Here’s what I wrote about Cohen after she was named as one of the Heeb100 in 2009:

Amanda Cohen, chef and owner of the New York City vegetarian restaurant Dirt Candy, was named in the food category. Cohen responded, “For everyone who has wondered about a Jewish conspiracy to control the world, I was just inducted into Heeb Magazine‘s ‘Heeb 100,’ which is sort of the next best thing. It’s a list of ‘smart, innovative and young’ [J]ews who are expected to control the world in the near future, or at least small portions of it.” Cohen added that she recently met with a rabbi to discuss getting kosher certification for Dirt Candy. She is currently featured on PETA’s VegCooking.com as Chef of the Month.

If you’re like me and you don’t have cable, you can always check out a stellar vegan cooking competition in New York City instead: Veggie Conquest!

So we all know that eating together is as much a social lubricant as anything else.  And without too much of a stretch we can turn cooking into a social affair.  And thanks to the Food Network, we even get our high definition voyeuristic fill of “food porn.”  But can all these mediums be massed up, and if they are would it be any good?

Yesterday, my friend and author Max Gross invited a few folks to join him for the first night of the reality show Top Chef – a show favored by other Jew and the Carrot readers and writers.  Will this season highlight any important food issues like the short-lived Chopping Block brought up sustainable fish or how Iron Chef America took on kosher cuisine in one of its episodes?  We don’t know yet what this season will bring, but from his account below he did get some folks together to not only eat, but to (try and) watch some reality TV food porn together.  According to Max,

One of the myriad of reasons that the last season of Top Chef sucked so hard was because even though the show was taking place in New York, our beloved culinary Mecca never seemed to enter into the picture.

You didn’t see the cheftestants stitching together Chinese dumplings in Flushing. Or flipping pizza pies in Brooklyn. Or scaling swordfish in Astoria. What’s the point of doing a reality show in New York if you’re not using New York? What a waste!

The only good thing about having Top Chef in the city was that on Wednesday nights you could occasionally find Tom and Padma watching the show and sipping beers at the Spotted Pig.

When Tom’s ultra-plush and expensive Craftsteak decided that they were going to turn the front of the restaurant into a reasonably priced enoteca (sort of) called Halfsteak, T&P switched over there. Various TC fans (along with cheftestants who had been cut from the show) could be seen nibbling on the white BBQ sauce chicken wings while the show wound up last season.

I hadn’t been to any of these TC parties last year, but I figured there would most likely be a decent turn out at Halfsteak last night for Top Chef’s premiere.

No such luck.

Tom and Padma were nowhere to be found. In fact, when I showed up and took a seat at the bar, the TV wasn’t even turned to Bravo — the Mets game had just started. “You guys are going to put on Top Chef at nine, right?” I asked the bartender.

“Oh,” he said. “I’ll ask the manager. But I think the baseball game has precedence.”

TC maniacs were nowhere to be found, etiher. When the manager gave his OK and the channel was turned to Bravo, a friend and I were the only ones in the restaurant who seemed interested.

“Could we turn the sound on?” I asked.

“No,” the bartender said, good naturedly. “But you have the captioning for the deaf.”

My friend and I stopped paying attention about 15 minutes in. I went home and watched the repeat at midnight. I guess Tom and Padma are watching it from Craftsteak at the MGM Grand.

If you haven’t seen Seth Rogen recently, you might be disappointed.

He looks really, uh, good.

Svelte. Clean shaven. Neat. Not the slobby stoner that schlubs like myself could identify with.

What the hell happened, Seth? (I have a special interest in Rogen’s slovenliness – his appearance in the movie Knocked Up inspired me to write my own treatise called From Schlub to Stud about how we are living in the golden age of slobby man-children.)

But apparently sometime in the last few months, in preparation for his role in The Green Hornet, he dropped what looks like a good 30 to 40 pounds. And I, for one, was worried that his good cheer might be wrapped up in his weight. The thing that was so endearing about Rogen was the fact that he was so unapologetic about his excesses — a little like a young, Jewish Jack Falstaff.

It turns out, my worries are (I think) unfounded. If you saw him on The Daily Show last week, you would note that his good cheer is still in tact. More than in tact — his wit seems as sharp as ever. And Rogen fully acknowledged the 800 pound gorilla in the room: Namely that it is tough for a fellow tribesman to deny himself the pleasures of the plate.

“A Jew’s natural weight is 400 pounds,” Rogen declared. Anyone under 400 should be commended for keeping himself under control. (Hear, hear!)

And as Rogen and Stewart banter back and forth, the conversation veers towards the Jewish obsession with food.

Why is it, both men ask, that Jews can recall a plum that they ate in 1983, with such relish?

A fascinating question, with many possible answers. I would argue that it is an obsession that has lasted since the Jews learned to walk upright. Sure, you might hear little tidbits in the various histories about feasting (and purging) Ancient Romans — but they didn’t have the same elaborate set of rules that the Jews constructed around food. It is clearly something that has been on our minds for many centuries.

Stewart and Rogen didn’t get into that. They only acknowledged that there is a real obsession. But it’s good to know that the slim, good-looking Rogen looks like he has food still very much on the brain. Thank goodness. I just hope he puts the weight back on, fast.

I admit I’m a Top Chef junkie, so when season 5 ended, I found myself going through a bit of withdrawal. While the Food Network doesn’t really do it for me, I decided to tune in to The Chopping Block, a newer show on NBC that features two teams going head-to-head, trying to run successful restaurants in New York City.

It’s not worth describing how the competition works, or details about the show, but I will say that it’s nowhere nearly as entertaining as Top Chef. Nevertheless, after being pretty bored with the pilot, I tuned in this week to see the second episode, to see if it picks up.

It didn’t. However, I was proud to see that for the first time on one of these shows, some food awareness actually played a role.

In Season 5 of Top Chef, one challenge actually took the chef-testants to Blue Hill Farm, where chef Dan Barber has made a name for himself by growing almost all his organic produce on site, as well as raising his own animals for the restaurant’s meat. While it was great to see how the chefs used what was local and seasonal, I was a bit disappointed that more about this wasn’t discussed by the chef-testants.

But on this week’s Chopping Block, conscious fish choices played a major role. The two teams were each to cook a dinner for two fashion designers and their friends. The red team gets designer Nicole Miller. Before going to meet her, they had to place their food order, and they made the regrettable decision that one of the courses would be Chilean Sea Bass.

Two of the chef-testants go off to meet Miller, and propose a course of the unsustainable fish. Miller not only doesn’t like Chilean Sea Bass, but she says, “It’s endangered,” and she would prefer halibut. The chef-testants look rather stunned, knowing that the order had already been placed.

They go back to their restaurant, and somehow get some halibut, but not enough, and it quickly runs out. During service, Miller overhears a waitperson telling a diner that the halibut ran out, but will be replaced with the Chilean Sea Bass. Miller is not happy; she marches into the kitchen and says something to the effect that an endangered fish will not be served at her party.

When guest judge Jeffrey Steingarten, the food critic for Vogue, comes in, he is first offered the Sea Bass. He too says “It’s endangered,” to which the server retorts,  “Not here it isn’t. We’ve got 25 pounds of it.” Steingarten chuckles at the joke, and then is offered a five-day-old piece of salmon (why this happens, I’m not sure), which he can tell is farmed. “No one should eat farmed salmon,” he later declares.

While I don’t think the fish debacle was ultimately responsible for the red team’s loss this week, it sure played a part. But I was just happy that these issues were being spoken about at all. Just as the Obamas planting an organic vegetable garden at the White House, Nicole Miller saying she won’t serve an endangered fish at her party makes a strong statement. People take notice of such things, and then, hopefully, begin to question their own choices. While I recognize that The Chopping Block was not the place for Steingarten to get on a soapbox and offer why farmed salmon is bad, the fact that he said “No one should eat farmed salmon” so adamantly, hopefully will send viewers to their computers to find out why not.

Related Post - A Meat Eater’s Dilemma: When Both Surf and Turf are Trouble

Is it just me or is there something not quite right about Burger King’s “Whopper Virgins” campaign currently gracing our television screens? For the uninitiated (you “Whopper Virgins virgins” out there), the ad campaign features members of various isolated ethnic groups participating in a burger taste test. The marketing shtik is that since the Romanian villagers, Greenlandic Inuit and Thai Hilltribesmen that star in these commercials have never been exposed to ‘burger culture,’ they can be utilized as objective voices in the Whopper vs. Big Mac debate.

There are number of things that are a little uncomfortable about this experiment. It could be the multinational corporation propagating a food that’s both unhealthy for the consumer and destructive to the world to those who have never seen fast food. It could be the introduction of plastic and paper packaging to a place where taking food ‘to go’ means wrapping it in a banana leaf. Maybe it’s the fact that the product being advertised costs more than a day’s income for the stars of the commercial. Or it could be the way the burger missionaries in the online video marvel at the villagers’ ignorance of hamburger etiquette as the natives foolishly attempt to eat the bun separately from the meat.

Above all that though, there is the fear that I’m watching some tragic episode of imperialism unfold before the cameras. That the invasion of the Burger King’s men will somehow set off some smallpox blanket like cataclysm. Perhaps if I had a degree in post-colonial studies I could articulate it more eloquently, but it seems to me that these Whopper virgins have been well… violated.

Although I’m a total Top Chef junkie, except for the occasional Iron Chef episode, the Food Network usually doesn’t hold my interest. But the other night, while channel surfing, I came upon a promo for an upcoming episode of Dinner Impossible. The basic premise of the show: put a celebrity chef in a very difficult situation, with an unrealistic time limit, and see if they can get the job done.

This season’s star is Michael Symon, a motorcycle-riding, tattooed Iron Chef who, I have to admit, I would put in that “sexy-ugly” category, but I digress. Anyhow, Chef Symon was shown in a kippah as a rabbi explained to him the laws of kashrut, and that he was expected to cook a Passover seder for 100 of his hungriest congregants Uh, Food Network people: We’re coming up on Rosh HaShanah, not Pesach, but never mind.

Naturally, I had to record it, while I nearly wretched my way through Sarah Palin’s speech (sorry, I digress once again).

Symon is from Cleveland, and while I couldn’t tell for sure, the synagogue looked like it was probably Conservative. A local kosher caterer named Marlene was brought in to offer advice and make sure Symon did everything right, and he had two of his usual guys to help.

Before I describe what went down, let me say a word about Symon. He is known on the Food Network as “The King of Pork.” This man loves the pig so much that when the rabbi told him it was forbidden, he pulled his shirt open to show a tattoo of two little piglets holding a banner that says “Got Pork?” on it right above his heart. When he learned that he was cooking a meat meal, so that cheese and butter were also out, he looked absolutely crestfallen when he said, “I can’t use all the things that make my food taste so good: butter, cheese and bacon!”

This is not the first time a celebrity chef has taken on kosher cuisine. The winner of Top Chef’s third season, a Vietnamese-born guy named Hung, went on to do a guest stint at a New York kosher restaurant after undergoing some serious training. (Vietnamese cuisine’s favorite proteins are shrimp and pork, afterall.)

As for Symon, a whole array of meat and veggies were available for his use, as was ground up carp to make gefilte fish. He was allowed to go shopping for additional items, but the rabbi warned him that not only did he have to look for the kosher symbol, but that things had to be kosher for Passover.

Right before getting to work, Symon learned there was one more task: his kugel was going to be compared to a master-kugel maker. I forgot her name, but when she walked in, Symon was flabbergasted to learn that it was his brother-in-law’s mother. Later, Symon divulged that even though he has a Jewish brother-in-law, he has never cooked kosher food in his life.

Symon returned from shopping to have his shredded coconut taken away by the rabbi, since it wasn’t Kosher for Passover. Symon balked, and quickly had to come up with another dessert idea, exchanging a berry dessert with sabayon for the macaroons he was going to make.

Overall, Symon rocked the seder. With Marlene giving advice, he and his guys turned out an amazing matzoh ball soup, brisket with wine-braised vegetables, a potato kugel with fresh dill and smoked salmon (Symon grated all the potatoes by hand, enough for 100 people, since the most of the kitchen equipment was under lockdown for Passover), and a carrot salad replacing the traditional Tzimmes. His gefilte fish was deep-fried, and he added spices and other things to it, declaring he would treat it like he does crab cakes. Later, a congregant said it was the best gefilte fish she had ever had.

It was amusing to watch the bald-headed chef try and keep his kippah on, while grating all those potatoes by hand and getting generally befuddled by the kosher laws. Overall, I thought it was a great idea for the show. As we all know, the kosher-for-Passover dietary restrictions are so strict, which makes it the perfect cuisine to introduce as a challenge to someone who’s not familiar with it.

And the kugel verdict? The congregants loved the meal, but Symon’s competitor’s kugel won out. At the end of the episode, Symon took a bow in front of his diners, saying “You guys sure have a lot of rules.”

And when he was done, he went straight to one of his favorite joints for a bacon-cheeseburger.

Little known fact: I was actually on the Food Network once. The show was an Al Roker on the Road special about food clubs, and I was featured in a segment about a group called Girl Friday in Iowa City. Unfortunately, the episode aired on the first night of Pesach in 2004, so I’ve never seen it.

We made a bunch of great recipes the night they filmed us, and one of them has become a standard in my kitchen. It’s really easy, gorgeous, and very tasty. The recipe comes from Thisbe Nissen, who co-wrote The Ex-Boyfriend Cookbook, and is generally awesome. While we were boiling the beets she kept encouraging someone to use the water to dye her hair purple. Also, I’m pretty sure she got me to say on camera that beets are really sexy.

Anyway, this salad is perfect for brunch or Shabbat lunch. Adding the cheese at the end saves it from turning pink, but if you’re not bothered by fuschia cheese you can add it whenever you want.

Recipe after the jump!

Spinach, Beets and Goat Cheese Salad
1 bag baby spinach leaves, pre-washed, or beet greens, thoroughly washed and chopped

1 bunch beets, boiled until tender, peeled and chopped roughly
2 cups walnuts, chopped
1.5-2 cups crumbled goat cheese (feta works, too, but goat cheese is best)
your favorite vinaigrette dressing
Boil the beets until they’re tender when poked with a fork. I almost always use red beets (much sexier than golden beets) but you can also use the golden variety, which won’t dye the cheese pink.

Let the beets cool, run them under cold water and the peel should slide right off. Chop.

Combine the spinach, beets, and walnuts, and add the dressing. Toss, and then put all the cheese on top.
Yields: 6 big servings, 8 side servings

I’ll admit, I’m pretty neutral when it comes to the Rachael Ray divide. I’ve seen her show, sure, and have been annoyed by her “Yum-O!” as much as everyone else, but when you don’t have a lot of time to spend in the kitchen, I can think of a lot worse things than using pre-made ravioli in a recipe.

But today in the foodie blogosphere, I found this story, which warrants a post over here in Jewish food-dom, if for no other reason, than because it’s so absurd. Ray, a Food Network star, was tapped to do a television advertisement for Dunkin Donuts. (That right there should be disturbing enough, but wait – there’s more.) In said ad, she wore what looked to be a keffiyah, the black and white checkered scarf favored by Yasir Arafat and other Palestinians. (Some believe wearing a keffiyah signifies support for mass terrorism; I believe it is more a symbol of resistance. But that is neither here nor there). A right-wing commentator named Michelle Malkin complained about it and now Dunkin Donuts has pulled the ad.

America may “run on Dunkin,” but it certainly brought Ray’s ad to a dead halt. You can read about it here.

Yeah, Bittman pretty much has it all (jealous sigh…)  That said, you can’t say he doesn’t deserve it – the man’s got chops.  Check out his articulate, Pollan-esque explanation of what’s wrong with the way American’s eat.  Wonder if Batali would agree with his critique?

(Hat tip to Ezra Klein of The American Prospect)