.

So Meatball Madness came and went over the weekend and it’s time for the round-up. The first thing I want to say is that it was SO MUCH MORE FUN to do Meatball Madness than it was to do last year’s Grand Tasting. It’s the difference between being mauled by an angry grizzly and being served a pina colada by a mixologist grizzly – one is a nightmare of blood, fur and tears and the other is unexpected and pleasant.

.

Our official Meatball Madness t-shirts! Designed by the amazing Tony Ruth.

.

Getting in the beef pit to go up against a bunch of meaty meatballs meant that I had a lot to prove, and so the design process and then the prep for my AllBalls (get it? No meat, all balls?) was pretty intense.

.

Wooden cages containing dangerous wild kale arrives at Dirt Candy.

.

Vincent is surrounded by wild kale displaying classic aggression behavior.
Probably because he is grilling their kin by the bushel-load.

.

It’s really hard to cook hot food at these events, but with meatballs you don’t have a choice: no one wants room temperature balls. I felt a little at a disadvantage because a lot of my competitors were restaurants with meatballs on the menu so they were old hands at this game, whereas I don’t have AllBalls on the menu so I was still working out the kinks. There was also a requirement that you have to make a meatball and a side dish (you can slide by if your meatball has two components) and being a good girl I followed directions. Then I looked around the room and saw restaurants that didn’t make the side dish and I suddenly felt like such a nerd. I also worked really hard on the tomato brioche my AllBalls were served on, making sure they had a nice buttery flavor with a tomato kick, and it killed me to watch people pick up their AllBalls and eat them and leave the brioche on the plate. Damn your South Beach Diets!

.

Dirt Candy’s Flower Ball at Meatball Madness.

.

My staff looking respectable and serious…

.

…and then not so much.
(l to r: Emily, my sous chef; our intern, Nin; and Diana, my server)

.

The really unflattering polyester jacket organizers wanted me to wear.

.

 

I met the guys from Little Owl (who won the event) and Ed from Ed’s Lobster Bar, whose lobster balls were terrific. The event was a blast, and people really seemed to love my AllBalls. They were really into the smoky taste and almost everyone I talked to thought they held up well against the meat meatballs. Serious Eats even picked my balls as one of the 13 Great Bites at the event, which made me feel warm inside. But there were two groups of people who really hated my AllBalls…

.

One of the Little Owl guys, being a tourist like me and taking pictures
of his own table.

.

My own very blurry picture of Dirt Candy’s AllBalls.

.

…one was the event chairs, Giada De Laurentiis and Lee Schrager. They were nice enough, but then they took a plate of AllBalls, took a tiny bite of one of my balls, and tossed the rest in the garbage. I get that people are watching their waistlines, but I really wanted to know what they thought and they ate less than a quarter of a ball between them. 

.

Then came the judges. Alex Guarnaschelli, Dana Cowin and Lee Anne Wong came by to taste the Little Owl balls, and since our tables were close to each other I offered them my balls when they walked by. “Sorry,” I was told, “You’re not part of the judging so we can’t taste you.” Well, I said, you could try them. I bet it’s not against the rules. “No,” Dana Cowin said. Lee Anne Wong was really nice and said she’d come back later and try them, but she never did. However, I like her because at least she was nice enough to say she was going to make the effort.

.

This makes mixologist bear unhappy.

.

Which is a perfect segue to the other thing I did at NYC Food and Wine Festival: participate in “Skirt Steak: How (Women) Chefs Get the Job Done.” Charlotte Druckman was the moderator, and the panelists included myself, Anita Lo, Traci Des Jardins and Carla Hall from Top Chef.

.

The five of us in all our glory!

.

Hydrating.

.

It was a lot of fun, and my general point was that the lack of female chefs is far more about perception than reality, and that a lot of the blame can be laid at the feet of the mainstream press who insist on covering more boys than girls, then get all defensive when people call them out on it, saying it’s because there aren’t enough women chefs out there. No, you just choose not to cover them. There’s a great recap of the panel on the Wall Street Journal blog or you can watch the entire thing over on the Bullfrog & Baum site.

.