This week for “Top Chef” night, we didn’t even bother watching the show. This season has been “Top Chef Masters,” and we have decided that it has been too boring for us to sit through another episode. I wonder if we will have to change names if we no longer are watching the show.
We could watch Too Fat for Fifteen, but I think the season just ended. And there’s just something wrong about cooking decadent food for “Too Fat Night.”
Tonight, by coincidence, was a vegetarian night. Well … as long as you consider bacon a vegetable, which most of us do. I made ramps with bacon. I had never had ramps before and they were just delicious. A subtle garlicky leekiness. Really wonderful. Unfortunately I should have bought more … they cooked down quite a bit.
Michael and Joe made an asparagus salad with parmigiano reggiano and bacon. I think the asparagus was just blanched so it had a nice crispiness. And the acididty of the dressing was really great with the green asparagus flavor. Finally the bacon and cheese were nice complements. I love bacon.
Mitch and Eileen made a broccoli cheese casserole. They used an ATK recipe. Mitch said that he changed the original recipe because he thought the cheese sauce was a bit boring. I believe he added some hot pepper, amongst other things. It was really great, and I had seconds of both this and the asparagus.
Dessert …. nobody had planned for dessert! Fortunately I had anticipated this possibility and had picked up a boxed chocolate cake mix at Trader Joes and made it as we ate dinner. It was a really decent cake, with much more texture than an average box cake, which was good.
I also made a butter frosting. It wasn’t so much a buttercream frosting, as. it was a butter frosting. Mom got the recipe from our neighbor when I was a child, and it is my favorite. Lots of butter. The only problem arose when I mixed ingredients while they were too warm and the butter melted. Fortunately I added more butter (cold) and things came together. Finally, per M’s request, I dyed the frosting blue. Very blue.
Dessert disaster averted. Whew.
Final note: There are two M’s in our group … three if you count me. The use of two M’s can sometimes be confusing, and I’m trying to decide how to deal with this. Fortunately I’m not partial to illeism (except on Facebook) so things aren’t nearly as confusing as they could be.
March 18, 2021
When I initially began writing the blog I never used proper names, only initials. This mostly worked, but over time became a distraction. Ultimately I abandoned initials and returned to names. As I re-edit these posts, I’m adding back names where I remember them. In this post, you can see that I don’t always remember which of the other two “M’s” is which.
Regarding the show: None of us really enjoyed Top Chef Masters at first. Eventually we came to enjoy it, but it took some time and a few rounds of elimination.
butterblogger 