James Oseland's palate should be donated to the Smithsonian

On Wednesday night,  Michael Chiarello, Rick Moonen, Nils Noren and Lachlan Mackinnon Patterson triumphed at what America does best: making unhealthful food look deceivingly tempting. The episode  reminded me of a blog that surfaced in the office this week called Fast Fancy Food, which I found repulsive and creative. But this isn't about me, it's about the contestants (at one point, it was about fine dining too).

The chefs were challenged to create dishes inspired by junk food (hot dogs, corn dogs, fish sticks and fried shrimp). Poor Moonen didn't even get to finish his dish, and scored no points. Chiarello, whose restaurant Bottega was reviewed last week by Times restaurant critic S. Irene Virbila, won with his fish stick meatballs. This seems like a bit of a misnomer, sort of like those chickenless-chicken nuggets from Trader Joe's, but I guess it worked.

For elimination, a group of "Top Chef’s" biggest fans were invited to a cocktail party thrown by the contestants. (I’m a little offended I wasn’t invited.) The challenge was to cater a party of 100 with three courses -- and no help. The chefs toughed it out, proving that though they're successful restaurant owners, they hadn't lost their hands-on approach. It also helped that Kelly Choi cut them some slack and said the dishes were meant to be miniatures.

Gadget porn

We've all got them -- those kitchen tools that seemed to be just the hottest, most got-to-have thing when we first saw them, only to wake up in the morning wondering, "$60,000 for a corkscrew?" Think I'm exaggerating? Check DVice's list of "8 of the most outrageous food gadgets money can buy." Note that cost isn't the sole determining factor: They're democratic that way. A $50 All-Clad asparagus pot is on the list too.

--Russ Parsons

The Biggest Little Garden: A box of grow-your-own vegetables

The Biggest Little Garden is a compact, three-tiered planter made of a handsome (and rot-resistant) cedar -- just the right size for a small balcony. The 32-inch-wide planters are narrow enough to squeeze through small apartment doors, raised high enough so no stooping is required for planting and picking, and built with a trellis on the top tier to support bean and squash vines. And for residents of New Westminster in Canada, it's free. Click to read more.

-- Deborah Netburn

RELATED:

What to do with those greens once they're grown? Here are some recipe suggestions from The Times' Test Kitchen.

Join us on Twitter @latimesfood.

Photo: Fraserside

Bye bye, delivery guy -- we've turned our kitchen into a pizza parlor

We turned today's Food section over to one of our favorite foods: pizza. We've got everything you ever wanted to know, or needed to know, about pizza.

Seriously.

You probably think you cannot make good pizza at home because you lack a pizza oven. Well, think again. Times test kitchen manager Noelle Carter shows you how to line your oven with fireproof bricks*** so you can achieve that trademark crispy crust. (You can also watch her do it in the video.) All good pizzas start with homemade dough, so we've got a recipe for that as well as recipes for pizza Margherita (and a no-cook sauce) and potato pizza. We've also got a look at variations on that theme.

But let's say you're not the cook-at-home type, or you want your pizza, and you want it RIGHT NOW. Times restaurant critic S. Irene Virbila takes you on a tour of the best gourmet pizza spots in town and here's a list you'll definitely want to bookmark, as well as a locator map. (And by the way, did you ever wonder how we got from regular old-fashioned pizza to gourmet pizza? Check out this cool pizza chronology flash graphic.)

What's that? You say that you can't get good pizza west of Manhattan? Then check this out. And then check out this list of places were you can buy it by the slice.

Finally, here's a photo gallery look at testing out pizzas in The Times' test kitchen, from start to finish, and here's a recommended wine to wash down that slice of 'za.

(***Note that we said fireproof bricks. If you use the regular ol' bricks you've got piled up in the yard, they could explode. And that's not a good pizza topping.)

-- Rene Lynch

Got rice? Then dinner is one-pot easy

Writer Sonoko Sakai has a secret weapon when it comes to making dinner.

Rice. Yep, rice:

It always gives me great comfort to know that when I cannot think of what to make for dinner, I can always rely on rice and everything else will eventually fall into place. Many Japanese plan their daily menu this way -- around a bowl of rice. It is not a surprise that gohan, the Japanese word for "rice," also means "meal."

One of my favorite dishes that makes rice a satisfying centerpiece is maze-gohan -- a one-pot rice dish made with a variety of seafood, meat and vegetables and cooked in a clay pot called a donabe.

Read more here, and check out the recipes for rice with chicken and dandelion greens and spicy rice with scallops.

What's that? No rice cooker or donabe? Here you go.

Photo: Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times

Do you have this in your kitchen?

Kitchen twine is a kitchen staple -- do you have yours?. Here's everything you need to know -- along with a step-by-step guide to that quintessential function, the butcher's slip knot. With that under your belt, you're just a ball of twine away from making: bacon-wrapped pork loin with roasted apples, boeuf a la ficelle and chicken roulade with red chard, pepitas and chiles over hominy.

-- Rene Lynch

Cook's Illustrated: Vanilla smackdown

Cook's Illustrated is a favorite among cooks for its practical, no-fuss, no-muss approach to food. For one, there are no ads. Also, with the exception of soft, natural colors on the front and back covers, the magazine is completely black and white. Inside, recipes are deconstructed and reconstructed to make them as fast and easy as possible, but without sacrificing taste (Kinda like a Consumer Reports for food and recipes). Another popular feature is the taste tests that, not surprisingly, often result in the blue ribbon going to a brand or product that is the least expensive one out there.

But the latest taste test, in the March/April issue, seemed almost sacrilegious: Cook's Illustrated found that there was no discernible difference between real or imitation vanilla when used for baking. Here's the article, which would normally be found behind Cook's Illustrated's pay wall, but they kindly agreed to let us use it here temporarily.

Read it and tell us what you think.

Can you tell the difference between real and imitation vanilla? Do you keep one, or both, on hand? If you're looking to conduct your own taste test at home -- in the interest of research! -- here are some dessert recipes to choose from, including two L.A. Times test kitchen recipes that call for vanilla extract: Tall and creamy cheesecake and Auntie Em's coconut cupcakes.

-- Rene Lynch

FOR THE RECORD: An earlier version of this post said that all the images in the magazine were drawn. Wrong! They are black-and-white photos.

Photo credit: Los Angeles Times

Slow cookers: Break out those recipes

Does the cold, wet, blustery weather have you hankering for comfort foods -- and slow cooker recipes?

Times Test Kitchen Manager Noelle Carter is working on an upcoming story about slow cookers, and has been busy developing recipes for it. (We can say this much: Not all the recipes are for dinner. At least one recipe is for a dessert so good that some have already predicted it will be a front-runner for the Times' top recipes of 2009 -- and it's only February!)

Do you have any favorite slow cooker and crock pot recipes to share with the Daily Dish? Or how about some tips for converting your favorite recipes for crock pot use?

Please let us know -- leave a comment here. We'd like to use them as part of our upcoming feature on slow cookers.

--Rene Lynch

Caramelized onions, Part 3

Caramelizing onions from Simply Recipes on Vimeo

You really like your caramelized onions.

This Food section story was a hit with readers, quickly ranking as one of the most viewed, most e-mailed and most commented-on stories of the week. Thanks to all who wrote to offer up their tips for putting an end to all those tears while chopping onions.

We also noticed that one question came up again and again: Could you make this process easier by doing it in a slow cooker?

Well, we haven't tried that, so we cannot give a definitive answer. But several readers said they'd had great results by using a slow cooker, over eight to 10 hours. Some readers advised high heat, while others, like Madeline O, advised keeping it low, low, low:

Put the onions in your food processor. Bam! Minced. Put the onions in your SLOW COOKER! (I have a 5 qt Westbend, that adjusts to VERY low. Leave the top off, and stir about every 15 minutes once they start to brown up...

If you try it, please let us know how it turned out.

In the meantime, check out the mesmerizing video we found over at one of our favorite blogs — Elise Bauer's Simply Recipes. And click below for two recipes from Leslie Goldenberg of Woodland Hills, who kindly passed along her favorite ways to use caramelized onions:

— Rene Lynch

Go ahead, be a wine snob

Food editor Russ Parsons waxed poetic about his iPhone just after he got it and was checking out some food-friendly applications for it.

Ahem, Mr. Parsons, you may be a newbie to the iPhone, but I’ve had one since the beginning. No, I haven’t traded up yet (not until AT&T gets its act together re its 3G network), but I’m having fun rifling through the seemingly endless new iPhone applications.

One night in a dark restaurant, my sister whipped out her iPhone to read the menu — with the use of a $.99 application called iLight that turns the iPhone’s screen into a light.

OK, I need that.

So far, I’ve barely dipped into the hundreds of applications available, some quite useless. But, I am using Recorder, which works like a dictaphone, except that you can e-mail sound files to yourself or anybody else. I also came across an application called WineSnob that works pretty well to catalog tastings on the go.

Enjoying a great bottle of wine at someone’s house for dinner? Snap the label’s photo, look up that obscure grape varietal and enter your tasting notes and rating in the database, where it will be saved for future reference.

Forget using the application’s list of “tasting tags,” though, which are distressingly vague — floral, melon, cooked veggie, round, flabby, light, etc. Fortunately, you can type in your own tasting notes and leave WineSnob's suggested adjectives in the dust.

There’s also a handy glossary for those who are stumped by terms such as aftertaste, carbonic maceration, legs or tartrates. And a section of wine quotes, should you be susceptible to, well, wine snobbism. www.iwinesnob.com

— S. Irene Virbila

Photo of WineSnob interface from my iPhone