Top Chef glorifies food porn and features terrible food safety.

I do like the way they eliminate contestants, and wish I had thought of that when I was coaching 8-year-old girls rep hockey – your slapshot needs work and you have no idea what off-side means, please pack your skates and go home.

Top Chef winner Richard Blais' Flip Burger failed an April 8 health inspection at its Buckhead location (that’s near Atlanta, in Georgia, U.S.). Dick, you wanna be a TV star, expect some attention.

The restaurant scored a 69 on an inspection last Friday (April 8). The Fulton County Department of Health and Wellness says a score of anything below a 70 is considered failing.

A new Fulton County health inspection conducted on Tuesday showed the Buckhead eatery with a passing score of 98.

The producers of Bravo's Top Chef have me pegged as their target audience. Tonight's episode featured the Sesame Street characters Telly, Cookie Monster, and Elmo (who were hilarious judges), and new ads for Target featuring former Top Chef cheftestants and Padma. It's an entertaining episode that left me with a bad taste in my mouth.

Tonight's challenge was to cook a meal for 100 employees in a closed Target super store in the middle of the night. Because of the improvised cooking setting, the chefs were forced to set up their kitchens, find their ingredients, and prepare to serve the employees and judges within a 3 hour time limit. Some concentrated on table linens, some on flavors, but there was a frightening absence of handwashing. Granted, many of the chefs opted to make soup, which in theory should allow for thorough cooking of all ingredients. But what about any fancy garnish and fresh salad that ends up on the plate?

My favorite of the season, Richard Blais, made a pork tenderloin (pictured right exactly as shown). He then topped his finished pork with some freshly sliced apple and green chili slaw before serving. His concern? "It's not the prettiest dish in the world. I know that. But I'm ready to defend my dish if I have to. I think it's tasty."

Anthony Bourdain confirmed, "Frankly, I think Richard's disk was butt ugly, but it was delicious."

One day I hope a chef will stand up and protest the cooking conditions or demand a meat thermometer. I will leave the food safety assessment to the experts, but I spotted a few potential concerns:

- using all cooking utensils and dishes straight from boxes with no chance to sanitize them

- improvised utensils, linens, garbage cans, etc.

- no handwashing stations, sanitizing solutions or rags to clean work surfaces or dishes.

I have hit pause on the DVR so many times that I'm not even done watching this episode yet, but I hope it does not end with a foodborne outbreak.

Food porn was on the menu last night as the new season of Top Chef kicked off. That’s me watching for about 30 seconds (right, not exactly as shown).

Earlier in the day I got a press release about the Grilled Australian Lamb Burger with Brie Cheese, Cranberry Compote and Roasted Jalapeno Aioli, “America’s new favorite upscale burger” created by Anthony Jacquet, executive chef of The Whisper Lounge in L.A. (left, exactly as shown).

The burger won the “Make Australian Lamb America’s New Favorite Burger” contest, sponsored by Plate Magazine and Meat & Livestock Australia.

The cooking constructions state:

To prepare burgers, place patties on hot grill. Cook for 2 minutes and then turn a quarter turn and cook for another 2 minutes. Flip burger and cook another 2 minutes. Turn a quarter turn and cook another 2 minutes. Add brie cheese and cover with a stainless steel mixing bowl for another minute. Pull burgers off of grill and let rest. They should be medium rare.

I don’t know what medium rare is. If Australia wants to increase consumption of lamb burgers, require clear cooking instructions, like using a tip-sensitive digital thermometer to ensure the burger reaches 160F so people won’t barf and consumption of lamb doesn’t plummet.

Susan Burton of Slate Magazine required almost 2,000 words yesterday to say she likes meat – well-done – and that she hates the food thermometer.

I honed in on the modern American history of doneness, in large part because it can be tracked precisely—thanks to the meat thermometer. This early-20th-century invention brought about a giant cultural shift: the reliance on a gadget—rather than instinct, or experience—to assess our meat. The thermometer was promoted to home cooks as a tool of scientific precision. It was also an instrument of relaxation, something that freed you from worrying about misjudging the meat: "A roast thermometer makes for carefree roasting," advised the 1959 edition of Fannie Farmer's famous tome. By midcentury, temperature measurements were a common feature of cookbooks.

Our standards for doneness changed rapidly when, thanks to Claiborne, Julia Child, and others, we discovered, and began to venerate, cooking methods that originated abroad. Once American palates adjusted to the European style of underdone meat, guidelines fell even further. (Child's leg of lamb: rare at 140 in 1961; 125 in 1979.) Times writer Florence Fabricant took note of this development in a 1982 article called "A Trend Toward 'Less Well Done.' " Fabricant called overcooking "a tradition in this country" and attributed the change to the influence of "Oriental" and "French nouvelle" cuisines. She also connected the trend to the then-new vogues for crisp-tender vegetables and for raw foods, like sushi. But eating rare meat wasn't simply a matter of evolving taste. It was a means of signaling something about yourself, an ethos. When Fabricant's article was published, serving your guests rare meat showed you were sophisticated.

These days, it shows you're cool. (Look no further than the title of Bourdain's forthcoming bad-ass memoir: Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook.)

Somehow, author Burton manages to simultaneously trash the precision of a meat thermometer and propagate food safety myths about so-called factory farming.

She’s so cool, she likes food well-done and doesn’t need a thermometer.

I’ll continue to stick it in.

Jennifer and daughter Ingrid brought the lamb, I did the cooking, and Amy’s mom flew in from Vegas. Another Thursday night in Manhattan (Kansas).

What better occasion to try out alleged perfect gravy that scientists with the U.K. Royal Society of Chemistry have determined contains drippings from a roast on a bed of halved onions, carrots and celery and the left-over water from boiled cabbage.

Add salt, pepper and a sprinkling of flour to thicken and …  a touch of soy sauce.

Dr John Emsley, a chemical scientist, says soy sauce should be used in place of traditional gravy browning because monosodium glutamate from the soy sauce brings out the meaty flavour.

A spokesman for the society said:

“Chemistry and cooking are basically the same thing. Both need to have the correct formula, equipment and procedures. Just think of Heston Blumenthal.”

Eww. Blumenthal makes me think norovirus and barf.

And I didn’t take pictures of Thursday’s dinner, but Top Chef on Wed. night also struggled with lamb, and none of the hot-shot chefs could agree on how to define medium-rare lamb.

Chef Kevin (left):

“We’re having temperature issues with the lamb. What I think of as medium-rare, is apparently what she thinks of as rare. I don’t know who’s right or wrong, I don’t know if there is anyone who is right or wrong.”

The judges knew:

“This was seared raw lamb that was horrible.”

“Severely underdone.”

“Center was like jello.”

“A little too bloody.”

The lamb shoulder roast we had last night was cooked to 140F. There’s even a chart on the Internet that says medium-rare lamb is 140F. I have no idea where the numbers on the chart came from, but it seems about right.

Genius chefs and judges: use a tip-sensitive digital thermometer and stick it in.

The gravy was delicious.