Don’t Do the Gourmet or Designer Food Thing at Home? What Do You Eat While Watching Top Chef?

Don’t Do the Gourmet or Designer Food Thing at Home? What Do You Eat While Watching Top Chef? by Roxanne McDonald

We might not have sushi and frog’s legs ala peanut sauce, but we got fair and affordable and easy-to-make simulations.

I don’t know about you, but when I watch cooking shows (or even dieting shows or shows about competing to lose weight), I get hella cravings. But I don’t have the energy, time, money, or desire (though I must boast I do have some of the skills) to prepare a similar dish I see or crave. So I come up with something relatively close, according to the imagined smells I smell, the crunch I wish to crunch, or the consistency I wish to please my palate with, while watching, say, the delicious preparations on Top Chef.

For example, the week the cheftestants worked with frogs’ legs, what do you think I would obviously substitute? Yep. Fried chicken. Right out of the box.

Course, I don’t go so far as to accompany the replacement frog legs with boxed wine, but a nice chilled chocolate milk, compliments of a dollar-store bottle of Hersey’s or Nestle’s chocolate syrup. And if one is too out and out lazy to microwave some frozen fried chicken, there’s always good and greasy KFC.

For the sweet and creamy mousse, I go with a box of instant chocolate pudding. I can whip it up during a commercial and have it along with the judges who are assessing continuity and clarity and all that for the dreaded lychee panacotta, for example. Or, if you are more diet (ugh) conscious, or want a snappier taste than plain old comfort food pudding, you can mix a large box of instant chocolate pudding with a pint of plain (unflavored) yogurt, which makes a mousse that is substantive and tangy and delightful for any dieter or foodie alike.

With most competitions on Top Chef, the ingredients include some vegetables. I personally dig brussel sprouts (which I sprinkle with parmesan, of course), broccoli, green beans (only those French cut and in a can), and corn. But if you want to get groovy with the greens, you can do a vinaigrette salad with some nuts and dried cranberries that will make you feel like a gourmand for a minute, at least; or you can goop up the ol’ iceberg lettuce with some of the yummiest, fattiest dressing around:

have a box of Hidden Valley Ranch salad dressing packets in your pantry, and whip in the buttermilk for some of the salty, creamy goodness every choke-down-the-vitamins salad deserves.

The benefits are, of course, many: very little prep time required; just as few dishes and pots and pans and utensils to need to have, use, and wash; and no one scrutinizing your fare except you, so no need to worry about that dreaded rejection those poor, pressured cheftestants face every week.
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