Bear-ly A Blog: Family Meal
(Author’s note: I’m breaking in a new camera. It’s not going well. Forgive me.)
This is less a cooking post than it is another not-really-a-review post because I can’t say enough good things about FX’s The Bear – an eight episode look into a Michelin trained chef coming back to run his family’s Chicago beef sandwich restaurant. I vaguely heard about this new restaurant show with the weirdly hot Lip from Shameless and was like “Okay, he’s got sad eyes and a history of nude scenes. I’ll give it a shot.” During the last few virusy years, we all watched pretty much ALL of TV. (I did anyway. I didn’t learn a new skill, quit a bad habit, improve myself in any way, or all the other stuff people claimed to do. I did try to make sourdough but failed.) Any new TV is welcome.
(The Bear also features weirdly hot over-actor Ebon Moss-Bachrach, brief glimpses of always hot Jon Bernthal and Joel McHale, newcomer hotties Ayo Edebiri and Lionel Boyce, and not-hot-but-cute Oliver Platt).
(Actually pretty much everyone on this show is hot).
I enjoy movies and shows about chefs, kitchens, and all that, but they’re either too romanticized, unrealistic, or cutesy-poo. I LOVED Chef and Julie and Julia (although they fall firmly on the cutesy-poo side). I liked Burnt okay (but really? Sous Vide was the big controversy that nobody had ever heard of? This Kentucky lady bought one two years later off Amazon. It’s not that shocking.) Big Night is delightful and bittersweet. Sweetbitter is uneven and melodramatic but had its moments. Waiting is gross nonsense.
The Bear though. Man oh man. Boy oh boy. Me oh my. I was watching right before it blew up online and someone posted about episode seven being one of the finest episodes of TV they’d ever seen. That’s a bold statement. Let’s look at some great ones in no particular order:
“Ozymandias” – Breaking Bad (among many others AND a lot of BCS’s)
“Battle of the Bastards” – Game of Thrones (among many)
“My Screwup” – Scrubs (sigh)
“Background Check” – New Girl (fight me)
“The Body”/”Hush” – Buffy the Vampire Slayer
“So Did the Fat Lady” – Louie (I know he’s gross but that episode, come ON.)
“Everyone’s Waiting” – Six Feet Under
“Jurassic Bark” – Futurama (tears)
“Why We Fight” – Band of Brothers
“Pilot: Part 1” – Lost
“Pilot”/”Whenever You’re Ready – The Good Place (buckets of tears)
This is just off the top of my head (yes, I did have to look up a couple of the episode titles, but still.) Sure, there are more. I didn’t even get into The Simpsons or Grey’s, which had a good run for being such a plodding soap now. I didn’t get historical, or even include musical/Halloween episodes that I like but probably aren’t for everyone. Even as I type, shows like Fleabag and 30 Rock are popping into my head.
Season One, Episode 7 of The Bear – “Review” was the most stress I’ve ever felt watching TV in a non-Breaking-Bad scenario. I’ve never seen the delightfully profane/break-neck/friendly fire/slow-mo trainwreck kitchen world captured so well. There have since been hundreds of think-pieces about the show – some nit-picky, some hilarious (see Bon Appetit’s ode to The Sexually Competent Dirtbag Line Cook™, which is a definite type) – so I won’t get too into it. But y’all need to watch it.
And I made the family meal spaghetti from the last episode “Braciole”. And I didn’t even make the braciole – although I have done. No spoilers, I promise – but if you haven’t watched it yet and plan to, then maybe don’t read too much further. There might be a tiny hint of something you won’t want to learn quite yet.
First, I had to get the right brand of tomatoes. This is a must. This means a trip across town to Whole Paycheck. There are only two stores in town that carry them. They HAVE to be this brand. If you know, you know.
I took a picture of the TV (so professional!) to get the exact recipe. Trust me – I’m not the first person/blogger/writer to recreate this recipe. And a lot of the ones I’ve read are so wrong. So so sooooo wrong. I saw one that used canned diced tomatoes. I saw one that called for lamb for crying out loud. Rapeseed oil? One said you have to add turkey sausage. Did you watch the show? Really? This recipe has four ingredients (lie):
- 10 garlic cloves
- Basil steeped in oil
- 2 28 oz. cans San Marzano Tomatoes (crushed) with the note “The smaller cans taste better.”
(I swear watching the show a voice in the back of my mind said “Why aren’t they using #10 cans? I love that brand. Surely it’s cheaper to buy the big ones.” My subconscious can be smarter than me.)
It’s a pretty standard pomodoro. I steeped the basil in oil. I added the whole garlic cloves and let them get a little color, then removed all but two, rook out the spent basil, and blitzed it with an immersion blender. (Important – ten cloves of garlic is too many for two cans of tomatoes. And I love garlic.) Carmy the main character, beautifully portrayed by Jeremy Allen White (Lip from Shameless), also halves an onion and simmers it in the sauce, then presumably removes it for serving à la Marcella Hazan. I also peep some crushed red pepper and butter.
Then added the two cans of tomatoes and the basil oil. Simmer. Toss with spaghetti, top with lots of cheese. (I did a version where I blended the garlic and basil into the oil, but WHOOO it was garlickly.)
To be completely honest, I didn’t love this sauce. Maybe it would have benefitted from a longer simmer. It definitely could have been helped with braciola. It was slightly hurt my using Whole Paycheck’s store brand spaghetti, which got mushy before it even finished cooking. Bleah.
As a tomato sauce though – meh. Just okay.
But watch this show y’all. I mean it. Mr. Dishes gamely watched the first two episodes because I wanted to and ended up putting it in his top ten of all time. But TBH he got super nervous about mixing frozen orange juice the other day, so he might think that cooking is actual witchcraft and that’s why he doesn’t leave me for saner pastures. My magic is too powerful. We can’t wait for season two.
Just a last thought – maybe I left out the most important ingredient. No chef is willing to share ALL their secrets. Maybe this will improve the taste.
illdothedisheslater 