Amuse-Biatch Gallery of Bad Jews

Lest you think, possums, that this is a reference to Inglourious Basterds, we hasten to add that this is taken from Robin Leventhal’s statement, “Well, I’m a bad Jew, and pork would be my vice.” Bad Jews are, of course, our favorites. (In our youth, we had a Jewish boyfriend—uh, same-sex boyfriend, as Ash Fulk would put it—whose preferred Saturday morning breakfast item was a little sliced turkey with a lot of bacon on a bagel. Eating it in bed (1) on the Sabbath (2) with a Catholic (3) of the same sex made it a treyf trifecta plus two, but we digress.)

Speaking of which, didn’t you love it when, after Robin’s pronouncement, those sly Bravo editors cut to the chercest of the Chosen, the Lioness of the tribe of Judah, Ms. Gail Simmons herself? Gail, fresh from bathing in Michael Chiarello’s mushroom polenta on Top Chef Masters, tossed her head ever so slightly and laughed her “Song of Solomon”-inspiring, Wong Kar Wai-esque version of Anita Ekberg’s Trevi-fountained laughter in La Dolce Vita…uh, excuse us, possums, while we remind ourselves that we are gay.

So, without further ado, here are the shocking pictures of Eli Kirshtein promoting bacon and handling shrimp.

Elia Aboumrad: “Niña Fresa” Brings Home the Bacon

Our Elia Aboumrad, the most “niña fresa”* of all, has finally provided Raggaydy Andy with the recipe for her much-lauded strawberry hors d'oeuvre from last week's holiday episode.
In the interest of service journalism, and due to a lack of new episodes and material, we shamelessly reproduce the recipe below, albeit in a more phonetically accurate version and with a few interpolations of our own in brackets:

ELIA'S STRAWBERRIES**

200g of heavy cream
80g of mascarpone cheese
30g of honey
10g of rosemary
Chopped [b]acon

You weep*** the hevee creem and then incorporate the rest of thee ingreedients with a weesk [wheech you are neverr souposed to leeck], chop the rosemaree and add eet at thee end.

Then, weeth a piping bag, squeeze over strawberries that you have previoslee cot in huff and spreenkle on top a leettol beet of chopped creespee bacon.****

*The literal translation of this in Spanish is “strawberry girl,” but it is Mexican slang for a girl from a wealthy background, with all that that implies.

**We're shocked at so prosaic, and so potentially naughty, a name; Strawberries à la mode du Pedregal de San Angel, or Fraises “Niña Fresa” seem more appropriate as potential names for the dish.

***Did anyone else catch the immortal exchange between Stewie Griffin and Brian on Sunday night about whether that white stuff that people occasionally put atop pie slices should be pronounced "Cool Wip" or "Cool Who-ip"?

****We thought the recipe originally called for pancetta (delightfully rendered in Elia's accent), and we know it's not quite the same thing as bacon, so what gives?

First Reaction: A Bunch of Snotty Little Kids

You could feel it.

Even we could feel it, and we had a head cold. Yes, with this episode, this season of "Top Chef" at long last hit its stride. At first we were a little thrown off, but once we got what this episode was about, namely, slumming, we got it. And we'll get into a bite-sized disquisition on this a little later today, but first let us start with what we learned from this episode.

We learned that Breathe-Rite strips don't work.

We learned that Marcel is really Liberace reincarnated as a Valley girl.

We learned that Padma is, or wants to be, the People's Princess.

We learned that only 38% of Americans eat in "fine dining" restaurants.

We learned that the Redondo Seaside Lagoon existed (and we're from Southern California).

We learned that when it comes to ice cream, Heston Blumenthal of The Fat Duck is He Who Must Not Be Named.

We learned that Humbert Humbert is a diabetic.

We learned about the dangers of sugar for one's posterior and one's periodontist.

We learned that Cliff, who won the Quickfire Challenge, is poised to become "Top Chef's" version of "Project Runway's" Michael.

We learned that bacon can be sassy, that food is for eating, that you can screw up a steak sandwich, that Betty has more nicknames than we can keep track of, and that her lungs are a force of nature.

Finally, we learned that when it rains, it pours, and that Emily is even saltier than she declared. And just when we began to love her, we lost her.