Top Chef Just Desserts, 8/31/11

Quickfire
Cakemeister extraordinaire Margaret Braun is the guest judge. Gail informs the contestants they have 45 minutes to turn lemons “into an amazing lemon dessert.” GO!!!
-- Melissa: lemon beignet
-- Vanarin: lemon curd semifreddo
-- Craig: lemon sour cream pound cake. Um, if that’s “an amazing lemon dessert,” then my name is Yellow Fruit.
-- Rebecca: lemon meringue pie. Also boring, but hey, she has a sprained wrist, so I’ll forgive her.
Bottom
-- Orlando: lemon three ways — lemon fritters, lemon cake, lemon cream sauce, with chocolate. Margaret said personally, she doesn’t feel that lemon and chocolate go together, so she didn’t like it. He childishly interviews that when judging, you ought to “leave your personal shit at the door.”
-- Amanda: caramel cremeux with lemon segments. Margaret didn’t like the contrast between caramel and lemon.
-- Sexy Nelson: lemon pavlova with mango coulis. He didn’t finish; his lemon cream and lemon candies didn’t make it onto the plate; plus, Margaret felt that lemon and mango are too similar to be paired.
Top
-- Katzie: lemon “spaghetti” — sliced lemon crepe ribbons. Now THAT’S “an amazing lemon dessert.”
-- Carlos: citrus soup with honey and thyme. He went all mad scientist on our asses and broke out the liquid nitrogen to make it.
-- Hot Matthew: lemon vanilla crème with mint puree and crumbled hazelnut sable. It makes me want to lick my computer screen. He wins! He has immunity and can’t be eliminated. Women everywhere breathe a sigh of relief.

Elimination Challenge
Create a multi-tiered cake. Orlando: “Craig’s the nitwit of the team.” Carlos explains stuff poorly. Melissa is making a cardamom cake, a spice which worries Chris. Sexy Nelson’s family “all freak out” when he left college to be a pastry chef. Judge Johnny comes in and — duh — right off the bat sees a problem with Sally and Rebecca both doing a devil’s food tier. Rebecca: “She’s buttermilk and oil; I’m milk and oil.” Johnny: “Right. Because that’s so different.” LOL. Next, Johnny is confused by Craig’s “pow pow.” So am I. But then I like Craig better cuz we find out he’s a former fat ass. So am I.


The Red Team’s cake has a few imperfections but gets plenty of compliments. And each tier, Hot Matthew’s lemon pound cake, Megan’s yellow butter cake, Chris’s chocolate hazelnut, and Melissa’s cardamom sponge, is well received. The Blue Team’s symphony-inspired cake is overdecorated. Vanarin’s caramel cake is flavorless and “a bit dry.” Johnny says Katzie’s buttermilk cake is “mushy.” Amanda’s devil’s food cake is a hit. Margaret says the Black Team’s cake’s tiers are very different. Boy, ARE they. Orlando’s bottom tier is a triangle; Sexy Nelson’s middle is a square building with windows; Craig’s top is a drum. Mismatch much? Also, it has started to fall apart in the heat. Gail thinks Orlando’s fondant is too sweet but likes the texture of his vanilla sponge cake. Johnny likes Sexy Nelson’s vanilla and lemon zest cake. Craig’s pow pow chocolate cake is too sweet but otherwise good. The Green Team’s cake impresses the judges. Johnny says Carlos’s vanilla sponge cake is very dense, but Gail likes the vanilla flavor. Sally’s use of fresh raspberries with her devil’s food cake is praised; Rebecca’s devil’s food cake’s hard layers are criticized.


Judging
Red and Green made the fave cakes. It’s Christmas!

Rebecca immediately starts crying because her wrist was hurting her so much in the Quickfire that she didn’t think she was going to make it. Sounds like somebody didn’t get very effective pain pills. Margaret said Green’s cake was very cohesive; Gail thought the flavors of all the tiers worked well together. Johnny said Red’s cake was complicated yet simple; Hubert and his ponytail said that the cake was structured well. Red is proclaimed the winner.

Black and Blue made the worst cakes. It’s bruises!

Sexy Nelson explained that Black’s tiers looked so dissimilar because each was representing a different person. Margaret says she liked his tier. Johnny says the cake had a visual disconnect and sloppy detailing. Orlando said that his cake was dense because it was the base. Johnny points out that dowels were supporting the cake, so that excuse is crap. Orlando, no doubt, is mentally telling Johnny to leave personal shit at the door. Hubert and his ponytail said that Sexy Nelson had the best cake; Johnny asks Sexy Nelson to name the weakest component of his team’s cake. Too nice to come right out and say Orlando’s tier sucked, Sexy Nelson says, “I would not remove [Craig’s] drum.” We hear you loud and clear, lol. Blue again gets knocked cuz their cake had too much going on and “looked amateur.” Johnny says Katzie’s buttermilk cake was “chewy.” Hubert and ponytail said Amanda’s cake was his fave; all judges agree that Vanarin’s cake wasn’t wow enough.


Debate: ugly cake or bad cake? I respectfully disagree with Gail’s “What’s the point of cake if it’s ugly?” Personally (shut up, Orlando), I’d be only a little mad if there was, say, a crack in some fondant or something, but I’d be flat-out furious if the cake tasted god-awful. That would ruin the event! “All in all, if the cake itself doesn’t taste good, it’s a failure.” Thank you, Johnny.

And … Vanarin, who made a bad AND an ugly cake, goes home.

Hell's Kitchen, 8/29/11

Timed Challenge
-- Jennifer’s vs Tommy’s: they both tasted great, but since Jennifer thought she’d cooked hers improperly and Tommy wowed Gordon with the duck egg, I thought Tommy should have won that one.
-- Paul’s vs Elizabeth’s: That seemed a draw. So of course Gordon gave it to the blue team, so we’d need tiebreaker.
-- Will’s vs Bitchy Elise’s: her undercooked calamari dish loses for the red team. And she starts weeping like a fricking baby. “Stop crying,” Gordon moaned, his voice dripping with irritation. Thanks for saying that, Gordon. On behalf of PLANET EARTH.


Dinner Service
This is not going to be a good night. Elizabeth is, like, not there from the beginning. Tommy ruins the salads. Bitchy Elise makes good risotto, but then she and Elizabeth accidentally ruin Jennifer’s course with bad plating. (“He’s making me nervous!” Bitchy Elise bleats as an excuse. *eye roll*) Elizabeth’s chicken is ready entirely too soon. Tommy rocks his Wellingtons. YAY TOMMY. So does Bitchy Elise, but Jennifer accidentally messes up the potatoes. The blue team’s desserts are perfect, but Bitchy Elise accidentally ruins Jennifer’s apples. And yes, I keep saying “accidentally” intentionally, because I don’t think anybody was screwing up on purpose … though I loved the Bitchy Elise-Jennifer showdown that the apples caused, lol.

Elimination
The blue team guys practically started floating after they received their black jackets. Understandable. Boy, has it been a long road. Jennifer, Bitchy Elise, and Elizabeth on the chopping block! Based on tonight’s performance, they should all go home in a triple elimination, lol. But Bitchy Elise has been in the bottom way more than the other two. Surely, Gordon … YAAAAAAAAY! Jennifer’s still in it! Oh. :( So is the bitch. :( Oh well. The longer Gordon drags out her inevitable sacking, the more glorious it will be when it finally happens. Buh bye, Elizabeth.

Movie Review: Columbiana, 8/27/11

Revenge, revenge, and more revenge. This movie serves it up in heaps and piles. And as the bullets fly and the body count rises, a new action hero emerges.

Columbiana opens with nine-year-old Cataleya witnessing her parents’ murder in Bogota, then escaping their killers in a delightfully fast-paced chase scene that rivals any from in the Bourne movies — and that awesome one in the beginning of Casino Royale. Little orphan Cataleya then makes her way to her Uncle Emilio (Cliff Curtis: 10,000 B.C., Live Free or Die Hard) in Chicago and informs him, “I want to be a killer.”

Fast forward to fifteen years and a whole lot of dead bodies later; all-grown-up Cataleya (Zoe Saldana: Avatar, Star Trek) is an ass-kicking, gun-toting assassin who, in addition to taking her uncle’s assignments, has a pet project: killing everyone involved with murdering her parents. Also in the mix are an artist boyfriend (Michael Vartan: Alias, Hawthorne), who doesn’t even know that he doesn’t even know her real name, and an FBI agent (Lennie James: Snatch, The Walking Dead) hot on her trail.


I suppose all the comparisons to 1994’s The Professional — also directed by Luc Besson, also about a female seeking revenge after her family is killed — are inevitable, but honestly, the movies aren’t at all similar. The Professional is about a 12-year-old girl. Cataleya is a grown woman, hear her roar, and
her cold-blooded settling of scores is better compared to the bad-assery of Uma Thurman's and Linda Hamilton's characters in Kill Bill and Terminator 2. Oh, and lest we get bored with simple shootings, we’re treated to a goodly array of murder methods: one bad guy is killed by his pet sharks; another is electrocuted in the bathtub; etc.


Good acting is often sorely lacking in action movies; not so here. Curtis, Vartan, and James all play their parts well. Heck, even the young actress who plays nine-year-old Cataleya (Amandla Stenberg: The Hunger Games) does a good job. And Saldana (who, I maintain, should have at least gotten an Oscar nod for playing Neytiri in Avatar, dammit) shines as the tough-yet-tormented main character. Cataleya kills — often — but she also cuddles with grandma, critiques art, and cries over departed loved ones. Is Saldana convincing as an action hero? At the end of a particularly pivotal fight scene, everyone in the movie theater cheered and applauded. So, yes.


There are a few departures from reality — Will a vomited-up computer chip really still work perfectly? Are all ventilation shafts that large, shiny, and clean? Can one shoot up a whole neighborhood in broad daylight in front of witnesses galore then simply walk away? Is every DMV in America staffed only by fat, sassy black women? — but overall, Columbiana is an exciting, explosion-filled romp of a good time. I hope that it, Angelina Jolie’s Salt, and the forthcoming Haywire are the start of many more tough chicks in action flicks!

Thanks for paving the way, Sigourney Weaver.

Project Runway, 8/25/11

Team challenge! Oh, get over it, complainers. Designers are not islands unto themselves. And good riddance, Cecilia. I get so mad when designers up and quit. They shouldn’t have applied in the first damn place, taking that slot from some other struggling, up-and-coming designer who desperately wanted the opportunity and wouldn’t have wasted it. Losers.






Tee hee, let it never be said that all gay guys run like girls. Olivier (LOVE) does, bless his skinny little heart, but did Josh fly or did Josh fly? Dude flew. Winners: Josh, Bryce, Anthony Ryan, and Viktor. Ha! You just got served, you slow, wheezing, out-of-shape heterosexuals! Not that I’ve got room to talk, lol, cuz I would have come in last after Bert—OH MY GOD, NO! OLIVIER (LOVE) DOWN! OLIVIER (LOVE) DOWN! DON’T JUST STAND THERE, HEIDI; GIVE HIM MOUTH-TO-MOUTH! DON’T JUST STAND THERE, TIM GUNN; START CPR! SAVE HIM! SAVE—oh. Whew! He’s not dying. I knew he was ok when he was feeling good enough to be mad at himself: “I would have loved to be the captain. Unfortunately, I had to fall like a bitch.” Ha ha ha! Chin up, Olivier (LOVE). Everybody falls.

The casual wear challenge. Meh. Always fun to see what the designers come up with when they are specifically ordered to relax and not do high fashion, but I usually don't like clothes created for this look. Plus, some simply cannot do it and send the model down the runway in a cocktail dress and sneakers. Oh, and speaking of ordered, it’s genius—genius, I tell you—that every season Heidi uses the designers to make a look (or three) for her NB line. The designer gets the satisfaction of winning; she and NB get mad profit off sales. Win-win!

I’m closely analyzing this Bert-is-hard to work with belief. I don’t see it. Yes, he and Viktor butted heads, but that’s cuz Viktor’s impossible. In this challenge, however, he just seems to have teammates, Anthony and Laura Kathleen, who don’t want to give him a chance. Which I don’t get, cuz he won the first challenge, so he’s obviously skilled. This is just age-ism, if you ask me. Joshua’s severely condescending attitude toward Becky is SUPER annoying me. Reminds me of Bryce’s pretentious she-didn’t-know-how-to-cut-on-grain horror with Fallene. I do not want Josh or Bryce to win. Oh GOD. Becky’s a crier. *eye roll* I don’t understaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand that. If Josh had told me my clothes looked “dowdy,” he would have felt my wrath, not seen my tears. But points to Josh for apologizing. That was big of him.


A big hearty laugh at how Anthony and Laura Kathleen just had to stand there and look stupid while the judges said their clothes sucked and Bert’s looked the best (and Bert got in some catty remarks, lol). Arrrrrrgggggghhhh, will Olivier (LOVE) EVER make something I like? I HAAAAATED that dress, and I DOUBLE HAAAAAAATED it with sneakers. “Farm dress,” Michael Kors called it. Oh well. I’m going to give him a(nother) pass, because he was on a winning team, yay!, and because I pretty much hated EVERYTHING on the runway this episode. And it's not just my casual-challenge dislike; the judges had trouble deciding who was worst, and Heidi couldn’t pick one collection that she liked the best. She had to pick and choose between two. Wise move, girlfriend.


Bottom two: Anthony Ryan’s gray god-awful bad-crotch disaster, or Danielle’s 853rd bad green chiffon blouse. I agree with Heidi’s hatred of AR’s disaster, but yeah, Nina had a point: AR has potential. But Danielle just keeps doing the same (bad) thing. Buh bye, Danielle!

Top Chef Just Desserts, 8/24/11

Yay! Top Chef Just Desserts is back! Celebrate the sweets, dammit. I hate chefs who pretend they’re too good to be bothered with confections. I invite them to get off their stupid high horse. Desserts make the world go round! After all, what’s a wedding/birthday without the cake? Ok, I’m already in loooooooooooove with Nelson. I don’t care what he’s saying; I just want him to keep talking with that accent. And Matthew’s cute, too.


Quickfire:
Sally and Chris: deconstructed banana split
Vanarin and Melissa: micro cake w banana carpaccio (what? banana carpaccio??? GIVE ME SOME!)
Katzie (cool name!) and Hot Matthew: chocolate egg cream
Orlando and Megan: snooze banana split, landed them in the bottom
Craig and Lina: snooze butter pecan ice cream, landed them in the bottom
Carlos and Rebecca: Captain Crunch milkshake, 2nd place
Amanda and Sexy Nelson: chocolate sundae-inspired chocolate sponge cake, 1st place
YAY! Sexy Nelson is not just a pretty face!


And now let me pause to admire everyone in their black chef’s jackets … WITH HOT PINK TRIM. Ha ha ha ha ha ha! I’m sure all the guys just loved that color choice.

Elimination Challenge
Ooooh, a fairytale theme! Some very pretty yumminess will come out of this. Too bad for Sexy Nelson: his and Amanda’s advantage, picking their fairytale, isn’t all that advantageous for him: “I’m originally from Argentina. And I don’t know what they are talking about. I don’t know what even is a fairy tale.” Omgeeeeeeeee he’s so bloody cute. I want to explain to him “what even is a fairy tale” over a romantic candlelight dinner. Eventually, he chooses “Gol-deen-locks and the tree bears.” Lol.

Team Gol-deen-locks and the Tree Bears
Sexy Nelson, Orlando, Rebecca, and Sally made a striking chocolate showpiece, an almond bar with fruits of the forest and honey ice cream, and porridge with basil syrup and cherry sorbet. It was very in keeping with their theme. Gail and Hubert love everything. I love Hubert’s ponytail.

Team Jack and the Beanstalk
Craig, Katzie, and Megan’s showpiece looked great—from the front. Maybe it would have been completed if Craig had been able to actually help Katzie and Megan instead of slow them down. Their desserts were a bergamot cloud with whipped lemon ricotta, and Johnny thought the flavor of ginger was overpowering; and also a brown butter hazelnut cake with white chocolate cream, which Dannielle thought was “a one-note cake.”


Team Little Red Riding Hood
“That sugar work is quite beautiful!” Gail enthused as she examined Amanda, Carlos, Chris, and Hot Matthew’s showpiece. “I’m having Gail thoughts,” Chris sweet-talked Gail, who was dressed as Little Red Riding Hood. The team made rose-scented bomboloni with coconut tapioca, and also a blackout sponge cake with cocoa nib nougatine. Gail and Hubert re-love everything again. I re-love Hubert’s ponytail.

Team Hansel and Gretel
HELLO. It’s Hansel and Gretel, dammit. The witch lives in a house made of deliciousness! That should have been Lina, Melissa, and Vanarin’s cue to go all out with a showstopper of a gingerbread house showpiece; instead, theirs was kill-me boring. And the desserts failed to impress: butterscotch brioche with goat cheese mousse and smoked pineapple, and a chocolate cloud with milk sherbet and cinnamon cotton candy accompanied by a shooter filled with a hibiscus apple selzter. What the crap do those flavors have to do with this fairytale? Why is a chocolate cloud paired with apple seltzer? WHERE’S THE DAMN GINGERBREAD?


Judging
Team Goldi and Team Lil Red are in the top, and (thanks to Chris?) Lil Red wins. No surprise there. Now, on to the suckery. Team J&tB and Team H&G are in the bottom. Few things annoy me more on reality tv than when contestants foist an idea on their teammates, then when it turns out awful, insist it wasn’t their idea. Tonight Lina pulls that move, pretending that she wasn’t the one pushing from the very start for making that kill-me boring cake house instead of a gingerbread house. And she was also called out, thank you judges, for pairing that stupid apple seltzer with Melissa’s chocolate cloud. On the other team, in contrast, Craig owned up to his lack of technical skill holding back the showpiece. And though all three on the team were responsible for those bad desserts, it’s going to be either Craig or Lina (who were one of the bottom two teams in the Quickfire. Way to foreshadow, Top Chef Just Desserts!).

And … Lina gets the axe. Good call. THERE SHOULD HAVE BEEN GINGERBREAD.

Hell’s Kitchen, 8/22/11

Hour One
Blind taste test! I was consumed with jealousy. Come feed ME, Gordon. Jennifer: “Chef Ramsay put nuts in my mouth!” LOL. Boy was I amazed how wrong some of those guesses were … almost as annoyed as I was watching Bitchy Elise’s smug, superior reactions to the incorrect answers. Yes, Tommy’s grape jokes were annoying (and yet hilarious), but I’ll take the blue team’s teasing over Bitch Elise and Ditzy Carrie’s non-stop bickering.


Dinner
Ohhhhh, ok. The reason Bitchy Elise cannot properly write down an order is that she’s a chef, not a waitress. Interesting. I wasn’t aware that chefs are entirely incapable of properly writing things down. Thanks, Bitchy Elise, for enlightening us. And yeah, if you can’t properly handle writing things down, Gordon should totally trust you running a kitchen. *eye roll* Wow, Tommy and Natalie are in serious trouble. They better hope the red team screws up worse … which they apparently are, thanks to Ditzy Carrie with the garnish snafu and Bitchy Elise and her fish woes. Jennifer: “I can’t believe this bitch just brought up raw fish.” Heh. Poor Tommy, who apparently has the worst penmanship Gordon’s ever seen. Will he manage to slide by yet ANOTHER night?


Elimination
First Gordon knocks Bitchy Elise down a few notches; then Jennifer screamed at her repeatedly to shut up until—gasp—she actually did. What did I do to deserve this wondrousness? And could it be a sign that Bitchy Elise is going home? Because Gordon, apparently, is done fooling around. The teams have to select not two but only one person to go home, which means the selectee has a 50%, not a 25%, chance of leaving. So, it’s Tommy (duh) and Carrie (ARE YOU KIDDING MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE?) on the chopping block. Aaaaand … buh bye Carrie. Darn. I wanted Bitchy Elise to go before her. Tommy, you’ve got nine lives.


Hour Two
I knew better than to get my hopes up when Gordon told Bitchy Elise to take her jacket off … and yep, she’s safe. The bitch stays to royally bitch things up another day. Red team, if you really think she’s going to be any less bitchy now that Ditzy Carrie’s gone, you’re idiots. Oh, yum! Now, THIS a vacation I can get behind. Screw the sightseeing, massages, and ex-Playboy bunnies coming to your Vegas hotel suite. Send me on a food tour so I can eat Italian, Chinese, French, Greek, Mexican, Indian, and Jamaican. (Will: “Shabba!” Ha ha haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! Omg, dude just scored sooooooooooo many points with me. In case you didn’t get the reference, he was singing the 1993 hit “Mr. Loverman” by Shabba Ranks.)

It’s pretty obvious that they’re going to have to cook one of those kinds of foods when they got back to Hell’s Kitchen. I’d have been taking some serious notes, unlike Bitchy Elise—who is a chef, not a waitress, mind you—who moaned, “We tried seven different cuisines, but I wasn’t paying attention.” How very chef of her. And also, “I’ve never seen kumquats before today.” How very chef of her. Will LOL-ed me again with his “Ghetto goes to the beach” remark as Elise passed him on her way out. Accurate. She revels in fulfilling the ghetto, loudmouth, “you-betta-get-outta-my-face,” black bitch stereotype.


Dinner
Bitchy Elise made such a big deal (“I’ll do it myself!”) of the fact that Tommy didn’t score the Wellingtons—as if taking a knife and making shallow cuts is such as hard thing for a “chef” like herself to do—that I’m guessing this will come back up later. Tonight’s scallop waster is Natalie. And after she ruined all those steaks last episode (then tried to pretend Tommy was the only one who needed to go up for elimination), I hope she doesn’t think Ramsay’s overlooking her mess-ups. Uh oh. Elizabeth got a talking-to in the closet. Last time that happened, the talkee (Jonathan) went home. But maybe she’ll be ok, since Bitchy Elise effed up the Wellingto—WHAT? Did she actually just try to blame Tommy for the scoring on the Wellingtons? After ranting and raving earlier because he DIDN’T score them?!?!?!! Tommy: “I didn’t score a damn thing. Play the replay.” Which they did, and he was right. Ha ha haaaaa! Caught in a lie! Last time that happened, the liar (Douche Brendan) went home. But darnit, Natalie’s and Elizabeth’s disastrous fish services might outweigh her lying.

Elimination
Natalie (duh) and Bitchy Elise (FINALLY!) on the chopping block. You know, I’m firmly convinced that Gordon asks the chefs facing elimination why they think they should stay just so he can play the tape back later and laugh at it, lol. He’s already made up his mind. And he chooses … Natalie. I guess the previous day’s steak blunders coupled with tonight’s four or five returned fish entrees were just too much. Though it was only Natalie’s third time up for elimination but Elise’s fourth or fifth. And though Natalie owned up to her mistake, but Bitchy Elise blamed Tommy and threw a trashcan-kicking hissyfit. And though Bitchy Elise LIED TO HIS FACE. Gordon’s just going to keep riding the Elise Ratings Train all the way to the finale.

The Sandwich King, 8/21/11

Bravo, excellent, awesome, two thumbs up. Great show. Thank you for getting it right, Food Network Star judges. And in your FACE, everybody who said that a sandwich show would be boring!


The format of The Sandwich King is entertaining and engaging. Jeff doesn’t just cook. This episode, we went with him to Johnnie’s Beef, where he originally discovered the sandwich that inspired today’s creation. We met owner Frank, who “lets us see where the magical beef happens.” Lol. And later in the show, we were treated to a second sandwich. Two for one! The juxtaposition was clever: one sandwich takes four hours, and the other takes ten minutes, appealing not only to those with plenty of time to cook but also those who want to be in and out of the kitchen fast.


This episode’s subjects: a Chicago beef sandwich and a mortadella fig focaccianini. Nice. I’m a vegetarian, but none of my family or friends are, so I will forever be in need of carnivore-friendly recipes. (Plus, with some tweaking, I bet I could make a vegetarian version of the Chicago beef using my fave meat substitute: seitan.)


The Chicago features a roast braised in red wine and beef stock with Italian seasoning and thyme, green bell peppers roasted with oil and granulated garlic, onions, fresh garlic cloves, and a homemade hot giardineria topping made with carrots, red bell pepper, cauliflower, celery, cerano peppers, all on a French roll. The giardineria intrigued me. I’d never heard of it, so I made a note to google it later — but then Jeff walked viewers through how to make it from scratch. Excellent. “I think my peppers are perfectly done.” Jeff said, taking the green bell peppers out of the oven. “Oh, perf!” he enthused, and I chuckled. “Perf”? I have a new word. Mmmmm: my mouth watered a bit when he dunked the sandwich in the au jus and took a bite.

Random: the split-screen effect is cool.


The mortadella fig focaccianini is “a beautiful hybrid between a focaccia sandwich and a panini sandwich.” (Lol—someone was taking notes during the Rachel Ray episode of Food Network Star, when Vic Vegas made The LaChanga: a hybrid between a lasagna and a chimichanga.) The focaccianini features fontanella cheese and mortadella meat between slices of focaiccia bread slathered with a fig spread made with dried figs reconstituted in water, sugar, and balsamic vinegar. I’m personally not at all a fan of sweet + salty, but I’m totally picturing focaccianinis cut into fourths on sandwich platters for guests at my next party. And I loved the tip on what to do if you don’t have a panini press. Because I don’t have a panini press.


Advice: it’s best if you record The Sandwich King so that you can rewind it, because, as with most cooking shows, sometimes the ingredient list comes fast and furious, and you’re liable to miss something. And now, if I may, some guest star ideas: Guy Fieri, of course. I have a sneaking suspicion that a Guy-Jeff pairing would result in nonstop LOLs. And some fave contestants from the last season of FNS! I want to see Susie and Jeff make something deliciously Mexican, Vic and Jeff make a yummy hybrid with a funny name, and Justin B. make the scrumptiously complex sandwich while Jeff makes the delectably easy sandwich.

I heart Jeff, and I heart The Sandwich King. This show is … perf.