ImStillMags wrote:
>
> You guys miss the point of the show. It is to test a chef's
> creativity and food intuition. They are given some weird stuff and
> told that they can use any part or all of each ingredient in their
> dish. They have access to a well stocked pantry and refrigerator
> full of fresh herbs and dairy, etc. as well as appliances, wines,
> spirits, a blast chiller and ice cream machine....in other words a
> complete kitchen.
>
> The whole thing about the show that interests me is that I try to
> figure out what I would do with the ingredients. Some of them are
> easy for me, I come up with a dish right away. Some are really hard
> if the ingredients are unfamiliar or disgusting.

Exactly. The chefs are genuinely surprised and part of the
entertainment is to watch some of them stick their noses in the air when
given twinkies and others shrug and transform twinkies into something
good. That increases the appeal of the show to me.

Shows that show easy cooking by chefs in their comfort zones fill the
schedule on several food channels. Shows that push highly skilled chefs
into great creativity are more interesting because I learn more about
creativity.

> Some chefs rise to the challenge, some fail miserably, but they all
> concoct something. Some are
> successful and some are not. I've been really impressed with a few
> of the contestants. Some of the creativity is applause worthy.

The beef tongue seemed easy to me. I had had lengua tacos in the last
week. I looked at the list of ingredients in that basket, thought of
those tacos, and knew I could make a dish from that basket.

I knew galangal from Good Eats but at a glance I could tell it is a
close relative of ginger. I have used pork rinds ground into a low carb
substitute for breading.

Usually one of the ingredients in the baskets would throw me for a loop.
Not this particular episode but that's the luck of the draw. I looked
at purple kohlrabi and figured they better be like regular kohlrabi, yet
one of the contestants said "I grow my own purple kohlrabi. It's an
ingredient I am familiar with". I expected him to win the entire day at
that point.