by Monica Y. Hong
And then there were five. Holy guacamole we’ve been tuning into Top Chef Texas for three months now! And Ed is still alive. He deserves a giant piece of cake and a huge glass of milk. Insert your favorite snack here and offer it to chef Edward Lee!
The episode starts off with Ed throwing off the covers, getting out of bed wearing a suit jacket and a button down shirt with crazy wolverine hair saying, “It’s all about business today.” Wolfman Jack has the right attitude, but he needs to put some pants on! His silliness helps preface an episode which stars guest judge Pee-Wee Herman! I know you are, but what am I?
For the quickfire challenge, the five remaining “cheftestants” have 20 minutes to serve up some of their most creative and delicious pancakes for Pee-Wee and Padma. Ed decides to draw from his favorite parts of the breakfast treat by making little crispy drizzles of batter rather than a whole silver dollar or full-pan pancake. He plates these scrumptious buttery bits with blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, bacon and brûléed marshmallow. Hand it over!
Ed impresses Pee-Wee with his whimsical play on pancakes, beats out some predictable lemon ricotta offerings and wins his first quickfire! And five grand! We can officially say we are proud of Ed for bringing home the bacon. Continue Reading »
by Monica Y. Hong
This week on Top Chef we put all our weight behind Chef Edward Lee, our last Korean American hopeful. Six chefs remain in San Antonio and with last week’s near perfect meal, the “cheftestants” cannot screw this up. Roll tape. Check out this week’s misfires.
Cut to the quickfire challenge where the chefs are tested on their precision and ability to think, well, quick. They have to prepare a dish highlighting the ingredients of shrimp, corn and pasta in 40 minutes. There is, of course, a catch. Within that 40 minutes, they have to peel, de-vein and butterfly two pounds of shrimp, shuck a crate of corn and make a pound of fettuccine from scratch.
To make sure everything is done perfectly, judge Emeril Lagasse and guest judge Cat Cora are there to check their work. Whatever time remains once all the prep is finished is the time they’ll have to cook their dish.
The chefs make three teams of two and Ed is paired with Paul. As soon as the clock starts, Ed begins making the fresh pasta while Paul shucks the corn.
“Whenever Ed and I are on a team, I’m bad luck for him,” says Paul. Cue menacing sound effect. Continue Reading »
Here are some videos we’re watching this week at KoreAm.
Girls’ Generation’s Surprise
Girls’ Generation sent hearts of many South Korean soldiers aflutter as they made a surprise visit to a military base. The crowd of horny men soon became delirious, jumping up and down crazily as they sang along to the songs, eventually drowning out the Girls themselves.
Kids Getting Sprayed with Water
It’s not always expensive toys that bring children joy and amusement. Sometimes, it’s a cardboard box or even, in the case of this video, a spray bottle full of water. These two kids giggle and laugh endlessly because of the spray bottle, to the point of turning bright red.
David Choe Tags Facebook
David Choe, a muralist, painter and graffiti artist, was invited by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to the new headquarters of the social networking website. There, Choe tagged the pure white walls with different images, just as he had done in 2006, on the walls of the original Facebook headquarters.
Building Constructed in 15 Days
In 360 hours, a Chinese sustainable building company, Broad Group, did what many thought to be the impossible and the unsafe: they built a 30-story hotel prototype. The research in the video explains all the safety tests done for the building as well as how the building is much more efficient in saving and utilizing energy.
Lost in Tokyo
With two days to himself in Tokyo, Japan, photographer Mark Bramley took nearly 10,000 photographs and video footage of the bustling city. His time-lapsed video shows everyday life in Japan.
Kids React to K-pop
Eleven kids, aged 7 to 13, react to seeing Super Junior, Girls’ Generation and 2NE1 for the first time. The kids react and comment on the popularity of K-pop as well as style choices and the mass appeal K-pop may have.
Bonus Footage:
Spica – Doggedly music video with Lee Hyroi
Spica, a new girl group, features Lee Hyroi in their music video for “Doggedly.” Hyroi, who hasn’t made a music video appearance in a while, is from the same company as Spica.
Shrieking Reporter
A reporter demonstrates a different way of traveling down flights. The building she’s in offers a staircase as well as a slide and as she slides down, her hilarious and unique screams echo in the staircase.
Draft Punk Word Project
A class of seventh grade students participate in an exercise put to Daft Punk’s “Harder Better Faster Stronger.” The students follow the lyrics and raise the appropriate card to follow the song. Nothing like having a Western hipster as your English teacher.
Drummer Kid Boots and Rallies
After an intense drum solo, a drummer gets sick but stays professional the entire time, declining help from a teacher, who rushes to his aid. This kid is sick!
Beatboxing Flutist
This flutist takes her music to a whole different level. As she plays her piece, the young musician stars to beatbox, creating a unique sound.
Morbid Wedding
Chadil Duffy, a young man from Thailand, had plans of marrying Sarinya when she unexpectedly passed away. Duffy, so in love with his girlfriend of 10 years, continued on with the wedding and married her corpse. Yikes.
The Wonder Girls are Back!
The Wonder Girls return with a song demonstrating how far their English skills have come. “The DJ is Mine” features another group, School Gryls, and shows the two girl groups battling it out for the love of the club’s DJ.
Samsung’s Smart Window
Samsung has developed a remarkable device that puts LCD in the last place you’d think to put it: in a window. Their new Smart Window transparent LCD doesn’t use back light units like traditional LCD screens. Instead, it relies on ambient light to let you see what you’re doing and without the back unit lights, you can see through the display and even when there is no ambient light, the Smart Window has a special transparent back unit light to illuminate it.
Korean High School, the Documentary
Kelley Katzenmeyer graduated high school, left her home and began taking high school classes in South Korea. In Korea, she intended to look at the education system but later found students’ concerns with test scores as well as beauty.
If you have more videos, email them to linda@iamkoream.com.
by Monica Y. Hong
Who knew this recap would still be going on all the way into the most coveted episode of the Top Chef season? Our two Korean American chefs deserve a lot of kudos for making it this far and for all their hard work along the way. This week chefs Beverly Kim and Edward Lee duke it out in a fight of boys versus girls. My friends, I give you Restaurant Wars. Cue smattering of applause. And one tremendously loud battle cry. Aiiyeeeeee!
Here are the rules. This week no quickfire. Screw the quickfire, we got a restaurant to run. Battle of the sexes. Hot four-on-four action. Each team armed with one KA hopeful. Three courses. Two options. Six dishes. First night men. Next night women. Better be good or get shot down by the judges.
Let’s talk ladies first. Lindsay and Sarah do not like Beverly. Sarah vetoes practically all of Bev’s dish ideas as they plan the menu, but they figure out her one dish: short ribs. Sound familiar? She made them last week as well as for her carne asada in week three.
When Sarah questions Beverly making short ribs again, Grayson says, “Why not? She’s f-cking good at it.” True dat. Continue Reading »
by Monica Y. Hong
This week’s episode of Top Chef Texas is all about celebrating the old and the new. Kinda like ringing out the old and bringing in the new, but in reverse. Happy backwards New Year! The new comes first in the form of a modernist quickfire challenge. The “cheftestants” have 45 minutes to make a dish that best illustrates modernist cuisine. Their creativity will win them immunity in the elimination challenge.
Chef Edward Lee whips up a dish that is a play on sushi — a salmon belly sashimi, compressed watermelon and a brunoise of three different kinds of radish held together with a coconut fluid gel to represent the rice. Meanwhile, Beverly Kim flash-steams some clams and mussels and serves them with a curry whipped cream and mango chili sauce. She is not too smooth when presenting her dish and squirts foam all over host Padma Lakshmi and then turns into a muppet, namely the Swedish Chef muppet.
Ed says it best, “I respect Beverly as a chef. I respect Beverly as a person. Is she an oddball? Yeah…”
Beverly explains why she is the way she is. “I came up in a very strict family, wasn’t able to sleep over and do normal things, go out to parties so I’m socially awkward cause I only focused on my work,” Kim says. Continue Reading »
FOR ONLY $28!
Featured Event
It’s the new year, and Yim Jae Beum is coming to town! After a sold-out show in Los Angeles last October, he is coming back to hold two U.S. concerts for the 2012 Lunar New Year. Everyone already knows this man can sing! He’s got an impressive resume, debuting as a rock singer back in 1986, releasing Korean classics, such as “For You,” and most recently, joining and winning first place twice on the MBC show, “I am a Singer.”
Seattle and New Jersey, get ready! We are happy to announce that we will be giving away TWO (2) pairs of tickets! read more
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