Ben Starr

The Ultimate Food Geek

Tag: vegetarian

  • Guest Post: Do Food Shows Have Ethical Obligations?

    My supremely cool fan Josh O’Connor, who interacts often on my blog posts, got to thinking about the issues of food waste, and the treatment of reality TV contestants with dietary restrictions, after one of my recent MasterChef recaps where many dozens of eggs were thrown in the trash, as well as shattering the plates…

  • MasterChef 4 recap: T-Bones and Live Birds (S4E19)

    (PLEASE NOTE: This blog contains the IPA-soaked rants of a former MasterChef survivor who has practically no inside knowledge of how this season was produced.  It’s not fit to be read by anyone.) So we’re back up to 7 contestants, now that Bri is back.  And it’s time for a mystery box.  Krissi tells us,…

  • Pumpkin Gingerbread Cookies

    Pumpkin, pumpkin, pumpkin.  It’s not just for pie.  These delicious cookies are rather decadent…chewy, moist, and exploding with pungent ginger flavor.  I recently baked hundreds of these with Michael Chen from MasterChef Season 3 for a third grade class at a local middle school during an assembly about seasonal cooking.  You might think kids would…

  • The Ethics of Eating Meat

    This great debate about meat just keeps on coming, and I couldn’t be more pleased.  I received a remarkable email from a fan who has been vegetarian since age 10, and I’d like to share a portion of it: “The ethics of meat eating have been on my mind since I spent five weeks in…

  • Animals are Meat: A Follow Up

    It’s now been about 24 hours since I posted the photo on Facebook of a free-ranging rooster from a chicken farm near Dallas that I was about to dispatch to become part of the menu at FRANK this weekend.  Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined what a magical 24 hours it would…

  • NEWS FLASH: Once upon a time…meat was ALIVE!!!

    As you all know, I run an underground restaurant here in Dallas with the stunning Jennie Kelley.  We met on the set of MasterChef and have become incredibly close friends.  FRANK is a celebration of fresh, local, sustainable food.  And for our upcoming French-themed Bastille day dinners, our main course is coq au vin, a…

  • MasterChef: Veggies and Catfish

    The only difference between de-ja-vu and mys-te-ry-box is that one of them has 4 syllables. I am sick of mystery boxes. I hate them. My only consolation is that you can’t be eliminated on a mystery box. I lift today’s mystery box and underneath is a treasure trove of veggies. I may be a Texan…

  • Christian’s Big Chocolate “O”

    Christian is a chocolate FIEND.  I have never seen anyone who can eat more chocolate than Christian.  For his birthday several years ago, Julia Child’s Chocolate Bombe just wasn’t cutting it any more, which was my replacement for Chocolate Blackout Cake.  So I had to think of something new. This was the result: Christian’s Big…

  • Ben Starr’s Pumpkin Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting and Candied Hazelnuts

    **Please note, instructions for making this into cupcakes are located at the bottom of the “cake” section of the recipe. This is the cake that I get demands for every October at my annual Fall Dinner Party, where I serve a 5 course meal with each course based on pumpkin. Regardless of what unique, delicious…

  • Chocolate Espresso Cheesecake

    Cheesecake is so indulgent, right?  I have to make it every once in awhile, usually for special occasions, but it’s so rich and so expensive to make that I only do it a few times a year.  Coffee is one of my favorite flavors, and that’s why I had to marry it with cheesecake.  This…