiley, $35) will be coming out April 21.
Tre Wilcox (below), a crowd favorite from “Top Chef” Season 3, cooked seared diver scallops with black truffle potato sauce, gold chanterelles, and spinach, before walking over to help Morimoto plate his dishes. Shy and soft-spoken but with the buffest biceps around, Wilcox left Abacus restaurant in Dallas. He now teaches cooking classes, and hopes to open his own restaurant in the near future.
One of this season’s “Top Chef” contestants, Ryan Scott, formerly of Myth Cafe in San Francisco, also made the rounds. Tall and charming as can be (yes, ladies, he’s over 6-feet, and quite dishy), Scott was mum on how well he did in the competition. He’s now scouting Bay Area locations for his own restaurant. And joked that he’d put chicken piccata on the menu as a first course. Fans of the show will remember that dish was nearly his downfall, and almost sent him packing his knives in the very first episode.