Fun With Carbs

Wow. Anybody else as blown away by the outcome of last night’s ‘Throwdown with Bobby Flay’ as I was? He went up against Michele Albano of Michele’s Pie’s in Norwalk at an event held at Shelton’s Jones Family Farms. The dish in question? Maple pumpkin pie, which Albano tops with a pecan streusel.

Read more about the challenge at the Valley Independent Sentinel site

Bobby used canned pumpkin puree, while Albano pointedly informed him that her pumpkin was fresh. She proudly demonstrated her made-from-scratch crust, and the crowd jeered Flay’s graham-cracker version.

However, local judges Chris Prosperi (owner of Simsbury’s Metro Bis and weekly food columnist for the Hartford Courant) and internationally-recognized baker and cookbook author Dorie Greenspan seemed to prefer Flay’s cookie crust. Ultimately, they named Flay’s pie the winner. No one seemed more surprised than the Iron Chef himself.

Richman, left, consoles a wing challenger. (Travel Channel)

At 10 p.m., I turned the channel to watch my other favorite competitive food show, ‘Man v. Food.’ Host Adam Richman travels the United States, taking on the country’s most infamous extreme eating challenges. These either include criminally large or voluminous foodstuffs (7-pound burritos, pizzas measuring 3 feet in diameter) or snacks drenched in sauce so searingly hot that chefs wear gloves and/or masks to protect themselves.

In this episode, Richman planned to avenge an earlier hot-wings loss at Buffalo Cantina in his hometown of Brooklyn. He’d failed to complete their ‘Suicide Six’ wings challenge in 2008 and wanted redemption. The wings were sauced with an unbelievable blend of chiles: serrano, chile de arbol, habaneros – and the final kick, pure chili pepper extract. Richman tasted one droplet of the extract off the tip of his finger and screamed an obscenity at the top of his lungs.

After choking down one wing, Richman seemed ready to throw in the towel, but reconsidered after remembering advice given to him earlier in the episode by Yankee pitcher Joba Chamberlain: “Just…wing it.” He plowed through the next five with a vengeance.

Richman visited Connecticut last month to tape an upcoming episode of “Man v. Food,” scheduled to run sometime in December. The episode’s big food challenge is still unknown, but Richman did visit Woody’s in Hartford and Doogie’s in Newington for hot dogs.