Oh Danny Boy, When Are You Going To Get Your Own Show?

Rescue Chef with Danny Boome

Lucy's Gumbo
Chicken and Seafood Gumbo
Blood Orange Lemonade
Grilled Savory Zucchini Flat Bread

The good news is that Danny has left the tri-state area, and, happily, we don’t have to hear him refer to places just outside the city as “Upstate” New York. The bad news is that the concept is the same – helping people make dishes that they’ve enjoyed elsewhere and had little luck cooking on their own.

Freelance writer Rebecca from Texas wants to recreate her mother’s gumbo recipe. I’m still not getting why she would ask DANNY how to make gumbo. Oh wait! I have an idea. ASK YOUR MOM! We’re not told if that’s impossible.

There’s a cooking set-up in the middle of the backyard. THAT looks normal. NOT!!! Instead of a stove, (well, there IS a burner) they use a barbecue for the pots and pans. This is never explained. Maybe Mom cooked on a clown train in uncertain surroundings or maybe Rebecca’s kitchen is being renovated. Danny is cooking outside as if it’s not weird. But everything seems weird to Rebecca.

She is perpetually confused: even as Danny is explaining something as simple as using vegetable oil to make a roux. He adds oil to a hot pot and then stirs in the same amount of flour. It has to cook for a long time, at least 15 minutes, he says, until it’s golden brown. Well, at first he says golden brown. Then, without explaining, he changes it to mahogany brown. Make up your mind.

My authority on a Cajun roux is Paul Prudhomme in his Louisiana Kitchen book of 1984. He refines what Danny says. The oil has to be added to a perfectly clean pan. That’s important if you’ve just been frying chicken. You heat the oil over high heat until it’s just smoking and THEN the flour gets added gradually, being stirred all the time. It should take only 3 to 4 minutes to get a dark brown roux. The vegetables go in next to stop the cooking. PP also calls the roux “Cajun napalm” because it’s capable of bestowing serious burns on the cook, so beware. Danny leaves the roux behind while he cooks it painfully slowly.

Danny slices 3 shallots, while pronouncing them SHALL-lots first and then shall-LOTS. He needs them for a zucchini flatbread, which Rebecca seems never to have associated with her mother’s gumbo…for a good reason. It’s NOT!

Oh, he’s using store-bought pizza dough, but at least it’s a good one. He brushes a baking pan with olive oil. Poor Rebecca is just lost. He stretches the dough to fit the pan and brushes the whole thing with more olive oil and sprinkles over salt. He presses sliced zucchini, which he actually allowed her to do, into the dough followed by the shallots. Danny tells her to grate ½ to 1 cup of Parmesan cheese over the top. 2 cups later, he puts the pan on a preheated medium grill for 20 minutes, with the top down.

Back to the roux, he prepares the triumvirate of Cajun vegetables – chopped celery, green peppers and onions. He lets Rebecca do some of the prep. She has a furrowed brow most of the time, but she does everything that’s asked of her, including the ridiculous camera close-up personal interview “Well, I was a bit suspicious when Danny said we’d be using okra. It’s kind of slimy.”

Honey, you’re making a GUMBO! Chances are it will have OKRA in it. Although, truth to tell, not every one of Paul’s gumbos has okra, but I’m sure your momma’s did.

As usual, Danny doesn’t even trust his cooking companion with the rice. He adds 2 cups of rice to 4 cups of boiling water. He adds the too-big vegetables to the roux.

Danny says she’s going to make her own hot sauce, which can be her signature addition to the gumbo. They chop lots of peppers, seeds and all and it goes into the food processer with canned tomatoes, sugar, apple cider vinegar and garlic. She questions him when he says the heat is in the seeds. I thought it was in the membrane, she says. (She’s right.) “There too”, he says quickly, wanting to change the subject. They process the whole mixture and it goes into a saucepan. The saucepan goes onto the grill, with the top down, to cook. Danny points out that the handle is stainless steel and won’t melt.

The problem with this show is that the other people are incidental to it. Danny doesn’t particularly teach anyone anything or let them do much anyway. I would rather see him in his own kitchen, making his own food, instead of pretending that he’s helping someone.

He takes out the flatbread. (I thought the zucchini should have been cooked first.) Rebecca claims to like it.

They cut 2 lbs. of boneless chicken thighs into 1inch cubes. Danny stirs in bourbon and 6 cups of chicken stock. He adds the chicken. No way does this look like the deep brown it should. It looks positively anemic.

He slices the okra thinly and tells Rebecca it’s the thickening agent. He add tomatoes and bay leaves and says the gumbo will cook for 1 ½ hours. (Paul's don’t cook that long.) He adds shrimp at the end and cooks it for 2 to 3 minutes. My, that looks pale.

I’m not being mean, really, well, ok, just a little, when I say that Cynthia seems a bit…mature to still be trying to duplicate her mother’s gumbo. Isn’t that something you do when you’re younger? By now, she should have asked a relative or experimented on her own enough to figure it out.

But I guess I DO know how she feels somewhat. Very, very, very unfortunately, my own mother is not around and there are times that I’d love to ask her about a certain recipe. Luckily, she left a very detailed recipe box and I have various family members that cook well and have good memories, so I’ve never been completely stumped.

Let’s use this as a lesson, though. Even if your kids can’t stomach being in the kitchen with you (okay, it’s MY kids I’m talking about), WRITE DOWN what you’re doing, especially if it’s a favorite dish. Many years, I give my brother and sister-in-law a favorite recipe for Christmas, plus the pot to cook it in and the other accoutrements needed to cook it. That’s a good thing to give to grown children too. That’s the one thing this episode encouraged me to continue.

Danny plans to serve a Blood Orange Lemonade. Rebecca even squeezes some of the fruit. He mixes 1 cup lemon juice, 1 cup blood orange juice and simple syrup. They cut orange wedges and add sparking water to the mixture. He adds a bit of mint and Danny pours. They toast to Mom.

He spoons the rice in bowls and then the gumbo goes over. She loves it and says it’s to die for. Her mom would be so proud. Okay, unless Mom is on a long, long trip, she’s definitely not coming back to taste it.

This mystery hangs heavy (in my mind at least) during the entire show. By the end of the episode, no other explanation seems plausible. It must be that her mother has gone to her reward.

That’s kind of a downer, especially for a episode that was shown on Mother’s Day weekend. Well, Rebecca, you’ll just have to take Danny’s word for it that you’ve made a good gumbo. In the future, write your recipes down and don’t depend on an energetic Englishman to capture the true essence of your mother’s Cajun cooking. And, Danny, find a real kitchen to cook in next time.

Let's Be Frank - Danny Gets Worse And I'm Insane For Watching Him

Rescue Chef with Danny Boome

Weeknight Family Meal
Mummy Boome's Traditional Shepherds Pie
Whole-Wheat Biscuits
Crustless Apple Pie with Vanilla Ice Cream

Danny Boome is in Hopewell Junction in upstate New York. Of course, with his sense of geography, he’s probably in Times Square.

Mary, a mother of two, has a terrible dilemma. Her boys will only eat meat, pasta and pizza. So how does that make her different from 99.9% percent of the universe? My daughter would only eat white food. I had to introduce vegetables to my son by the ½ teaspoonful.

Anyway, the big thing she wants to learn is how to get her kids to eat more vegetables. This will be a bit of a challenge, because, let’s just say, Mary isn’t the most proficient cook on the block (or, actually, in the neighborhood, state, or even in the stratosphere).

Danny’s solution is nothing short of…COMPLETELY IDIOTIC! He thinks that by making a dish with a mirepoix of 1 lousy onion and 2 not terribly big carrots that THAT will get Mary’s kids to eat vegetables. PULEEZ! Oh wait, am I being too harsh? There IS a stick of celery in there…

So HE dices the mirepoix, because in addition to the lousy recipe idea, he’s still not teaching her how to cook.

Mary, honey, may I give you some advice? Notwithstanding the legal battle brewing over these 2 books, pick one - The Sneaky Chef or Deceptively Delicious - (you could probably use both) and you’re good to go. They will show you how to add a meaningful amount of vegetables to your kid’s food. And if the kids ever find out what you’re doing, then you’ll have the fun of seeing them spit out their food, when they learn there’s spinach in their brownies or beets in their spaghetti sauce.

Incidentally here is a very well thought piece on the disadvantages of this approach. I agree that it doesn’t get them to expand their food choices, “It just teaches them to like macaroni and cheese and brownies”, but sometimes you’re just desperate.

Next, Danny talks complete garbage about how to make this Shepherd’s Pie in advance. He says it’s okay to cut up the (minuscule amount of) vegetables in advance and put them in a bowl of cold water and keep them in the fridge. What??? Who cuts an onion in advance, puts it in water and then sautés it? That’s just crazy talk.

He talks about the minced beef. She doesn’t know what that is.

Next they’re on to the potato topping. Danny doesn’t let Mary anywhere near the potatoes to test them for doneness. It turns out he’s got a good reason.

She has never made mashed potatoes before, on account of her mother being Italian and always serving pasta. Why do I think they were always known as noodles in Mary’s house? Mary has only made mashed potatoes from a box. (Could this have anything to do with Aunt Sandy’s pernicious influence on the American public?)

They proceed with the recipe. There’s nothing particularly objectionable about it, except that he doesn’t let Mary make them herself.

The ONLY reason I’m still sticking around is to see if he puts an extra stash of vegetables somewhere in the Shepherd’s Pie that will make this whole thing make sense.

Wait, it gets worse. Danny replies to Mary’s query about freezing the Shepherd’s Pie in the affirmative. She’s all excited. She says she’s going to make a boatload of them and freeze them. Goodness!

Food Network, this is dumb! This is obviously not an effective recipe (the way Danny’s making it) for sneaking vegetables into a dish. It’s a perfectly serviceable Shepherd’s Pie recipe, BUT Danny has not made it a particularly vegetable intensive one.

It gets more ridiculous from here. For a supposed weekday menu, he has Mary making biscuits with the boys. It’s great that they’re all cooking and having fun. But this has nothing to do with the same meal that Mary is excited about freezing, because she has no time to cook during the week.

WHO is masterminding the concept of this show? It’s all over the place. What exactly is Danny here to do? Is he demonstrating recipes? Is he teaching someone kitchen skills? Or is he there to just look cute and be some kind of a wise guy? Yup to the last question.

Okay, enough! I don’t need to see him sautéing apples and serving them with ice cream, because he’s “too lazy to make a crust”. Who asked him to? How about some poached fruit with yogurt? Or little fruit and yogurt parfaits? Let’s, at least, PRETEND to get some nutrition into these poor boxed-mashed-potato fed boys…

Oy - Danny Boome, you seem nice enough, but you’re about to wear out your welcome in the kitchen…mine at least.

Can Rescue Chef Be Saved?

Rescue Chef with Danny Boome

Fried Chicken Cookoff
Spicy Fried Chicken
Raspberry Iced Tea Punch
Black Bean and Mango Salsa
Sour Cream and Lemon Honey Corn Muffins

There is no question that, Rescue Chef, is an almost exact copy of beloved Tyler’s and hunky Curtis’s shows, but that’s not even the major problem. The biggest issue is that it's simply not well done. The people don’t seem to be in any pressing need of culinary instruction and Danny does little to instruct them.

But on Saturday’s show at least, the recipes themselves may have been reason enough to pay at least a little attention to this athlete/chef. As far as Danny goes, I hate to throw the baby out with the bath water or the recipes out with the bad show.

The initial premise is faulty. Why does someone who cooks regularly against her boyfriend in kitchen challenges need help, anyway? And why is she going to DANNY in particular? And why, oh why, is she asking HIS help making FRIED CHICKEN…almost as ludicrous as his “instruction” of chicken tortillas last week.

There are no real answers to those questions and those no real reason to watch…except one, actually two this time. Two out of the three recipes he made (I'm not counting the dumb iced tea) were actually good, very good, including the fried chicken.

Take a look at this recipe. Spicy Fried Chicken. Danny marinates the chicken in buttermilk and chipotle. I love that idea. He dredges the chicken in equal amounts of flour and cornmeal. That makes it really crunchy. Good thinking. Notice I’m saying HE does this and that, because he still does most of the cooking himself. He also adds WAY TOO MUCH salt. He says TWO tablespoons in the show. The recipe says one tablespoon. Still too much.

I'm not as happy with the Sour Cream and Lemon Honey Corn Muffins. To me, the Indian Head recipe is a classic. It uses equal amounts of flour and cornmeal. Danny’s uses almost 3 times as much cornmeal as flour and again too much salt (2 teaspoons). Plus he uses 1/3 cup of honey. That’s too sweet. A quarter cup is plenty, And does honey even belong in a corn muffin, especially one accompanying fried chicken? The lemon zest (and juice) is weird too.

The last recipe, Black Bean and Mango Salsa, is a real winner. It’s got the standard - black beans, mango and red onion, but Danny takes it up a notch with roasted tomatoes. He adds plenty of cilantro (maybe a bit too much) and lime juice and zest.

Danny should have stopped there, but then he makes Raspberry Iced Tea Punch. I like the fruit macerating part, but Iced Tea WITH Prosecco? Nah, I don’t think so. Leave out the tea and it would be fine, OR leave out the Prosecco.

That’s kind of symbolic of what’s wrong with this show. They should leave out pretending to teach people how to cook and just let Danny cook. Why does everything have to have a gimmick? At least make it one that makes sense.

The only one that needs rescuing on this show is Danny...from the format.

A year ago today…Ina and Jeffrey Sitting In A Tree and…Lifestyles of the Rich and Frying

Danny Does It Again...

And That's Not A Good Thing

But don't worry, I'll teach you how to make rice.

Rescue Chef with Danny Boome
Pomegranate Margarita
Chicken Enchiladas with Green Sauce and Long-Grain Rice

I wanted to give Danny another chance to see if maybe his non-lesson last week to Carla was just a mistake.

Today, he’s in Westfield, New Jersey. I guess his show doesn’t have the budget to go farther. Now this is odd, Art Director Amy, has called upon Danny to help her recreate her abuela’s Chicken Enchiladas.

Ok, really…the guy is Australian, he’s a soccer, or is it rugby player? and if he can’t even SAY the word enchilada he probably doesn’t know how to make them. Plus he says he’s going to teach her how to make the ULTIMATE chicken enchilada, so now he’s not only stolen the entire concept of Food 911, he’s using a phrase synonymous with Tyler’s other show.

Danny gives Amy a white onion to slice up. No instruction or anything, he just hands it to her. When she doesn’t know which end is up, he kind of mocks her and gets her started. Then he gets on with adding oil to a pan and crushing garlic with his knife. Amy peers over to see what’s he’s doing and he sends her back to her task of slicing the onion.

Maybe he should have started with a bit of knife sharpening and showed her HOW to chop and slice an onion. He gets a big miffed when she slices the entire onion – he had told her to do only one half.

He adds the garlic and onions to the pan along with dried chili flakes and more oil.

Danny does show her how to slice a boneless chicken breast in half widthwise. Well, actually there’s not much to show, you just do it. Amy is delighted with the information. (Not that there was any.) See, Danny, she would have gone into spasms if you had showed her how to handle a sharpening steel. SHE is the one who explains that by cutting the chicken in thin strips it will cook more evenly and quickly. Well, I guess she realized that Danny wasn’t going to do it. He cooks the chicken. A bit more seasoning wouldn’t hurt. How about some cumin and chili powder?

You know, this is really a bad show. Amy keeps asking questions, which should have been answered in the normal course of events. “How do you know when the chicken is done?” His answer: “When it’s not pink.” Brilliant, Danny.

Danny starts the green sauce. He picks up an anaheim chili and seems very proud of himself. I just noticed he’s cooking on a portable gas burner. There happens to be Viking stove in the background. We have to hear how Amy has heard of a serrano chili, a jalapeño chili and goodness knows what other chili, but never an anaheim chili. This is riveting television.

Danny places the chili on a flame, then in a bag. He does explain to Amy about removing the waxy skin, but proceeds to do it himself. He scrapes out the seeds and talks about how some folks feel the heat is in the seeds and others think it’s in the veins. Well, I think that issue has been pretty well-covered by now.

He puts the chili into a food processor, (he called it a blender) with ¼ cup of chicken stock, garlic, oregano, salt and pepper. He shows Amy tomatillos. Danny rinses them off and quarters them and adds them to the food processor.

Tomatillo alert – While you certainly may use RAW tomatillos, the majority of recipes call for cooking them. I am by no means an expert in Southwestern or Mexican cooking - hard to believe, I know - but whenever I’ve encountered a recipe calling for raw tomatillos, I always cook them first. I chop them up and cook them in a bit of water or stock for about 8 to 10 minutes. They keep their wonderful fresh flavor, even though they're cooked. It gets rid of the bitter flavor that catches you in the back of throat. Any dissenters?

Danny finishes processing the green sauce ingredients and actually lets Amy pour the mixture into a measuring pitcher. That’s been the highlight of her cooking experience so far – pouring stuff into a pitcher.

He washes 2 cups of long grain rice. WHY in the world is he doing that? Long grain rice does not need to be washed. He cooks it in 3 cups of boiling water for 8 to 10 minutes at a medium simmer. HUH? What kind of way is that to cook long grain rice? Amy will end up burning the rice every time AND undercooking it. Long grain rice couldn’t be any easier to cook, but not this way. He didn’t get any part of it right.

Use these quantities:
1 cup white long grain rice 1 ¾ cup water or stock
2 cups white long grain rice 3 ¼ cups water or stock
3 cups white long grain rice 4 cups water or stock
4 cups white long grain rice 5 cups water or stock
(Get it? Starting at 3 cups of rice, you use one more cup of water than rice.)

Place the measured rice and water into a heavy bottomed saucepan and bring to a boil, an hysterical boil. Cover and turn down the heat to low, as low as possible. Cook for exactly 20 minutes without disturbing it. (No kidding. Don’t open the lid.) If you’re not ready to serve it, simply move it to the back of the stove and leave it covered. It will hold up just fine for up to an hour.

Danny gets ready to assemble the enchiladas. He has a small baking dish ready, which he doesn’t grease or anything. HE pours a cup of the green sauce (he’s made 2 cups) in the bottom of the dish.

He says to put a couple of tablespoons of oil in a pan to soften the tortillas. The recipe says to use one cup of oil. He turns the tortillas in the oil and then blots them a bit. Then he puts a bit of filling in the middle and rolls up the tortilla nice and tight. Gosh, he even lets Amy do one. I can’t tell who rolls the rest, but HE pours the rest of the green sauce over and HE covers the entire top surface with cheese. Okay, I really think Amy could have handled that. HE even puts it in the oven himself, 350°F for 15 to 20 minutes. He makes a point of telling her to preheat the oven. That seems to be his most emphatic tip of the day.

He shows Amy the finished rice. He stirs it with a…SPOON?! He’s mushing it all up. NEVER use a spoon, always a fork. He adds the juice of half a lime and some coriander and again stirs it with a spoon. He’s really making a mess of it. Amy is worried about how it will taste. The taste will be fine, but the texture will be like porridge when he’s finished with it.

For a margarita with pomegranate juice (it sounds kind of like an old lady drink), Danny squeezes lime on the rim of a margarita glass and dips it into salt. Oh, he’s actually letting Amy help do the next one.

He pours 4 oz. of tequila into a big jar. He counts to 4 as a way of measuring 4 oz. Amy is impressed. He adds Triple Sec and pomegranate juice. I think he’s using FRESH pomegranate juice. Now that's a bit exciting.

Danny shakes the mixture in the jar (?) and pours it into the glasses, over ice. Why is he putting ice in the glass? It's so painful to take a nice big sip of a wonderful cocktail (well, I don’t know wonderful this will be) and get a big lump of ice hitting your upper lip. No, shake it really well over lots of ice and strain it into the glass. Gosh, Danny, you don’t seem to know anything.

Then he spends far too much time and he’s far too impressed with himself for cutting a piece of lime so it will stay on the rim of a glass. He adds a splash of soda water to each glass. Oh, by the way, there is no lime juice in these margaritas and the recipe has it listed as optional. That’s wrong, isn’t it?

Danny plates up the enchiladas and mushy rice (on only one plate). Amy loves it. They toast to Granny.

She goes back to Texas and makes it for Dad. He says he likes it. What’s he supposed to say? The cameras are right there.

Actually, the recipe looked fine, except for not cooking the tomatillos. But did Danny teach us anything we didn’t know? Did he put a spin on a technique that would help us to remember it or make it easier to carry out? Did he use an unusual ingredient or a known one in a different way?

No, no and no. AND he wasn’t even all that helpful to Amy. She could have looked up the recipe and cooked it herself. It wouldn’t have been any different from having Danny in her kitchen, because he didn’t make any effort to teach her anything.

Look, he’s a nice guy, kinda cute and according to his biography, he’s quite an experienced cook. As long as it’s all true, and even if it’s not, it’s clear that the Food Network has come up with a really dumb concept for him. Why not have his actual cooking skills on display? Why have him pretending to teach somebody? Why not let Danny just be Danny?

A year ago today…And the livin' is easy........I wish the chef were and…Healthy Schmealthy, Just Make It Good!!!

Make Boome for Danny

Rescue Chef with Danny Boome

Short Rib Rescue
French Green Beans

Short Rib Bourguignonne

Baked Figs with Chopped Pistachios in Mascarpone

Dijon Mashed Potatoes

The first thing that annoyed me about Danny Boome's new Rescue Chef on the Food Network is that he repeatedly referred to Yorktown Heights as "Upstate New York". It's actually in the upper reaches of Westchester County and NOT upstate. I thought if he doesn’t even know that, what else is inaccurate?

The other thing is that I’m not sure why this show is really necessary. There’s already a similar one with that really hot guy with the big schnoz…HE IS cute. Danny’s okay, but the premise is just not new…not that ever stopped anyone. Actually, that seems to be essential for success nowadays – an idea that’s almost exactly like an already successful idea. We’ll see.

Danny is “rescuing” a young married woman, Carla, who wants to recreate her wedding feast for an anniversary. I never thought of that before. I guess it’s not a new idea, because one blogger I read regularly had the same thought, and I’m sure others have too.

Danny shows a chart for a split second that’s supposed to educate us where the short ribs come from. It’s hard to absorb that in 2 seconds, but he’s anxious to get on with it.

He gets flour ready with lots of seasoning and coats the short ribs. I like Ina’s (or is it Michael’s?) trick of seasoning the meat itself BEFORE it gets dredged, rather than relying on the flour mixture to do the job.

Danny adds the ribs to a pan heated with butter and olive oil. Let Carla do it! (Plus he doesn’t explain why he’s using both – butter for flavor and olive oil for its higher smoking temperature.)

Next he teaches her about a mirepoix a mixture of aromatic vegetables used to flavor the base of soups, stews and sauces. He says we’re going to “baton” the vegetables. Well, actually, Danny, a mirepoix is not “batoned”, it’s diced. And he should be teaching her knife skills, which he really doesn’t, so she struggles a bit. (The FN recipe does say to DICE the vegetables.)

Next Danny turns the ribs over. Why doesn’t SHE do it? He even says that the browning evenly is the hardest part of the entire dish…so let her do it!

She slices an onion, not well, while he makes lardons. (The recipe calls them lardoons. I think of lardoons as being STRIPS of pork and lardons as being diced pieces.) He removes the meat from the pot and adds the whatever you wanna call them to the pot. And by the way, are YOU doing the cooking, Danny, or should she? He turns down the heat and adds the vegetables. (I wouldn’t have added them so soon.) They quarter the mushrooms and add them last (but still too soon.) He doesn’t remind her that whenever you cook mushrooms, it should always be on a high heat. Add them, stir them around in the fat and leave them for a few moments to pick up a nice color.

They peel Yukon Gold potatoes.

To a break…Does the Food Network realize we talk about Giada’s zealous Italian pronunciation? A new promo for her show has her teaching us how to say various Italian food words. It’s actually funny, although they aren’t the over the top ones like spah-gitt-tee.

Back to Danny. He’s stirring the vegetables. He tells Carla about deglazing while, of course, HE does it. She does get to stir for a minute. He says to use between a half a bottle of wine and a full bottle. NO, not to deglaze! He’s confusing the notion of deglazing with using wine for cooking. He needs to make it clear to Carla that FIRST you deglaze by picking up all the little brown bits in the pan with the wine (or whatever you decide to use) and let that mostly boil away and THEN you turn your attention to whatever liquid you want to cook with.

The point of this show SHOULD BE to cook a recipe WITH the person (not FOR) in a way that demonstrates various basic cooking techniques that he or she can then apply to other situations.

After Danny pours the whole bottle in, he adds the meat back to the pan and adds beef stock just to cover the meat. He cooks the short ribs in a 350°F oven for 2 to 3 hours. He does mention that it’s important to preheat the oven.

He teaches Carla how to get potatoes ready for cooking earlier in the day – peel them and put them in water with lemon juice to prevent browning. Again, he’s so busy slicing the potatoes that he forgets to show her how to. He adds them to simmering salted water, which he says cooks them more evenly. (Than what? Cooking them in cold water?)

To cook green beans, he places them in a colander on top of the boiling potatoes. Carla is really impressed with that idea. (She must not get out much.) Now this is weird…He puts the beans in a bowl and spoons over some of the hot water from the potatoes to “keep them warm”, which, of course, will also help to overcook them and lose their nice color. There’s a reason that many cooks follow the shocking method after cooking. If he doesn’t want to do that, then he should just tell her to steam the beans for 5 minutes before serving, and there’s no issue about keeping them warm.

9 times out of 10, I roast my green beans these days, which does require a bit of olive oil and salt. I place them on a foil-lined baking sheet and throw them into whatever oven I have going, anywhere from 350° to 400°, for 20 minutes or so. I find these are so good, they don’t even have to be served hot. Whatever - just don’t pour hot water over waiting vegetables.

The recipe on the website does use the plunging into ice water method. Why doesn’t he do that on the show?

Danny lets Carla drain the potatoes, but he looks a bit concerned as she does it. He never does address her number one concern, which is how to tell when they’re done. Finally he says to use a sharp knife to test them. There should be no resistance when it meets the middle of the potato. He adds in a couple tablespoons butter and mashes them. He grates in a bit of fresh nutmeg, He adds a little coarse mustard (is that an EEW or an AHH, I can’t decide) and mashes that in. Carla tastes it and doesn’t look totally convinced that she likes it.

Danny pulls out the short ribs. He tastes. He adds a bittersweet chocolate, just a little, to give the sauce “more emotion”. Oh please, he’s only doing that to impress the gal. Interestingly, the recipe on the website does not include the chocolate. So what, they decided at the last minute that the show needed a little more voom? Dumb.

The beans are still keeping warm. He chops the ends off the figs, which is an interesting choice of dessert, because Carla doesn’t like figs. And what this has to with her wedding dinner, I don’t know. He cuts a cross in the end of the figs “to let the jamminess out”.

Then he shows her how to make quenelles out of the mashed potatoes. I’m all for using French vocabulary in cooking, but maybe it’s more important that the person learn the technique first and THEN learn the word. Here, she’s not learning HOW to do given task that well, but she does learn the French word for it. Again, dumb.

The mashed potatoes go in the middle of the plate. HE lays the short rib on top, puts the not-terribly green beans on the side and tops with the sauce.

He switches back to the figs, putting them in a 300°F oven for 10 minutes, until they’re “nice and squishy”. He says you can buy pistachios out of the shell. Good luck with that, Carla. The last time I tried, I couldn’t find them. Danny mixes mascarpone with honey and dollops that on top of the figs with shavings of chocolate and a sprinkling of pistachios. (What does chocolate have to do with this?)

We see the follow-up. Carla made the dinner. She forgot to turn on the oven for the short ribs, but eventually she got them cooked. Her hubby liked it all, so did she, but it didn’t look like the earth moved. I guess, for some people, that doesn’t happen in the kitchen.