Cooking with beer and more Iron Cheffery

In today's edition of Why the L Train is the Bane of My Existence: We had to be at the Chelsea Market by 9 am. We left the house at 8.30. Plenty of time to get to 8th Avenue and walk one block, right? Right. The L train is Murphy's Law as a locomotive. Anytime you really need to get somewhere on time, you won't. Because the L train hates you. We ended up getting off at 3rd Ave at 8.54 and tried to hail a cab. Ha. I don't know which one of us brainiacs thought that we could hail a cab on 14th street and 3rd Ave at 8.54 am with ease. Miraculously, somehow, we got to the Chelsea Market and the Food Network studios at 9.04. Whew.

Gerald's friend Andy, who works for Iron Chef and got us the tickets, met us downstairs, and whisked us up the elevator after we signed our life away onto some non disclosure agreements. I still don't know what I signed off on. We waited for a bit outside whilst they did some preliminary filming, and then we were in.

Since I don't know what I signed, and I don't know if Food Network has Google alerts, I won't tell you too much. Well, I really can't tell you too much because we left before Iron Chef Cat Cora's judging and the final decision. It was 12.30 and that shit was still filming. Meanwhile, we'd been sitting in kitchen stadium for over 3 hours with the amazing smell of a billion butters (the secret ingredient! shhh), and all I had was a small bowl of Muesli before I left and we needed to eat. Stat. The whole time I was sitting there, I was daydreaming of Amy's Bread and the Italian market. I was really excited to see that one of the butters they had was actually the one that I'm currently using! Hooray for Vermont Butter and Cheese!

Anyhoo, during breaks, we got to talk to one of the sous chefs, Michael, who was really really cool, and got to say a few words to ALTON BROWN (!!!!) and the Chairman. Did I mention Isaac Mizrahi was there? He was so wonderfully queeny and great.

We left the Chelsea Market after I bought Janine some Italian cherry tree honey, and got us some black peppercorns and roasted fava beans. Omg they're so good. Highly recommend.

So how do I not cook an interesting, okay maybe not super interesting, but jazzy nonetheless dinner, after watching some of the most amazing meals I've seen cooked earlier in the day? I can't. So I did. I was really inspired by Mary's use of Guinness in her mustard sauce. There was leftover beer in the fridge. And I had some Russian fingerling potatoes. And parsley. And fresh mozz. Something good can come of this.

I roughly chopped some spring garlic, including the stems, and did a quick saute in some olive oil. Threw in the fingerling potatoes and some salt and let it get a little brown. Then came the Czech beer I found in my fridge. Was that yrs Mikey? Let it sit, covered. Once it absorbed most of the beer, I threw a smidge more in there. Once it was totally absorbed, I added some fresh pepper (after a comedic interlude with peppercorns and my food processor, which I do NOT recommend doing) and finished off with my Iron Chef butter and some parsley. Then I sliced the last of the fresh mozz and put it in the pan for a super quick fry.

I suppose I should start taking pics of the food. But I'm a lazy uploader, as I've mentioned, and I forget that I have a camera as well. I've commissioned husband to be official photographer due to my shortcomings. Maybe that'll make this shit hella less wordy and have actual pics. We'll see how that all works out.

In closing, props to me for 2 blog posts in a row, and cook with beer, it's actually good. If you know me, you know that's a bold statement because I hate beer. No, don't even try to talk me out of it...I've tried to like beer for the past ten years, it just doesn't work with my palate.

What should I experiment with next?