:
SLop enters stage left wearing more red than Nikita Khrushchev’s wife. She is carrying a fake plant in a red box. She tells us that her girlfriend, Yusai (or something…I never was any good as spelling names of Asian descent), is having her new makeup line debut, necessitating a party. Guess she already threw one for her guy friend, Max Factor. The entire room is white with random red objects inserted anywhere she could find space. Think Yusai might resent the Red China implications? Maybe she really digs lavender. Who knows? Anyhow, Sandra promises us fantastic Chinese food, including wonton soup, pork bao buns, beef stir-fry and almond cookies. We’re also promised a “beautiful tablescape”. Sandra: “I’ll see you in the kitchen.” And then she just wanders off. Well…that was anticlimactic.
We start with wonton soup. The oil sizzles when it hits the pan. Who knew that she figured out how to turn a burner? Apparently, wonton soup is Yusai’s favorite, “much more than sweet and sour.” Jesus, woman, make her a bowl of tomato soup or perhaps some vichyssoise! She just might like the change of pace. Reminds me of that episode of “Married…With Children” where Pat Morita plays Marcy’s boss, comes over from Japan and desires anything but sushi. So what do they present him? Sushi! But I digress…
SLop displays more awkward cutting, using her knife like a paper cutter on the chicken. She tells us to get “pre-ground chicken” from the grocery store. Shouldn’t Yusai karate kick her in the face for using onion soup mix in Chinese cooking? Myself, I feel like waffling her upside the head for that hideous form-fitting, painted-on dress. What was she thinking?
Oh god, the mixture looks like something she scraped out of a spittoon. She mixes low-sodium soy sauce into her chicken broth. Since when has Ms. “Cheese Whiz In My Dinty Moore Stew” been worried about sodium?
We can find wonton wrappers either in the refrigeration or Asian sections of the supermarket. Now I’m wondering if there is an Asian refrigeration section. “Yes, can I please get half a pound of ground Filipino? Thank you.”
She fills the wonton (“Not too much meat or it’ll pop out!”—excuse me, I’ll be dry heaving now) and, GASP, figured out that using water on two sides will make it seal! This woman is a GENIUS! Quick, give her a TV show! Oh, wait…
She’s so pleased with herself that I’d like to see her get hit with a gong mallet. She cobbles her way through one and, thankfully, MV has done the rest. She dumps the whole bowl haphazardly into the stock (which she calls “soup”).
She drains canned water chestnuts and bamboo shoots into a strainer over a bowl. God, you stupid woman, if you MUST use a strainer, pour it into the sink! Your patented technique is not only pointless and stupid, it is also necessitates extra washing. Although I’d be surprised if The Wallet hasn’t bought her a live-in maid by now. She adds a bag of frozen mushrooms, carrots and snap peas. Not only are those dissimilar in cooking time, do frozen mushrooms actually exist outside of her mind?
The soup looks overcrowded and the vegetables are bigger than the wontons. Twenty bucks says she would add a couple of spoonfuls of peanut butter if her friend was Thai. She lids it up and tells us to let it simmer a few minutes. On what planet to carrots become fully thawed and appealing after 2-3 minutes in simmer stock? They take more than 2-3 minutes in the microwave! I love SLop-gistics!
The chopsticks in her hair annoy the shit out of me. The idea is just so cloying. Hopefully, in fitting irony, Yusai appears in an ugly outfit with pasties that hang down to her waist. I’d pay to see it.
We’re back, as SLop appears with a bamboo steamer. Man, when MV’s bao buns look like someone left them in the sauna too long and the dough barely looks cooked, Sandra’s are gonna be hilarious.
A bamboo steamer is a kitchen essential for Chinese food or so I’m told. SLop brings up fast food places at the mall again, noting that she has a fantastic “trick to help [us] utilize the resources at [our] own mall.” Never knew my mall’s food court was a cooking resource.
She tells us that Chinese takeout places at the mall have great barbecued pork. Then, there’s a really weird five second spot of dead silence. Either she blew her cur badly or she totally lost her place on the teleprompter. Too funny. SLop pulls out a tray with seven premade bao buns that she “already started”. Hands up if you buy that for a second. Yup, me either.
SLop sautés some scallions, then pulls out a jar of garlic. Oh, dear god! The garlic is mahogany in color. Get a new jar, woman! I’ve seen plenty of jarred garlic at the restaurant where I worked and it was always either white or light tan in color. This stuff looks like miso. That simply cannot be right.
She adds jarred ginger that looks for all the world like baby food applesauce. She then busts out the HOI-sin sauce. Methinks she put the em-PHA-sis on the wrong SYL-la-ble. Every chef here at my school calls it “hoi-SIN”. Then again, this woman got her degree at Bovine University, so I’ll let it slide.
Wow, her scallion/ginger/garlic/hoisin/oyster sauce mixture looks like road tar. I can’t imagine that was the desired result. Plus, it’s like a car crash of flavors. She makes the LAMEST attempt to chop the barbecued pork in recorded history. Just give her a plastic cafeteria knife already. At least she can’t hurt herself with that. She tells us that when she met Yusai they became fast friends and went out on dates every Sunday night after that. No, really. She said that. She mixes the pork into the sauce and it suddenly becomes the Exxon Valdez Special. Ohhhhh, my goodness.
She slaps a wad of breadstick dough on the board and cut it with a chef’s knife. Just get a damn pizza cutter! Yeesh! I used one to cut pizza dough for more than a year with NO problem!
She drops some Valdez into the dough and folds it up, thus trapping the filling. She’s doing a whole lot of filled dumplings so far, huh? She then wastes cabbage leaves just to line the bottom of the steamer. She then place the steamer in a wok with water.
Time to taste the wonton soup. Indeed, it’s overcrowded and not especially captivating. She then pours herself a big bowl to “taste” it. Uh…doesn’t she have guests coming? Man, when the vegetables are bigger than the ladle, you screwed up quite badly.
Time for another commercial.
Oh, you’re back. She claims that beef stir-fry is simple and that I MUST have it at an Asian-themed dinner. Sorry, just because you look like my grandmother doesn’t mean I want your advice.
SLop busts out a wok and…wait, let’s pause here a moment:
1.) The wok is being used on an electric stove, a very poor conductor of heat
2.) I’m sure she has no idea how to actually stir-fry something
3.) When she added the oil, it just sat there. No hissing, no sizzling, NOTHING. Granted, I’m no Martin Yan, but I’m pretty sure a wok needs to be red hot for it to be of any service in stir-frying.
Now then. She adds the meat and it finally hisses. I’m thinking there was an edit in there. As the meat (which takes “seconds” to cook) is in the wok, she finally starts her mise en place. Oy. She cuts up a red bell pepper and shows off her atrocious knife skills yet again. Something about the line “Watch your meat” makes my skin crawl and bile rise in my throat.
SLop being SLop, she opts for a prepackaged seasoning envelope. And more frozen and canned vegetables. Oh goodie. I swear, she probably has a vegetable garden where she grows cans of Green Giant. Unbelievable. The volume of vegetables is incredible, almost 6:1 over the meat. What is she thinking? We finally get a “Whoot!” after twenty dull minutes.
What’s the antonym of mouth-watering? Because that’s what this dish is. “Now, just garnish with parsley, serve it to your dog and open up some Stouffer’s for your guests. Yusai will understand. She knows that I’m hopelessly underqualified.”
We’re promised almond cookies and a tablescape ahead.
We come back to a shot of MV’s almond cookies. I think it would have been worth the price of admission if Sandra had tried to make them using Jordan almonds. “Well, Yusai, I wanted them to be colorful…like Chinese New Year!” Anywho…
She tells us that the recipe is from Yusai. Then clearly, that’s what she’ll want to eat at her celebration party. Her own halfass recipe. She is truly one of a kind and thank God for that.
Her recipe is based around a roll of refrigerated sugar cookie dough and a tablespoon of almond extract, the single most awful tasting flavoring in history. Well, except for anise. Roll the dough into little tiny balls, press an almond on top of them and bake the on 325o for a few minutes. Not only is that a vague time, it is also an unusually low temperature. She tries to sell us on the gift value of cardboard sugar cookies with cheap almond flavoring. I’m not buying that one either.
Time for the tablescape.
“Red and black are always the most romantic colors to use when serving Chinese food.” Yeah, nothing screams romantic quite like a black paper lantern. This woman is hysterical. She claims her ceiling full of cheap hanging lanterns is “dramatic”. I think it looks like a Chinese disco. (Which is a riotous visual in itself!) She reveals that she spraypainted the lanterns herself. She tagged ‘em, g. She even found fans that she’s giving away to the guests. That might be a good idea if it wasn’t: a.) blatantly stereotypical and b.) they didn’t look like oversized ping-pong paddles. She even covered a piece of plywood in cheap red fabric with calligraphy print. She also wrapped it around black napkins and asks “Aren’t they darling?” No, no, they’re not. That is not a functional napkin in the slightest.
Wait a minute, she didn’t make the drink! They showed them on the table, but I never saw her make it and my tape has the end of Paula Dean & the beginning of 30MM. Did they edit that out due to the response or something?
Final Thoughts: What an annoying, insipid episode. 2 prepackaged bread products, too many flavors in the buns and a soup that wouldn’t appeal to anyone. The Chinese Embassy should send a cease and desist letter.
What’s next week: Pearl Onion Harbor: The Tokyo Terror?
Rant on “Semi Homemade Cooking with Sandra Lee”: # 307-“Chinese”
SLop enters stage left wearing more red than Nikita Khrushchev’s wife. She is carrying a fake plant in a red box. She tells us that her girlfriend, Yusai (or something…I never was any good as spelling names of Asian descent), is having her new makeup line debut, necessitating a party. Guess she already threw one for her guy friend, Max Factor. The entire room is white with random red objects inserted anywhere she could find space. Think Yusai might resent the Red China implications? Maybe she really digs lavender. Who knows? Anyhow, Sandra promises us fantastic Chinese food, including wonton soup, pork bao buns, beef stir-fry and almond cookies. We’re also promised a “beautiful tablescape”. Sandra: “I’ll see you in the kitchen.” And then she just wanders off. Well…that was anticlimactic.
We start with wonton soup. The oil sizzles when it hits the pan. Who knew that she figured out how to turn a burner? Apparently, wonton soup is Yusai’s favorite, “much more than sweet and sour.” Jesus, woman, make her a bowl of tomato soup or perhaps some vichyssoise! She just might like the change of pace. Reminds me of that episode of “Married…With Children” where Pat Morita plays Marcy’s boss, comes over from Japan and desires anything but sushi. So what do they present him? Sushi! But I digress…
SLop displays more awkward cutting, using her knife like a paper cutter on the chicken. She tells us to get “pre-ground chicken” from the grocery store. Shouldn’t Yusai karate kick her in the face for using onion soup mix in Chinese cooking? Myself, I feel like waffling her upside the head for that hideous form-fitting, painted-on dress. What was she thinking?
Oh god, the mixture looks like something she scraped out of a spittoon. She mixes low-sodium soy sauce into her chicken broth. Since when has Ms. “Cheese Whiz In My Dinty Moore Stew” been worried about sodium?
We can find wonton wrappers either in the refrigeration or Asian sections of the supermarket. Now I’m wondering if there is an Asian refrigeration section. “Yes, can I please get half a pound of ground Filipino? Thank you.”
She fills the wonton (“Not too much meat or it’ll pop out!”—excuse me, I’ll be dry heaving now) and, GASP, figured out that using water on two sides will make it seal! This woman is a GENIUS! Quick, give her a TV show! Oh, wait…
She’s so pleased with herself that I’d like to see her get hit with a gong mallet. She cobbles her way through one and, thankfully, MV has done the rest. She dumps the whole bowl haphazardly into the stock (which she calls “soup”).
She drains canned water chestnuts and bamboo shoots into a strainer over a bowl. God, you stupid woman, if you MUST use a strainer, pour it into the sink! Your patented technique is not only pointless and stupid, it is also necessitates extra washing. Although I’d be surprised if The Wallet hasn’t bought her a live-in maid by now. She adds a bag of frozen mushrooms, carrots and snap peas. Not only are those dissimilar in cooking time, do frozen mushrooms actually exist outside of her mind?
The soup looks overcrowded and the vegetables are bigger than the wontons. Twenty bucks says she would add a couple of spoonfuls of peanut butter if her friend was Thai. She lids it up and tells us to let it simmer a few minutes. On what planet to carrots become fully thawed and appealing after 2-3 minutes in simmer stock? They take more than 2-3 minutes in the microwave! I love SLop-gistics!
The chopsticks in her hair annoy the shit out of me. The idea is just so cloying. Hopefully, in fitting irony, Yusai appears in an ugly outfit with pasties that hang down to her waist. I’d pay to see it.
We’re back, as SLop appears with a bamboo steamer. Man, when MV’s bao buns look like someone left them in the sauna too long and the dough barely looks cooked, Sandra’s are gonna be hilarious.
A bamboo steamer is a kitchen essential for Chinese food or so I’m told. SLop brings up fast food places at the mall again, noting that she has a fantastic “trick to help [us] utilize the resources at [our] own mall.” Never knew my mall’s food court was a cooking resource.
She tells us that Chinese takeout places at the mall have great barbecued pork. Then, there’s a really weird five second spot of dead silence. Either she blew her cur badly or she totally lost her place on the teleprompter. Too funny. SLop pulls out a tray with seven premade bao buns that she “already started”. Hands up if you buy that for a second. Yup, me either.
SLop sautés some scallions, then pulls out a jar of garlic. Oh, dear god! The garlic is mahogany in color. Get a new jar, woman! I’ve seen plenty of jarred garlic at the restaurant where I worked and it was always either white or light tan in color. This stuff looks like miso. That simply cannot be right.
She adds jarred ginger that looks for all the world like baby food applesauce. She then busts out the HOI-sin sauce. Methinks she put the em-PHA-sis on the wrong SYL-la-ble. Every chef here at my school calls it “hoi-SIN”. Then again, this woman got her degree at Bovine University, so I’ll let it slide.
Wow, her scallion/ginger/garlic/hoisin/oyster sauce mixture looks like road tar. I can’t imagine that was the desired result. Plus, it’s like a car crash of flavors. She makes the LAMEST attempt to chop the barbecued pork in recorded history. Just give her a plastic cafeteria knife already. At least she can’t hurt herself with that. She tells us that when she met Yusai they became fast friends and went out on dates every Sunday night after that. No, really. She said that. She mixes the pork into the sauce and it suddenly becomes the Exxon Valdez Special. Ohhhhh, my goodness.
She slaps a wad of breadstick dough on the board and cut it with a chef’s knife. Just get a damn pizza cutter! Yeesh! I used one to cut pizza dough for more than a year with NO problem!
She drops some Valdez into the dough and folds it up, thus trapping the filling. She’s doing a whole lot of filled dumplings so far, huh? She then wastes cabbage leaves just to line the bottom of the steamer. She then place the steamer in a wok with water.
Time to taste the wonton soup. Indeed, it’s overcrowded and not especially captivating. She then pours herself a big bowl to “taste” it. Uh…doesn’t she have guests coming? Man, when the vegetables are bigger than the ladle, you screwed up quite badly.
Time for another commercial.
Oh, you’re back. She claims that beef stir-fry is simple and that I MUST have it at an Asian-themed dinner. Sorry, just because you look like my grandmother doesn’t mean I want your advice.
SLop busts out a wok and…wait, let’s pause here a moment:
1.) The wok is being used on an electric stove, a very poor conductor of heat
2.) I’m sure she has no idea how to actually stir-fry something
3.) When she added the oil, it just sat there. No hissing, no sizzling, NOTHING. Granted, I’m no Martin Yan, but I’m pretty sure a wok needs to be red hot for it to be of any service in stir-frying.
Now then. She adds the meat and it finally hisses. I’m thinking there was an edit in there. As the meat (which takes “seconds” to cook) is in the wok, she finally starts her mise en place. Oy. She cuts up a red bell pepper and shows off her atrocious knife skills yet again. Something about the line “Watch your meat” makes my skin crawl and bile rise in my throat.
SLop being SLop, she opts for a prepackaged seasoning envelope. And more frozen and canned vegetables. Oh goodie. I swear, she probably has a vegetable garden where she grows cans of Green Giant. Unbelievable. The volume of vegetables is incredible, almost 6:1 over the meat. What is she thinking? We finally get a “Whoot!” after twenty dull minutes.
What’s the antonym of mouth-watering? Because that’s what this dish is. “Now, just garnish with parsley, serve it to your dog and open up some Stouffer’s for your guests. Yusai will understand. She knows that I’m hopelessly underqualified.”
We’re promised almond cookies and a tablescape ahead.
We come back to a shot of MV’s almond cookies. I think it would have been worth the price of admission if Sandra had tried to make them using Jordan almonds. “Well, Yusai, I wanted them to be colorful…like Chinese New Year!”
She tells us that the recipe is from Yusai. Then clearly, that’s what she’ll want to eat at her celebration party. Her own halfass recipe. She is truly one of a kind and thank God for that.
Her recipe is based around a roll of refrigerated sugar cookie dough and a tablespoon of almond extract, the single most awful tasting flavoring in history. Well, except for anise. Roll the dough into little tiny balls, press an almond on top of them and bake the on 325o for a few minutes. Not only is that a vague time, it is also an unusually low temperature. She tries to sell us on the gift value of cardboard sugar cookies with cheap almond flavoring. I’m not buying that one either.
Time for the tablescape.
“Red and black are always the most romantic colors to use when serving Chinese food.” Yeah, nothing screams romantic quite like a black paper lantern. This woman is hysterical. She claims her ceiling full of cheap hanging lanterns is “dramatic”. I think it looks like a Chinese disco. (Which is a riotous visual in itself!) She reveals that she spraypainted the lanterns herself. She tagged ‘em, g. She even found fans that she’s giving away to the guests. That might be a good idea if it wasn’t: a.) blatantly stereotypical and b.) they didn’t look like oversized ping-pong paddles. She even covered a piece of plywood in cheap red fabric with calligraphy print. She also wrapped it around black napkins and asks “Aren’t they darling?” No, no, they’re not. That is not a functional napkin in the slightest.
Wait a minute, she didn’t make the drink! They showed them on the table, but I never saw her make it and my tape has the end of Paula Dean & the beginning of 30MM. Did they edit that out due to the response or something?
Final Thoughts: What an annoying, insipid episode. 2 prepackaged bread products, too many flavors in the buns and a soup that wouldn’t appeal to anyone. The Chinese Embassy should send a cease and desist letter.
What’s next week: Pearl Onion Harbor: The Tokyo Terror?
Current Mood: annoyed
Current Music: Staind-14 Shades of Grey (album)
