I called my brother and he says that the ‘jug’ in question is actually a large jar. He also swears that this is a REAL recipe. Then again, he won’t tell me who the hell is supposed to eat it…
I saw that one. Lobster tails on hamburger buns (actually Kaiser Rolls) were a lobster-club sandwich, with bacon, lettuce and mayo. Seems like a waste of a good lobster tail, but not actively vile as per the vanilla-garlic-mustard-potato-lobster-grease-salad above.
To me, Martha’s was a frivolous waste of perfectly good lobster (Why would you put bacon on lobster? Bacon’ll overpower it), but Emeril was actually torturing the poor crustacian.
Fenris
well, while I agree that the concotion described is past vile (I have the perfect drink to accompany it, tho’ - we were served at the Vermontville Maplefest, iced tea, presweetened with … maple syrup…: shudder:: ) I do feel obligated to point out that being boiled alive isn’t generally considered a ‘charitable act’, either… 
True, but at least Martha’s Lobster didn’t die in vain. I could concievably enjoy the club sammich she made, if the bacon were mild enough.
Fenris
Now lobster rolls are a fine tradition. They are just lobster with a bit of mayonnaise (emphasis on the bit) and minced celery on a toasted hot dog bun. The bun should preferable one of the old-fashioned squared-off type. No bacon.
I enjoyed several on my last trip to Maine, although you do get the sense that they are just showing off: “Look, we got so much lobster, it’s practically fast food!”
The vanilla thing sounds just nasty, though. And, much as I love both lobster and garlic, they probably don’t belong together. (Someone is welcome to come along with some succulent Chinese concoction that proves me wrong about this, recipe required for evidence.)
Boiled lobstah, broiled lobstah, lobstah flambee, lobstah creole, poached lobstah, roasted lobstah…
This thread reminds me of that Visa card commercial a few years ago. Old guy in some restaurant in Maine mumbling on and on about all the ways you can have “lobstah”. Made me giggle every time.
Lobstah flapjacks, curried lobstah, lobstah quiche, lobstah Newberg, lobstah and blueberry muffins, lobstah a la king, lobstah fritters, lobstah soup, smoked lobstah, lobstah jambalaya, bah-becued lobstah…
<a slight hijack>
What about what Bobby Flay did to the poor beasties on the Iron Chef rematch? All those southwestern spices wouldn’t cover up the actual taste?
<we return you to your regular programming>
Booby Flay and the IC2 rematch is a whole 'nother rant. However, every time I write it, it keeps coming across scary and stalker-esque and threatening rather than funny, and rather than subject myself to a well-deserved lecture by overworked mods/admins about liability, etc…, I’ve refrained from posting it, 'till I can get it right. Suffice it to say that as vomitous as I find most of Emeril’s foods, I’d rather gorge myself on Emeril’s “cuisine” than spend five minutes in that smirky, smarmy, ugly-Americanish Bobby Flay asshole’s presence. And his food is normally as bad as Emeril’s.
Fenris
(Who assumes that dropping an Elder God on someone is not going to be construed as a threat)
has anyone ever seen emeril and chuck barris in the same room?
i didnt think so.
Fenris, once again your pure genius shines through. You da man!
But I read today in the paper about how some folks in New York ended up with some strange symptoms, like numbness of the mouth, after a banquet (I want to say it was an Explorer’s Club banquet, but don’t quote me–my search attempts have been futile, and my newspaper is at work). Anyhoo, they had been eating tarantula. Yep. Oh, and they were doing it by choice.
Now, all the hair is supposed to be removed from the tarantula before it is cooked and eaten. Apparently a few stray ones were cooked in to the food, though. No one became seriously ill–just some minor numbness and swelling of the mouth.
Spiders. They were eating spiders, and doing it because they wanted to. AAAAAAAAAAAAGH! NO!!! That is SO WRONG!!! Christ, I had to take a Xanax after I read that article!
Excuse me now while I go curl up into a quivering, freaked-out mess once again…:::twitch:::
[making Kurtz noises]The horror, the horror, the horror[/making Kurtz noises]
Hey, Persephone, pass the Xanax, would ya? I think we could all use some after what’s been posted here. (Spiders! Yuck!)
Fenris,
I think I love you.
Fenris,
I know you are a respected person on this board and I have enjoyed your posts immensely.
However, I am wondering something.
If you don’t like Emeril’s show, why do you watch it? Is it some sort of weird fascination toward someone who, in your opinion, massacres food for the sake of popularity, or do you just watch so you can have more fodder for SDMB posts? I can’t imagine you’d want to emulate him as a cook. I’m a relative newbie here, so I’d really like to know what the real deal is. It’s hard for me to know how to react to posts like this.
I have deep respect and admiration in my own personal life for anyone who can cook, but most especially men, since it was never expected where I come from that men have any knowledge in this area. I wish my own husband could cook, though when it comes down to necessities, he can certainly fend for himself, and for me when I am ill. I come from the “food is love” culture and tradition, so cooking means a lot to me.
My favorite show on FoodTV is Mario Eats Italy, since that is a culture I can relate to, and I learn so much about Italian cooking and tradition from it. There isn’t a single thing on that show I wouldn’t gladly eat!
I know you are ranting about Emeril here, and I don’t mean to ruin that, but I sincerely want to know if he’s so awful why he’s being given “legs” by people who obviously know his show sucks. Seems to me if it’s that bad, it should be boycotted so it’s not on anymore.
Thanks! I appreciate it!
**
I don’t normally watch Emeril, but it was dinnertime, I felt like eating in front of the TV and nothing else was on. Once I started watching, I couldn’t stop…it was like watching a train-wreck. (and, if truth be told, I started considering it as fodder about the time he lubed up the lettuce).
**
Laughter (I hope), if you find it funny, outrage if you’re a huge Emeril fan. Boredom if you don’t like my writing style or topic. In any case, I wrote this to share my feelings about Emeril (hopefully in a humorous fashion.)
**
Me too. I’m not mocking Emeril because he’s a male chef. I love cooking and if the board weren’t so <censored> pokey right now, I’d provide a few links where Scylla, Zenster, Chef Troy, Robgruver and I, along with several other male dopers (and some great female Dopers too: Hi Javamaven!) had great cooking fun. Look in MPSIMS for the two “Iron Chef” threads that Scylla started and Zenster’s magnificent “Ultimate Recipe Thread”.
I enjoy cooking (and eating) and because of that, Emeril offends me even more. You’re right. Cooking is about love, and art and science, which is why Emeril’s “Cookin’ ain’t rahket science. Jus dump da stuff onna plate” style of ‘cooking’ is so irritating to me.
He degrades the art of cooking by turning it into the crudest sort entertainment, just barely above a food fight (which is not to say that cooking isn’t entertaining (Look at Mario’s or Alton Brown’s shows. Look at the Two Fat Ladies or Julia Child’s old shows. Hell, look at Iron Chef: Art and entertainment, all rolled into one!), but Emeril’s idea of entertainment is ruining food and teaching bad habits. One doesn’t throw spices across the room, hoping that they’ll hit the plate. One does not stick one’s paws in food without washing one’s paws. One doesn’t indiscriminatly dump spices on every dish, ruining subtletly and flavor. One doesn’t tell people “don’t measure” and then pull delicate items prepared by sous chefs out of the oven, giving the false impression that it’s possible to achieve a beautiful, light, fluffy cake with no measuring.
**
I prefer Iron Chef and Alton Brown, but Mario is number 3 (did you know that the same people who do Alton Brown’s show also do Mario Eats Italy? Also, did you notice that The Crazed French Chef on Alton Brown’s Good Eats is…
um…aargh…whatshisname… Mario’s sidekick?) Mario is a wonderful chef and I agree with you: the vast majority of what he cooks looks wonderful.
**
This is a classic debate and one that won’t be settled here. To use a far more serious analogy, a local radio talk show host out of Denver has on Holocaust Deniers a couple of times a year. This host is Jewish (Mike Rosen, for those of you in Colorado) and he has fantastic debating skills and a razor sharp tongue. Like I said, he has these people on two or three times a year, lets them talk for a bit, then verbally shreds them and their arguments into Nazi coleslaw with sheer acid logic. It’s entertaining, and it’s educational. But every time he does, the head of the Colorado chapter of the Anti-Defamation League calls into the show and accuses Rosen of giving the Holocaust deniers free publicity. I share Rosen’s philosophy. It’s better to expose those sort of people for what they are, rather than ignore them and hope they’ll go away.
I do NOT in any way!!! compare Emeril to Holocaust deniers, but the question of how to deal with philosophies you dislike is similar. I doubt many people will start watching Emeril as a result of what I wrote (vanilla-greased lettuce…yuk). But even if they do, I hope they’ll do so with the awareness of what I wrote and may see beyond the cutsey antics to the crude incompetence and bad techniques behind it.
Fenris
Hi!
Time for me to chime in…
Ok, first of all, I’m only going to defend Emeril for just one moment. Vanilla is actually a very good accompaniment to lobster. One of the actual dishes I made in school was a lobster tail served with a vanilla-champagne sauce (it’s a very frou-frou thing). We often look at vanilla as being a sweet flavor, and we are not always willing to look at it as a possible savory flavor. Since lobster is very mildly flavored, vanilla carries it very well.
That being said, I cannot stand his show or his style of cooking.
Were we seperated at birth? This is the exact same reason why I feel the hairs on the back of my neck rise when I come across his show.
There was a thread about this about 7-8 months ago (I’m not going to search for it right now since the boards are so freakin’ slow at the moment). I stated then that my problem was his sloppy, haphazard way of working in the kitchen. Ok, I also believe that cooking “ain’t rocket science” but there is a point where you gotta follow a certain level of ratios for your products to turn out edible.
Case in point: I remember watching him about a year ago, making a salmon mousse (I took note of this, because I had just done a salmon mousse in class about a week before). His recipe calls for a shot of vodka. He adds it to his food processor, then says, "Hey, what the hell! and pours in about 8 more ounces of vodka to the whoops and hollers in the audience. What most people don’t understand is that mousse is now ruined. It’ll be runny, won’t hold a shape, and will taste like Absolut Salmon. Not a good thing. That was the day that any possible respect for him went down the drain.
But, he’s a showman. That’s what makes his shows popular, and he’s a crowd-pleaser. Doesn’t matter that half of the recipes in his cookbooks are missing steps, or are entirely ridiculous (c’mon, do you really need a recipe to make a roast beef sandwich?). He got his way up to the top somehow, and it looks like he’s gonna be around for a while. That’s ok. I’ll just watch something else until Iron Chef comes on.
[sub]pssst… Fenris… so, when are you gonna do SDMB Iron Chef III? I can’t email you, so I’m askin’ here…[/sub]
For the most part I agree that Emeril is more showman than chef, but JavaMaven, one small thing I disagree with you in your post…
One of my favorite episodes of Taste with Mr. Rosengarten was the episode that he did on Salami sandwiches. A good sammich has a recipie like any other prepared food, and even roast beef is included in that.
Yeah, but Rosengarden’s gimmick (and a good one) was to take ONE specific recipe and analyze the hell out of it. He spent a show doing (the single best I’ve ever eaten) blueberry pie and analyzed each ingredient. Here are our types of flour. This is the appropriate kind and here’s why!. Here are our “fat” ingredients (butter, lard, shortening, etc). Here are the advantages and disadvantages…and so on. I learned more about pie-cooking in that one show than I’ve ever knew before (plus I learned a fantastic pie recipe).
I miss Rosengarten…
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by JavaMaven1 *
**
Yeah but…
Vanilla + Champagne wouldn’t be bad. The “acidity” of the champagne + the sweetness of the vanilla would support the flavor of the lobster. My objection is to olive oil + garlic + Dijon mustard + Vanilla. (Plus the idea of running so amok with the vanilla that you pour about a 1/6th of a cup of vanilla oil on each serving of lettuce?). How could you taste anything else, especially since oil clings to your mouth?
Dunno. Perhaps we’re identical twins. Are you a medium height, slightly overweight hairy guy? 
**
Arm…breaking…must give in…
Keep an eye out in MPSIMS over the next day or so.
Fenris
An update on the fishbone thing- I asked my father what Emeril was doing with the grilled fishbone, since he saw more of the show than I did. It turns out it was supposed to be decoration, but Emeril also said it was so crispy you could eat chunks of it. :eek:
…or even now. Permit me to announce Iron Chef part San.
Come on over and join the fun, or just watch
(Hey, it’s my thread, I can hijack it if I want! :D)
Fenris
PS: Protesilaus, I’ve seen the “fried fishbones” think on Iron Chef. Apparently if it’s fried juuuuuuuust right, it does turn into something edible. (I trust Chen Kenichi)