Welcome to the official BwB Blog! The Binging Blog. Blogging with Babish. There’s something there, I’m sure of it. Check in here for (often) weekly and (sometimes) daily updates, food I’m cooking in my free time, sneak peeks at future episodes, drunken rants, and more!
This first post is about my latest episode, the Seinfeld Special Part I. In case you were wondering, the Part I does indeed imply future BwB on this subject — there’s simply far too much food in the Seinfeld canon to address in one sitting! I decided to go with Soup Nazi soup because I knew you guys would kill me if I didn’t, and muffin tops and babka because they offered interesting opportunities for comparison. Seinfeld is decidedly light on the culinary info, unlike most of my chosen source materials — so I hope y’all don’t mind the amount of artistic license taken in each of these methods!
For the soup, I only had the first 4 ingredients revealed by the episode - my best shot at accuracy was to try and make the best damned mushroom soup ever to grace a bowl. I can’t say for sure if it is, but it blows the pants off any mushroom soup I’ve ever had. The recipe was developed by combining my favorite aspects of recipes from J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, Jamie Oliver, Gordon Ramsay, and America’s Test Kitchen. So, all of my favorite things. The result was a rich, creamy soup base with flavorful mushrooms, subtle citrus from the lemon zest, and added luxury from the crème fraîche. Plus it felt really good to say crème fraîche on camera again. If I could do it again, the only thing I’d do differently would be to straight-up fry the mushrooms into crispy chips for an even better texture and depth of flavor. I hope you guys try it for yourselves - if you’re a fan of mushrooms, this one’s a keeper! As is the case with most recipes from the show (I hope), there’s a lesson to be learned - use bread and oil in a high-powered blender to create creamy soups without dairy! That, and learn the difference between celery and parsley.