Gooey Duck
I watched--well, just the end of it, really--the first episode of Top Chef last night. Normally, I am a total sucker for Bravo's reality TV efforts (Blowout, people, I watched Blowout) but I am strangely resistant to this show. Anyway, the guest judge was Tony Bourdain so the contestants all were given assorted gross-out ingredients appropriate for the host of Make Tony Bourdain Barf, or whatever that show is called. One of the gross-out ingredients: Geoduck.
I didn't know you could eat geoduck. I didn't know geoduck was good for anything other than walking around the house saying geoduck geoduck geoduck over and over again until the cat looks at you funny and runs away. But apparently not only can one eat geoduck, one can almost win the first Top Chef challenge with geoduck--Mr. Cooking With Panopea came in second. The winner of the challenge (who was working with ostrich and abalone) got a big stack of TB's books and an open invitation to got drinking with Tony next time they were both in New York.
Okay. You know those stupid "getting to know you" questions, about the one historical figure you'd like to have dinner with or the celebrity you'd must like to ride a bus with? I don't have much interest in splitting a sandwich with the guy, but I would love to go out and get shitfaced with Tony Bourdain. It still happens on rare occasions, but I have mostly outgrown the "getting drunk just to get drunk" phase of my life. Also, dude could drink me under the table before breakfast. Doesn't matter. The possibility that I could get on this show, make the best mustelid carpaccio that he's ever tasted, and thereby win a weekend of doing shots of fermented spider venom with Tony Bourdain in the skeeviest dive bar in Hanga Roa? Kind of makes me want to chuck it all and go to chef's school.
In further geoduck news, apparently Bobby Flay is the Food Network's go-to guy for geoduck recipes. Instead of raising Flay's stock in my eyes, this makes geoduck all of a sudden less cool.
3 comments:
I was surprised that they let the Southern cook go instead of the guy who didn't manage his time well and couldn't get his frogs legs on the plate. I mean, I get that the frogs legs guy was a better cook, but it just doesn't seem fair to keep him when he couldn't complete the challenge. This does seem like it'll be a better season than the last one; any one of these contestants could cook circles around Ilan, I think, and they don't seem like the type of people who would commit assault either, which is also a pleasant change.
Had you ever heard of geoduck before? I watched the ep with a bunch of friends, and only one guy (my friend's husband who's a total foodie) knew what it was. The rest of us figured it was a kind of duck.
--Meg
Well, the unplated frog's legs guy did manage to come back with the bit about the Ecuadoran line cooks from Bourdain's book. I think that was probably what saved him (plus, it was great TV).
I have heard of geoduck, but I don't know that I'd ever seen one before. Isn't there a minor league baseball team called the Geoducks or something? I should look them up. What I didn't get was the black chicken. What was up with that? Wait--I just had an idea for post-Friday fun!
I thought of this post the other week. Men in Trees was a repeat and I was wondering why I had heard of these things.... the guy gives the girl a "gooey duck" shell I guess you can call it, that she puts on her arm as a bracelet.
NJ
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