Battle of the Brands

Would you make this for your family?

Would you serve this to a guest to your home?

If you've been stuck in a media blackout bunker, trying to hide from the insanity that is the Republican primaries then you might have missed the ongoing bloody Battle of the Culinary Brands.

This current battle really started last August when Tony Bourdain gave an interview to TV Guide. In that interview he slammed Food Network's shiniest stars, Rachel Ray, Sandra Lee, Guy Fieri and Paula Deen. Of Deen he said "the worst, most dangerous person in America … plus, her food sucks”. This is nothing new for Father Tony, he's been bitch slapping Food Network stars for years now but Paula decided to answer back with the tired, old, I'm one with the real people trope. "You know, not everybody can afford to pay $58 for prime rib or $650 for a bottle of wine,” she said. “My friends and I cook for regular families who worry about feeding their kids and paying the bills.” (...and yet I don't see Tony pimping a 3 piece furniture set for $3,600 or a cheapest single ticket to her seven day cruise for $1,500). Frank Bruni, the food critic for the NY Times shoved his way into the conversation, siding with Deen and calling Bourdain elitist which is pretty freaking funny considering the paper he works for and the town he works in. Things settled down for a bit until....

Flash forward to January 17th and Paula Deen is confirming on NBC's Today show that, yes, she has Type 2 Diabetes, yes, she's now the spokesperson for Novo Nordisk and their injectable diabetes drug, Victoza and yes, she's known and has been treating her diabetes for three years. Victoza, which costs something like $500 a month, is not exactly cheap for the common folk Ms. Deen so loudly claims to champion. Mr. Bourdain, looking a bit like a modern day prophet, lobbed this Twitter pie directly at Team Deen's face, "Thinking of getting into the leg-breaking business, so I can profitably sell crutches later." Bruni, suddenly smelling which way the butter burns, also checked in with NY's opinion on this national story, saying "She had waited three long, greasy years since her diagnosis to come out. During that period, she promoted the deep-fried life without acknowledging her firsthand experience of how a person can be burned by it". Thanks Frank.

Since then it's been a constant tsunami of quotes and public relations web spinning. Paula's longtime publicist left Paula in December over the current direction of Team Deen, thinking she still had a job with her sons. She was quickly released from their employment. Food Network, also sensing bad juju, released their statement that they had no idea whatsoever that Ms. Deen had diabetes. Paula weakly defended herself, blathering something about not being educated enough to reveal her condition. Apparently she also felt a bit hurt that none of her brother and sister celebrity chefs are running to her defense but can you blame them? Actually I'm guessing that the only person happier about this Deen/Diabetes brouhaha is Ina Garten who can now officially come off the Internet Outrage pedestal after having refused a child's Make a Wish request and had her brand ripped up one side and down another.

The most amusing aspect of this whole charade is that those who strongly support Paula Deen's culinary empire (Smithfield Ham, Philadelphia Cream Cheese/Kraft Food, Nebraska Furniture Mart, magazines, restaurant, cookbooks, dvds, cookware and television shows) now claim that her food, her culinary output is only meant to entertain the masses. That she's always preached moderation. That's she's not responsible for what food you choose to put in your mouth. To this we must call Shenanigans! If Paula Deen is only on TV for entertainment purposes I'm guessing companies like Smithfield and Kraft are going to want their advertising and sponsorship dollars back. They are certainly not advertising on her show or on the Food Network as some sort of charitable donation. Hell no, they want Paula's viewers and fans to buy and keep buying their many processed food products. They don't care if Americans get diabetes, they have product to push and now with Victoza, you can keep eating their products and her food and all will be well.

The one thing I agree with out of all this is that no one forces you to eat or cook like a tv chef, food blogger, or newspaper critic. You have to be responsible for your own health and decisions. But there's a reason why the tv show Jackass has huge blazing warnings not to try their stunts on your own....because idiots do. There are thousands and thousands of Paula Deen fans that cook and eat her food with regularity. They find justification in the buzz words used to describe her food: comfort, rib sticking, southern, traditional, country and uncomplicated. Pointing out the unhealthy aspects of her dishes is translated into attacking the emotional resonance that food represents to her devoted fans. C'mon y'all, you'll feel better if you make yourself a big ole pile of my Mac and Cheese and some wonderful fried chicken, just like grandma used to make. That's a pretty powerful pitch. Let's all just remember that above everything thing else it is a pitch. Paula's not your girlfriend and she's not going to invite you into her house to cook you food, Tony's not your buddy, Frank Bruni doesn't really care about your opinions. They all represent Brands that must be fed and cared for. They all have an agenda to push and empires to maintain and salaries to pay. The team you should be most concerned with is YOU and your family. Use the common sense that the good lord gave you and use fresh food in dishes you make yourself, recipes full of vegetables, fruit and whole grains. You can only help yourself build a strong foundation to a healthy lifestyle and in the process make your own wonderful food memories.

Fry Baby Fry

I was dreading this episode. The Paula Deen episode. They had been teasing her appearance since the beginning of the season. She seems to inspire either total devotion or absolute avoidance. You can put me in the avoidance camp. One reason was on total display during this episode. Equating traditional Southern cooking with frying everything. Paula didn't exactly help the cause by admitting that she deep fat fries everything she can get her hands on. Mac and cheese, lasagna and butter were her shining examples of her repertoire. Just because you can totally immerse a thing in hot liquid lard does not mean you should.

At some point I would imagine Paula put out good traditional food at her restaurants. However her installation at the Food Network has somehow morphed her into a cartoon character of her former self. Would you really want to trust your stomach to someone who came up with this recipe gem, Cheesy Ham and Banana Casserole? Go ahead, click the link, if you dare. Cheese, ham, banana, bacon and.....wait for it....potato chips? (Thanks to Jillian Madison of Food Network Humor) People that's just wrong in so many ways. So, for whatever reasons the producers had in their skulls, Paula was invited to judge this episode. Let's all be thankful she wasn't asked to cook.

Which brings us to the Quickfire. Create a deep fried dish. That's all. However it's only a thirty minute challenge so there's not going to be any deep fried dishes that takes hours to make, it's quick, down and dirty. Now you would think the chefs with Southern backgrounds would have a leg up for this challenge. However Carla is sinking like a rock food-wise and Tiffany is a mystery at to why she's still here, and Blaise really isn't into Southern food. That leaves Dale, Antonia and Mike. Now, for reasons unknown, chefs lose their minds for the first half of the episode.

Exhibit A:

Here is Blaise back at the penthouse, explaining an original dish he thought up, called Chicken Oyster on a Halfshell, to Mike. Mike, despite everything else he is not, is a quick study. Seeing that Blaise is not making this recipe for this particular challenge, decides that it would be a perfect dish for Mike to make. Guess the Professor shouldn't have been so free with his lessons. This development cracks me up to no end. Mike's depth of douchiness is revealed to endless, Blaise gets bitten by his own ego by forgetting that this still isn't the coronation procession of Top Chef Richard Blaise. Why Blaise didn't make that recipe to begin with is baffling but he seems to be skipping down the path Marcel blazed with his unending foams. A liquid nitrogen frozen ball of coffee, lime flavored mayo deep fried does nothing for me. Can the dude cook without the tank? Not that any of that mattered because both boys got smoked by Antonia. Too bad Antonia got smoked by Antonia.

Exhibit B:

Here's the winning dish. Notice I said dish, singular. Apparently the rules we the viewers never hear about unless there's a major violation say that the chefs should make two servings of their dish. Antonia, having reached thus far in the competition, somehow forgot this. This truly sucks for her because it was Paula's favorite dish.

Doesn't matter because Antonia can't be considered for the win on that technicality. She loses the challenge and five thousand dollars. Even worse? The winner....

...Chef Law violator, Mike McDouche.

All I can say is watch your back Mike, still a lot of sharp knives left in the competition and Karma's known to have the sharpest knife of them all.

The Mahogany Experiment: When in doubt, add butter.

Who can resist chocolate cake? Not many folks that I know, and that's why I chose the Mahogany Cake recipe from my antique shop find as my first "Lost Recipe Box" cooking challenge. I was also keeping in mind that even food made from a not so great recipe will usually disappear as long as it is presented in dessert form...

Before starting, I did a little research on the recipe. Searching "Mahogany" yielded some interesting results. There was a recipe similar to the one on the card in the NY Times Heritage Cookbook that claims to have originated in 1870, but I found the exact recipe from the card at YumYum, so if you want to see the recipe without having to decipher the spidery handwriting, click away.As you can see above, the first run of this recipe was not awe inspiring. The flavor wasn't exactly overflowing with the chocolate goodness we crave. The "Mahogany Icing" was your basic grainy cocoa and powdered sugar icing. Flat, unappetizing and definitely not attractive. The cake, while somewhat moist, was still very crumbly, falling apart when I tried to slice it. And the raisins and nuts added absolutely nothing to the complexity of flavor (or the ease of slicing!). It needed some serious help, so I called in my culinary muse, the Java Junkie, for a consult. "It needs a major overhaul, and it looks like, well...a giant hockey puck!" I said. "How do we fix it?" She reviewed the original recipe, analyzed the problems, and came up with a few suggestions to improve both the texture and the taste."First we need to change up some of the ingredients. Add a fourth egg, use superfine sugar, substitute half a cup of tapioca starch for half a cup of the cake flour, and eliminate the nuts and raisins." she suggested. "Next, let's address the way the ingredients are combined...let's change the way the ingredients are incorporated thusly - whip the egg yolks and sugar until they double in volume and you can make "ribbons" with the mixture, then add the softened butter (use butter, not margarine), then the dry ingredients, then the milk/cocoa mixture. Fold the egg whites in by hand, being very gentle - the ribbonning is what makes the cake moist, but the way the egg whites are incorporated is what will make it light, like a genoise". "And no tapping the damned pans on the counter to even the batter!"

Having taken care of the cake part, I addressed the other problem..."We have another issue - that icing has got to go" I said, "what's your go to chocolate icing recipe?" "I've got just the thing!" she exclaimed. "Ina Garten's Chocolate Buttercream Frosting. It's divine."
I incorporated all the changes she suggested and as you can see it's much more appealing visually. The texture also improved; moist, with a nice tight crumb. The icing? Well let's just say Paula Deen's got nothing on the Contessa when it comes to butter! That icing is off the charts. The key (besides the pound and a half of butter) is the addition of espresso, and using the best chocolate you can. I used Callebaut but you could try Valrhona or Scharfenberger. It's worth the extra money.

I think that, after the adjustments, the Mahogany Cake is now a real winner. (Smile office-mates, more cake for you!)