This Blogger Is Cooking Her Way Through the Entire "Top Chef" Cookbook

This Blogger Is Cooking Her Way Through the Entire “Top Chef” Cookbook

For my Penn Foodies series, this week we’ve featured a restaurant entrepreneur, a couple who had their blog turned into a cookbook, and now today a chef (and blogger) on a mission!

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Carolyn Anne Dizon (W’90, Parliamentary Debate Team) is cooking her way through the entire Top Chef The Cookbook and has shared it with all of us. She is now over half-way through the cookbook, and along the way she blogs about the process on her BravoTV Blog “The Cookbook Chronicles”, shows step by step photos and overall explains things to the home cook. In addition she discusses the episode the dish was featured on, and also blogged about the past season 5’s Top Chef’s weekly episodes.

How did Carolyn become such a foodie? Her roots started at Penn…

Per Carolyn,

“I have always been cooking, was an avid follower of Julia Child since my teens, did tons of cooking in elementary school and high school, and at Penn, during my senior year, had a “cooking club” with my roommates where we would all rotate each night one of us taking on the role of making dinner. I also tried to perfect pumpkin pie my senior year at Penn – I think I may not have succeeded in that endeavor – I remember for one version (I made about 8 versions), I forgot the eggs, and the less-than-perfect results were launched out the window of my rowhouse apartment onto 40th Street, much to the dismay of my roommates and friends! But seriously, I believe that during my sophomore year when I lived in High Rise East, I was one of the few people who actually made use of the kitchen!

My blogging started rather spontaneously. I always had been doing my version of “blogging” by musing on “whatever” – often reality TV shows – to many friends via email and we’d keep a running dialogue going. Recently I met two women through friends of mine who both work at BravoTV.com. I told them what a fan I was of the show and “impressed” them with my knowledge of all kinds of trivia from the show. I guess they were impressed because they asked me if I wanted to audition to blog for the Top Chef cookbook. I jumped at the opportunity and after sending two sample blogs got the position.” (find out more about why she’s doing this blog HERE)

Per Carolyn,

“I love my blog for this recipe because it is an AMAZING dish using classical French technique (which I feel is key to any properly trained chef – it provides the foundation for them to branch out from after). This recipe required a lot of steps, has great photos, was a huge success (totally a “clean plate club” meal), and the blog is a little funny because the blender basically exploded when I was blending the sauce – still I battled on, which is precisely what I would hope any home chef/cook to do as well.

+ Carolyn’s BravoTV blog: “The Cookbook Chronicles” HERE

+ Carolyn’s personal blog: TheSassyFoodie.com where she’ll be blogging all about the current “Top Chef Las Vegas” season which starts tonight!

+ Follow Carolyn on Twitter