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May I Serve You Gin and A Sinking Ship?

Titanic icecube
Tacky

 

Okay so you are at a party and you are served a drink with a ice cube in the shape of a ship. Not just any ship but resembling RMS Titanic. Do images come to mind of the star-crossed lovers of Cameron’s Titanic? How about the terror those aboard felt in those final moments? Or will just laugh it off as a joke as the people at Fred and Friends hope you will? After all they are just ice cube molds, right?

I can say, with some authority, what many in the Titanic community would say and it would not be printable here. Some of the printable words are disgraceful, tacky, disrespectful and that is on the mild side. There have been many Titanic themed products over the years, some very nice collectibles and others just tacky like stuff sold to tourists at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco.

Perhaps the best place for them is where tacky already is. I recommend any MTV reality show but if tacky is as tacky does, then send it the house where the cast of Jersey Shore is staying. Ought to make for some interesting television. :-P

Top Chef Rules For Cheftestants

Okay so this is not related to Titanic per se (although gourmet food was served about the ship) but I happen to be a fan of Bravo’s Top Chef.  In watching the many seasons of the culinary contest, there are some rules that become evident that will either make or break a cheftestant on the show. So here are a collection of rules, in no particular order, for aspiring cheftestants. Obviously others may be added as needed. By no means it is inclusive; I doubt I thought of everything. 🙂

1. Going to culinary school goes far on Top Chef
It is a fact that on Top Chef that those who go to culinary school usually do much better than those who do not. The reason is that most cooking schools, especially the well known ones, teach a lot of important techniques that being self-taught you might miss out on.  A self taught chef can produce good food but is at a serious disadvantage to someone who has mastered the art and cooks like it is served in a fine upscale restaurant.

2. Never Over Salt! Ever!
Perhaps one of the biggest hits on a dish is to make it too salty. In most cases, it is a death sentence for the chef who prepared it. Usually they ask if you knew it was too salty. If you answer no, they question your palate. If you answer yes, they question why you sent out the dish in the first place. Either way it is bad and puts you on the top of the list to be eliminated.

3. Light touch on seasoning fine; Under seasoning bad.
If too much salt is bad, under seasoning a dish is just as bad. The result is bland tasting food that just needs that extra dash of something to zing it up. It is not as bad as oversalting a dish but if it is combined with lackluster presentation and food that ought to have been better, your now on the list to be eliminated.

4. Do not make something you have never done before.
One thing that sinks aspiring cheftestants is deciding to cook something they have never done before. Unless you are familiar with the ingredients, it is best you stick with what you know. Otherwise expect the judges to be very tough in making you defend the dish if it turns out wrong.

6. Check your food for doneness.
Serving raw seafood (unless sushi or a cerviche), raw poultry, or too rare a meat will get you a fast ticket to the bottom. Likewise overcooking will end you at the bottom as well. Never assume it is cooked right by merely looking at it.

7. Avoid complicated dishes unless you tie it all together.
All the components of a dish must go together. Do not, repeat do not, just throw things together and hope for the best. Judges will zing you hard for this and worse if it tastes bad.

8. Never put something on the plate unless it relates to the other components.
One thing that trips up a cheftestant is putting something on the plate that simply does not belong there. Slices of cheese or fruit ought to complement not stick out like a sore thumb.

9. Avoid funky or strange combinations UNLESS you know how to make it work right.
Butterscotch, peanut butter, strong cheeses have been the death knell for a dish and the chef who prepared it. Even if you know how to do it perhaps it would be best to let it pass on this show. Judges are finicky and picky about what they like and dislike. Certain sweet and peanut dishes are good dishes in their homeland but not necessarily in the Top Chef dining room.

10. The Classics Trap: Your dish must recall the original.
Top Chef often asks its cheftestants to take a classic dish and make it something new. What this requires is ingenuity and skill to remake or update it. Remember though it has to hearken back to the classic dish. This is especially true if you have to deconstruct it. All the components of your dish must line up with the original in some way.

11. Crispy good, soggy bad.
This has been the doom of many a meal on Top Chef. When the dish, like a corn dog, has to sealed up and taken elsewhere to be served the risks of it going soggy are high. Steaming occurs while it is enclosed making your once crispy food soggy. Failing to understand this bit of food science will put you high on the list to be sent home.

12. Make sure the dish you serve is as advertised.
A few seasons back one of the cheftestants cooked Coq au vin. The judges all loved it but there was a problem: it was not Coq au vin. The dish requires a rooster not just a regular chicken to be served. And since many of the judges were classically trained French chefs and knew what the dish was, they had to give the win to another cheftestant. Likewise one cheftestant called his salad “Waldorf” but the judges pointed out it was not even close to the classic (and not very good either).

13. Overconfidence and arrogance is a dangerous combination.
It seems almost a Top Chef axiom: those that are overconfident and arrogant end up tripping up along the way.

14. Be sanitary.
Thankfully (as far as we know) this has not been a large issue. However it goes without saying that if the judges see you being unsanitary in food preparation or serving they will zing you for it.

15. When cooking food that is a local specialty, make it fresh.
Chicago is known for its sausage. So if you are going to wow the judges and others, you have better make some delicious sausage of your own. Relying on store bought varieties, while safe, will not impress the judges who expected something more.

16. Never serve under-rested meat.
The proper resting of meat and poultry is important to insure that flavor does not run out when you cut into it. There is perhaps nothing more sad than to see a perfectly good piece of meat ruined by not properly resting it. There is also a corollary to this: always slice your meats with the proper knife and make sure you do it evenly.

17. Never butcher an already tender cut of meat.
Taking a tender lamb, for instance, and then butchering and cooking it wrong will infuriate the judges and send you home for wasting a perfectly good piece of meat.

18. If not sure, omit the drink
If not required to have either wine or alcohol as part of your dish, skip it. Sometimes it can work in your favor or add little to the dish. Worse is when the drink is so bad that even if the dish was good it sends you to Judge’s Table where they examine you for sanity.

19. Do not try to fool the judges by mixing cooked with undercooked!
Simply put, you are an idiot for trying this. If you think that mixing undercooked potatoes with fully cooked mashed potatoes will not be noticed, you deserve to go home for such a bonehead move.

20. “The oven was not working right” and other excuses.
Most professional chefs have had kitchen equipment go down on them. When it happens, they improvise around it. If your food was over or undercooked due to bad ovens, burners or anything but a genuine power outage it will not cut you much slack with the judges. They can all recite experiences of their own and how they got around it in a pinch (and served the meal to the delight of everyone).

Titanic Whistle

Since we have been on the subject of Titanic items of late, this image titanic whistle floated to the top during a recent search. At first I was not quite sure what it really was. It is called “Acme Thunderer Titanic” but that name seems not really to say much about what this whistle will do. It seems to imply this is a very loud whistle that thunders above all others making it a titanic whistle of the first order. The whistle is in a British catalog called Judge’s Choice Petfood Ltd (By Appointment To Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth Petfood Supplier). It looks pretty cool and  if anyone out there has actually blown this whistle, drop us a line here at Titanic News Channel.

Titanic Exhibition In NYC-Times Square

 

(Photo Courtesy George Behe)
(Photo Courtesy George Behe)

If you are going to New York or live nearby, the touring Titanic Exhibitionis at the Discovery Times Square Exposition. The exhibition has gotten positive reviews in the New York Times and worth the trip. Ticket info:

Child $17.50 (child 4-12), Adult $19.50, Senior $18.50

Group tickets are also available by calling 866-9-NYCTIX (866-692-2849). TSX is open seven days a week from 10am to 10pm.

Tickets can purchased online.

It Was Like Titanic

Last summer the P&O cruise ship Pacific Sun was caught in a vicious storm off New Zealand. 77 people were injured as the ship headed home through 20-foot swells and winds around 50-knots. Now a report about to be issued reveals what passengers experienced during that harrowing time. According to the New Zealand Herald, the report states it was “pure good fortune” that passengers and crew were not more seriously injured or killed.

Apparently many furnishings were not secured, such as casino gaming machines, tables, a grand piano and heavy office equipment such as photocopiers. As the ship tossed about in the storm, they became mobile causing some passengers to remark to officials later that it was like what they saw in the Titanic movie. Now that is pretty scary when you think about it. (Years ago I worked in a building in downtown San Francisco when the 1989 earthquake hit. The building was designed to sway with the earth movement. Upstairs in another office a copy machine was pitched across the room right into the wall. I consider myself fortunate since I was in our copy area at the time and  luckily those machines did not move at all.)

In perhaps a great understatement, the report states “It says procedures for securing furnishings following an earlier accident – in which another cruise ship’s equipment injured people – were not “sufficiently robust.” Injuries to passengers were broken bones, cuts, and bruises. Seven were seriously hurt and one passenger had part of a finger amputated. As a result of the ship rolling so badly, the two spa pools were emptied of water creating more hazards. Muster stations were damaged resulting in passengers being sent back to their cabins.

But it gets worse, according to the newspaper, as to why the ship was not prepared to handle this kind of situation.

1. The captain was in a hurry to get back to Auckland in time for the next cruise. By failing to heave-to earlier he put the ship in the ship in the worst sea conditions. This was not deliberate but inadvertent.

2. The bridge crew was unable to see or monitor the swells when it was dark.

3. Two of the four muster stations were rendered useless because of the damage and mess caused by unsecured furnishings. This is significant since these muster stations are where passengers are to go to in an emergency.

4. The stabilizers used to keep rocking at a minimum were inoperative. One was worn out and the other useless at slow speeds the ship was traveling at.

5. Crew had lifejackets but apparently the signal for passengers to put them on was never given. Apparently this is a normal operating procedure (giving the alert first to the crew then usually followed, if needed, to the passengers).

Most of the injuries came by falls, and unsecured furnishings toppling on to people. “Had Pacific Sun’s furnishings and fittings been sufficiently secured so as to resist moving when she heeled, the number of injuries would have been greatly reduced,” the Marine Accident Investigation Branch report says. According to the Herald, P&O states that the heavy objects have now been secured and that the experience provided a “valuable insight” for the company. Night vision goggles are now being deployed (or have been deployed) so that bridge crews will be able to see outside at night. And of course better maintenance was suggested by the report which, of course, P&O says it will do.

Now to be fair this was an unusual situation. It is not every day cruise ships sail into such intense storms. What surprises me is how unsecured the furnishings were. I know that major cruise ships have stabilizers to prevent the ship from rocking too much but all it takes is very severe weather to turn them into dangerous projectiles. Yet it would seem common sense to secure them to minimize harm to the ship, passengers, and crew. Hopefully lessons have been learned from this incident. It must have been scary though to see tables, chairs, gaming machines or other things suddenly move across the floor (or in some cases likely tossed considering how big the swells were). No wonder some passengers later said later they thought at the time they might not make it out alive.

Alternative History: What if Titanic Sinking Was A Conspiracy?

AuthorHouse sent out a press release on 22 June announcing the publication of  “A Cold Night in the Atlantic” by Kevin Wright Carney. Serial numbers that do not match Titanic and a stash of gold found in the wreck lead to the discovery that conventional history got it all wrong. Due to accidents and serious questions about Captain Smith, the RMS Olympic is not considered seaworthy. So in 1912 the White Star Line decided to switch the ships. Titanic became Olympic and Olympic became Titanic. And it was decided to sink the ship to collect insurance. Alas it all falls apart when the plot is uncovered and the sinking occurs prematurely thanks to an iceberg.

“A truly unique and thrilling novel, “A Cold Night in the Atlantic” cleverly breathes new life into a piece of American history,” says the press release. That will come as a surprise to Robin Gardiner and Dan Van Der Vat who wrote the non-fiction book “The Titanic Conspiracy;Cover-Ups and Mysteries of the World’s Most Famous Sea Disaster (1995, Carol Publishing). Their book examines the motivations of the people involved to switch the ships and argues that something nefarious did occur. The book was and still is dismissed by most Titanic historians as nothing more than tabloid fodder.

It seems to finally have found its home in a fictional novel, which is probably where it ought to be. Gardiner and Van der Vat will likely be reading the book as well kicking themselves for not doing the same thing–or sue Carney alleging he used their “facts” to make his book more legitimate. Down the road I can see a miniseries on a cable network (probably Sci Fi Sy Fy).

Titanic Adventure Slide

Titanic Adventure Slide
Titanic Adventure Slide

Every summer I read news stories about the Titanic Adventure Slide. Recently I saw this at a little league event and the kids really liked it. The picture really does not do it justice as to how big it really is. It was one of the most popular attractions at the event. There are two models for rent. The small one is 27”H X 16’W X 38” L. The other is 33’H X 21’W X 51”L. But both are 33’ tall making them impressive to look at. If you live like one of those housewives in New Jersey and have a large open area, you can buy them but be prepared to shell out some serious dough. The 27’ Model costs $10, 458 and the 33’ one is $12, 988.

Titanic Adventure Slide
http://www.partyusa.com/titanic.htm

Inflatable USA
http://www.hullaballoosales.com/catalog/product_info.php/cPath/49/products_id/219