Food Network Star

by Ian Jackman

  10 ounces cremini mushrooms

  2 tablespoons unsalted butter

  Kosher salt

  Freshly cracked black pepper

  6 ounces softened goat cheese

  3 tablespoons olive oil

  1 recipe Mushroom Wine Sauce (recipe follows)

  ¼ cup chopped fresh parsley leaves, for garnish

  Special equipment: kitchen twine

  MUSHROOM WINE SAUCE

  1½ cups dried shiitake mushrooms

  2 cups boiling water

  ¼ cup white wine

  ¼ cup chicken stock

  1 tablespoon unsalted butter, cold

  Kosher salt

  Freshly cracked black pepper

  1. Lay the chicken breasts on a piece of plastic wrap, place another piece on top, and pound with a meat mallet or rolling pin until they are each about ½ inch thick. Set aside.

  2. Stem the mushrooms and put the caps and stems in a food processor; pulse until finely chopped. Melt the butter in a medium-size sauté pan over medium-high heat and add the mushrooms. Sauté until the mushrooms have released their liquid and the liquid has evaporated, about 10 minutes. This is called a duxelle. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Set aside.

  3. Coat each chicken breast with 2 tablespoons of goat cheese and top with ¼ cup of the duxelle. Roll each breast up burrito-style: begin from the bottom, roll into the middle, and tuck in the sides as you finish. Tie the roll with three pieces of twine, securing the ends and then wrapping in the middle. Season with salt and pepper.

  4. Heat the olive oil in a large sauté pan over medium-high heat. Cook the chicken roll-ups on all sides, cooking in two batches, until they are cooked through and golden brown, 12 to 15 minutes. Allow the rolls to sit 5 minutes before removing the twine and slicing each one into 4 to 5 slices. Top with the remaining duxelle and several spoonfuls of the Mushroom Wine Sauce. Garnish with the parsley.

  MUSHROOM WINE SAUCE: Place the shiitakes in a mixing bowl and add the boiling water. Allow the mushrooms to soak for 15 to 20 minutes, until the liquid gives off a rich, earthy fragrance. Strain, reserving the liquid. Thinly slice the mushrooms and put aside. In a small sauté pan over medium-high heat, bring the mushroom liquid to a strong boil and reduce by half, about 10 minutes. Add the wine and the stock and reduce by half again, 3 to 5 minutes. Add the sliced shiitakes. Remove the pan from the heat and add the butter, swirling the pan until it’s incorporated and the sauce is glossy. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

  Prep Time: 10 minutes • Cook Time: 15 minutes • Inactive Prep Time: 15 to 20 minutes • Ease of Preparation: easy

  Eggs, Dressed Up

  For Jag, Rory, and Amy, the last stop was Rachael Ray’s studio, where they had to demo a signature dish live in five minutes. The focus would be on the storytelling. For Rory, Rachael was a calming influence. “She gives off this ‘Hey, it’s going to be okay’ feeling.”

  Amy talked to Rachael about cooking a dish that reminded her of a time before she’d had kids. Eggs, “dressed up, a little chichi, a little fancy-schmancy,” or, as Rachael said, “Uptown eggs.” Amy talked through her piperade and plated it with lentils and some basil. It was family-style and not too perfect. Amy plugged Next Food Network Star, and her time was up.

  “The eggs are a bistro dish, and the piperade often goes on an omelet, so they go with the coddled eggs just fine. The only problem is it can be a little messy with the peppers and the ham. I plated it on Rachael Ray and thought, ‘This does not look good.’ You’re either going to dump it on the ramekin so you can’t see the egg or spoon it onto the side, where it looks like little worms trailing over the edge. Flavorwise, it works really well.

  “You have think about what it looks like. People can’t use the normal senses they usually bring to food, so the only things they get are you and your luscious descriptions and what they can see, so it better look good. I’ll serve the eggs with a salad or sautéed mushrooms, asparagus, grilled zucchini—however you’d serve an omelet.”

  —Amy Finley

  EGGS EN COCOTTE with Basque Piperade

  Recipe courtesy Amy Finley

  Yield: 4 servings • Prep Time: 25 minutes • Cook Time: 40 to 45 minutes • Ease of Preparation: easy

  FOR THE EGGS

  2 cups water

  2 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened

  8 large eggs

  Kosher salt

  Freshly ground black pepper

  ¼ cup heavy cream

  ½ cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese

  Special equipment: 4 (1-cup capacity) ramekins

  FOR THE PIPERADE

  2 tablespoons olive oil

  3 ounces prosciutto, about 8 slices, cut into ¼-inch strips

  1 small onion, finely diced

  1 red bell pepper, seeds and ribs removed, cut into 1 by ¼-inch strips

  1 green bell pepper, seeds and ribs removed, cut into 1 by ¼-inch strips

  1 garlic clove, minced

  1 (14½-ounce) can diced tomatoes

  ¼ teaspoon crushed red pepper (optional)

  Salt

  Freshly ground black pepper

  1 tablespoon chopped fresh basil leaves

  1. Preheat the oven to 375°F.

  2. FOR THE EGGS: In a small saucepan, bring the water to a boil.

  3. Coat the bottom of each ramekin with the butter. For each serving, crack 2 eggs into a small bowl, being careful not to break the yolks. Carefully slide the eggs into a prepared ramekin. Season each with salt and pepper, drizzle with 1 tablespoon of the cream, and sprinkle with 1 tablespoon of the Parmesan. Set the ramekins into a medium-size glass or ceramic baking pan, allowing at least 1 inch of space between them. Transfer the pan to the bottom rack of the oven and pour the boiling water into it, being careful not to splash any into the ramekins. Cover the pan with aluminum foil and bake for 12 to 15 minutes, until the whites are set but the yolks are still a bit runny. While the eggs are baking, prepare the piperade.

  4. FOR THE PIPERADE: In a large skillet over medium heat, heat the olive oil, then cook the prosciutto until it begins to crisp. Add the onion and sauté until lightly golden. Add the red and green pepper and sauté until they just begin to soften. Stir in the garlic and cook until fragrant, 30 seconds to 1 minute. Add the tomatoes and crushed red pepper. Allow the mixture to stew over medium-low heat until the liquid has evaporated and the tomatoes are heated through. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

  5. Remove the skillet from the heat and add the basil. Divide the piperade among the ramekins (you will have extra) and serve on a small plate, piping hot.

  “The Rachael Ray show was the best time of my life—hands down! That is what I have always wanted to do, what I still want to do, and I won’t give up until it happens!”

  —Rory Schepisi

  Rachael Ray: A Q&A

  You seem to enjoy working with the finalists.

  I really do, it’s a lot of fun. I’ve always considered myself completely unqualified to be on food television so I am proof positive that in America, anything can happen. And if you have a relationship with the audience, if you’re someone who has a story to tell and you love food, anyone can truly be the next Food Network Star. I am the embodiment of that. I enjoy working with the group as it gets smaller, giving them advice on how to loosen up enough to let the story come through. I believe that food television is not really so much about the food as about the storytelling. Engaging a person in your personality is far more important than in technically schooling them on how to prepare a dish.

  Guy Fieri is the embodiment of that. It doesn’t matter what he’s talking about, you just want to listen. He’s fun and it’s infectious and you just want to be a part of whatever he’s got that’s making him feel that good.

  You don’t have to worry about helping them with a Point of View . . .

  The hardest trick is coming up with your thumbprint—what is your bag going to be? What is their 30 Minute Meals? Food Network has got
so big that it becomes tougher to come up with something new because it’s so diverse. And now there is Cooking Channel too. It becomes progressively harder with each round to reinvent the wheel.

  Do you empathize with what the finalists are going through?

  Of course. My first time at Food Network I did a pilot of 30 Minute Meals on Emeril’s set and I set a pan on fire. They had been preheating the pan for an hour unbeknownst to me and I poured olive oil in it and the flames shot up as far as I could see. I wanted to throw up.

  Now are you able to forget the camera is there?

  I am. Everyone is different. I like to know the camera people’s names. When I first started it was Camera One, Camera Two and I said, “Can we just call the cameras by the names of the people standing behind them?” I like to have a conversation with my friend Jay or my friend Dante or my friend Hugh. The more I can break down that wall the more comfortable I think the audience will be.

  Do you get nervous now?

  No, not at all if there is food involved. If I’m at Food Network I’m very comfortable. If I’m on the daytime show and the President or an Oscar winner is coming in, you get a little excited. I don’t know if I’m nervous or super-excited to sit down and get to know that person.

  The Food Network studio is your office?

  It’s like hanging out in a really big kitchen. When people come over to my house I invite them so they are there for a lot of the preparation. The kitchen has always been the heart of the home I grew up in and the home I live in. It’s great to have work feel like being at home.

  How would you have done on Next Food Network Star?

  I don’t think I would have gone in for the competition. I fell into all of this quite by accident so I never perceived myself as belonging with that group of people. I don’t think I would have been brave enough to do it to begin with.

  Do you think you could be a judge on the show?

  I could never make the decisions. I just don’t have the heart. I’d like to think that I’m pretty good at making finalists feel comfortable enough to get the best performance out of them but I would be equally poor at breaking their hearts because I know how hard it is. That’s what I love about working with the show. They look to me to do the mentoring role and it’s all fun and they do all the dirty work. I feel a little bit guilty about it. But not very!

  How was Iron Chef for you?

  The longest most horribly nerve-wracking stomach-curdling experience of my life and I would never be dumb enough to do it again.

  Do you have any advice for a finalist on Iron Chef?

  I have no advice. The day I was on I hadn’t slept all night and I was paler than I had ever been in my entire life. I was wearing beat-up jeans and had my hair pulled back and looked absolutely miserable. Gorgeous Giada comes out with her hair done and a beautiful chef coat with embroidery. She looked like a Disney movie, as if animated birds were going to be chirping around her head. Bobby is my good friend but he is very intimidating in that context. My partner was Mario and he’s how I got into it to begin with. He said, “Ah come on, it’ll be fun.” And I got there and I said, “Mario, this isn’t fun!”

  You said the best advice you were ever given was to smile all the time . . .

  Everyone knows the camera puts a couple of pounds on but they don’t think about what that really means. Everything you do is bigger on TV except being too big. If you talk in a big booming voice it seems quite normal. If you make a frown you look like the most miserable person on the planet. If you are not smiling you look like you are about to cry. Things get very distorted when you are inside that little box. What feels really over the top comes over as just being in an okay mood. You have to be explosive like Guy Fieri to come across as even an excited or an upbeat person. It is really hard to get that across to people when you are trying to help them be on camera. That is why Sara Moulton’s words were so true. You have to smile all the time for no apparent reason. If you catch sight of yourself on a monitor—I never watch myself on TV but you can’t help it on set—you look really messed up if you are not smiling. You look really depressed.

  So there’s almost no such thing as being over the top . . .

  Exactly. That’s weird. It’s tough to get used to that.

  What do people mean when they say “be yourself?”

  You have to do whatever makes you the most comfortable. You have to look at yourself and ask, “Is my sense of humor the best thing I have going for me?” “Do I know a lot about the history of food?” What was great about Mario’s show was that he knew so much about the history and where the recipes came from. Not only was he charming and larger than life but he could teach you a lot without it feeling like you were being taught. Do you love having a party? With Emeril you didn’t realize you were learning a recipe because there was a live band and he was telling jokes with people sitting at the counter so it felt like a big cocktail party. Figure out what makes you feel your best.

  Are the challenges a fair test?

  I’m not sure if anyone should be thinking on their feet how to coat a piece of fish in fruity cereal. I don’t want that question answered. It’s a classic training technique—the mystery box. And it’s television—of course they are going to come up with the most ridiculous thing and no, I don’t want to eat it. And I think there is very limited use for marshmallow. But that’s just me.

  In Season Four, some of the finalists had a hard time working with the kids. . . .

  It’s the toughest thing of all. I have a children’s charity and it’s still super-challenging if we have a kid on our show. You are trying to do whatever you can to make the child feel comfortable or attract an audience with children without losing your balance, keeping adults entertained and the food interesting. Any time you layer in animals and children it becomes a lot harder.

  What’s the hardest thing for the finalists?

  It’s the whole thing. Being in a studio surrounded by cameras with lots of lights. It’s weird and takes a lot of getting used to. It’s disconcerting to hear voices in your head too. [Producers talking on an IFB device.] They use them sparingly—if you forget an ingredient they will say, “You wanted tomato in that.” Mostly they are time cues. Prompters are hugely distracting and I use them as little as possible. Reading anything on a prompter is ridiculously hard to do without letting people know you are reading, by squinting at it or reading back and forth.

  And you have to get the recipe done in the time frame . . .

  They tell you day one it is not your job to stop under any circumstances. That’s for the directors. I’d only stop if something dramatic happens, like I literally fall down. You just keep going. One time we’d just finished filming 30 Minute Meals and it was my birthday and they brought out thirty little cupcakes. I leaned in to blow out the candles and I set both sides of my hair on fire. I wish the cameras had been running for that.

  Some of the women are cooking in heels, which would seem to make it harder . . .

  It’s tough to do anything in high heels. Women are more conscious of their look and they have every right to be paranoid because it matters more. Unfortunately it is still not an even playing field. I do forget the camera’s on; I never forget when I am in high heels.

  The show asks a lot of the winner . . .

  Finalists don’t consider that they are going to become in one way or another a celebrity. I think it’s a small and fairly reasonable price to pay for all the fun and great opportunities it affords you. Being on food television, they have to be very open about themselves. You’re in somebody’s home, in the kitchen and they have to trust you. You have to give them more of yourself than you think or they’re not going to believe it.

  So people feel that they know you . . .

  You have to allow them to to some extent.

  In Season Six you directed finalists’ pilots—how was that?

  I loved it. It was so fun. I loved being on the other side of the camera and I’d love to do that again
. That’s something I am definitely qualified to do: directing food television.

  With a Twist

  Rory had a great time with her Blue-Collar Texas House-Fire Steaks, Chuck Wagon Potatoes, and Grilled Asparagus.

  Off the bat Jag wielded his achiote oil, or “Evoo Red,” as he called it. He played to the crowd: “How many you guys like lobster?” “The Italians say that it is taboo to add Parmesan cheese to seafood. But I’m not Italian, guys, so you know what? Let’s have a good time.”

  “Jag did something on Rachael Ray that no one else has been able to do—he just took the crowd. He has an incredible energy.”

  —Bobby Flay

  LINGUINI AND LOBSTER CARIBE

  Recipe courtesy Joshua Adam Garcia

  Yield: 4 servings • Prep Time: 40 minutes • Cook Time: 20 minutes • Ease of Preparation: intermediate

  ¼ cup plus ½ teaspoon kosher salt, divided

  1 Spanish onion, halved

  4 lobster tails (2 pounds), shells reserved, meat cleaned and roughly chopped

  ½ bunch culantro or cilantro, 10 sprigs left whole, 3 tablespoons leaves, chopped

  3 tablespoons achiote oil (recipe follows), annatto seeds reserved

  2 tablespoons unsalted butter, divided

  12 ounces linguini or your favorite pasta

  ¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

  2 cloves garlic, thinly sliced

  2 Roma tomatoes, seeded and roughly chopped (⅔ cup)

  ¼ cup white wine

  ¼ teaspoon crushed red pepper

  ¼ cup high-quality chicken broth

  ACHIOTE OIL

  3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

  ½ teaspoon annatto seeds

  1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Stir in the ¼ cup salt until dissolved. Add half of the onion, the lobster shells, the culantro sprigs, and the annatto seeds. Reduce the heat and simmer for 30 minutes. Pour through a fine-mesh strainer into another pot and return to a boil.