Your Last Meal

On Top Chef, the judges, which included several very well known chefs, were asked to say what their last meal would be (assuming they had the chance to plan). They chose simple childhood meals that had meant something to them when they were young.

If you were told you were leaving this sphere (regardless of whether it was your doctor, the warden, or an enraged ex-wife with a gun in her hand that conveyed the news) what meal would you like to have as your last?

I'm going to think on it a bit - not sure I'd necessarily go for childhood comfort food.

kind of a cool idea....but ultimately a big bummer - I pass on this one

The last thing on my mind would be food. When I recently broke my wrist and had to go in for surgery, the thought of food made me gag. I pass on this one, as well.

My Great Uncle just died so I don't want to think about last meals because his last meal was beef broth in a hospital bed. I'll have to pass on this as well.

Looks like you'll have to think about the pre-execution option as everyone seems to be focussing on sickness.

Assume you are in wonderful health. Assume you are going to either get the chop the next day for some infraction or other, or maybe that you are going off on some very risky adventure (first man to parachute from low orbit?). Anyway, get past the health aspect and focus on what you'd like your ultimate meal to be.

If I were to go the same way as the Top Chef judges did - comfort food from childhood - I'd probably ask for something that I don't know the name for. You take a big cookie cutter and cut out a hole in a slice of bread (or 2 or 3) and fry them with an egg in the middle, topping them with the fried piece you cut out. With or without accompaniments like bacon, we used to get a kick out of this as kids, for some reason, and I still regard it fondly although rarely repeating it.

Well, Bill, since most people don't want to respond, I'll give you my version: it'd start with beluga caviar and creme fraiche on blini served with Krug and follow with a serving of freshly made angel hair pasta generously dressed with shaved black trufffle and served with a 30-year old Gran Bussia from Aldo Conterno. Then, of course, I ascend to heaven accompanied by a chorus of angels.

Mark Lipton
(Who thinks that the latter part of the fantasy is less likely than the former)

Like this?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_in_the_basket

My mom used to make this odd concoction. Hamburger Balls. It was like meatloaf except she'd form it into a ball and wrap bacon around it, then bake it. The bacon was always wilty and the hamburger cooked too well done. Needless to say that wouldn't be my last meal and I have no idea why it popped into my brain.

I'll have to give some thought to my perfect last meal.

Thanks, Patti - that's it. Never knew it should be called one eyed jacks but that appeals top the poker player in me.

Good choice, Mark - though not, I would think, what you viewed as comfort food as a child (unless your home was markedly different from mine!). I like the simplicity of your choices, each featuring a strong flavour.

I'm pondering something involving seared foie gras myself.

[Jenise]

No Mom's home cooking for my last meal! Not that my mother wasn't a good cook, but none of her dishes surpass any of the foods I've come to love in my greater adult adventures though a perfect piece of rare prime rib (wagyu beef, please) could come close, and for the first time in my life I'd order the Diamond Jim Brady cut just for the fun of seeing that on my plate. With that, since calories are no longer a concern, and though I do not otherwise consider it the perfect match for prime rib, I might have to have Joel Robuchon's mashed potatoes made with tons of butter or real french fries the Dutch way, made with thick perfect potatoes and fried three times. For a starter, I could be sold on foie gras a la Chinois on Main--a thick slab with a slab of grilled fresh pineapple and drizzled with a hoisin sauce, a perfect lobster tail with drawn butter (no, make that thermidor), or, if I had the mashed potatoes instead of the french fries, Chinese restaurant style fried shrimp the way the New Canton restaurant in downtown Whittier made them when I was a kid, fried in rings and served with a small plate of ketchup and so much hot chinese mustard your temples hurt. I would also need a bit of salad--bibb lettuce with a mustard vinaigrette and chives, tossed and reassembled in a head (a Thomas Keller method) would be perfect, and for dessert? A bowl of ice cold bing cherries picked that morning or some perfectly tree-ripened yellow peaches.

However if the meal is made to order then I might have to ask for something barbecued overnight low and slow because that takes longer.

However if the meal is made to order then I might have to ask for something barbecued overnight low and slow because that takes longer.

Next someone will ask for hundred year eggs, starting from fresh!
(They really only take a few months to make, though why anyone bothers escapes me - horrid things I wouldn't put in my mouth - once was more than enough!)

Can I say it depends on the weather?

If it is warm and sunny then it is hard to beat a perfectly grilled ribeye (organic Alberta beef please and thanks) with grilled veggies. If it is winter and blustery a fabulous Irish stew. If it is raining then I am leaning to roast chicken, mashed spuds with roasted garlic and sour cream with a side of asparagus.

BUT the food I always call my desert island food (as in you are stuck with only this dish for the rest of your life) is spaghetti and meat sauce!

Is your desert island food different than your wish for your last meal?

Can I say it depends on the weather?

Is your desert island food different than your wish for your last meal?

Well yeah - if only because if my last meal was foie gras it would soon become my last meal on the island - one can only take so much FG (or so I have been told - haven't yet come to any conclusion based on personal experience).

Jenise - I obviously picked the wrong day to start this thread (I have a bleak salad to eat at my desk for lunch) - your list is making me hungry!

Before my execution:

Blinis with creme fraiche and caviar (Krug Brut Champagne)
A dozen raw oysters with nothing but lemon juice (Chablis)
Fine country-style white bread with aioli sauce
Lobster thermidor (Romanee (Romanee Conti de la Romanee Conti)
A small cheese platter with bread and buffalo milk butter
Strawberries with creme chantilly (Chateau Yqueum 2001)
Petits Fours (Armagnac)


And if they tell me that strawberries are out of season, I'll tell them "no problem....I'll wait"

Best
Rogov

I'd like a nice beef filet, medium, with a side of either a baked potatoe with butter and sour cream or macaroni and cheese (why not both for this occasion?) and some Hagen Daz (sp?) chocolate ice cream for desert. A nice Pomerol or Margaux would round out the meal.

Before my execution:

Blinis with creme fraiche and caviar (Krug Brut Champagne)

Hmm... I like that choice!

Strawberries with creme chantilly (Chateau Yqueum 2001)

What? You'll pass up on the '21?

Mark Lipton

Barbeque for sure -- a mixed plate. Ribs (both spareribs and baby backs) by someone who really knows how to smoke them (where you have that 1/4" red rim above meat that is pull off the bone tender as you eat it. Not too heavy on the smoke, but enough to add character. A great hotlink, that's more like a chorizo than a link, per se. A couple slices of perfectly smoked brisket and a couple chicken wings (or one quarter of a breast). Slammin' barbeque sauce (like the one I make; not too sweet, not too tart, and not too hot to taste the nuiance of the flavors). Potato salad (the kind made with mayo, sour cream, a touch of vinegar and lots of celery, shallots and dill) with a final finish of course sea salt and coarse cracked black pepper; and cole slaw (vinaigrette based, not mayo). Corn on the cob (with lots of slathered butter) and a good preasant bread to sop up all the drippings. Ginger beer. For dessert: a great cheese platter (parmesan, stilton, Wisconsin cheddar and an artisan surprise), dried fruits, mixed nuts and a bottle of my home made blackberry port, chocolate mousse (about 2 oz), cheesecake (a sliver) with a flour-based crust (not graham cracker), peasant bread pudding with whiskey sauce (2 oz), and a cup of Earl Gray tea, with cream. Burp!!

Ready, aim, Fire!

Man, what a depressing thought.

I think I would like to have my typical Sunday dinner, which is definitely comfort food to me.
There would be unlimited wine during this meal, bottles of robust, rustic red from Italy.
I would like to start the meal by nibbling on an appetizer tray - some really good salame, some sharp provolone and creamy ricotta salata, a few olives, and some roasted peppers, accompanied by a loaf of crusty, seeded bread.
Then, I want a big bowl of penne rigate, doused in "gravy" and showered with grated Pecorino Romano, followed by a meat course of meatballs, sausage and braciole.
Wrap it up with a green salad dressed simply with vinegar and olive oil. The next course would be a pan of roasted nuts - filberts, almonds, walnuts, and if in season, a chestnut or two. Then I would have an orange, or, again, if in season, a peach or some melon.
If I'm given any time to digest at all, I would like to enjoy one last bowl of chocolate ice cream about two hours after the main meal.

Then, they can kill me in my sleep.

[Jenise]

Man, what a depressing thought.

I think I would like to have my typical Sunday dinner, which is definitely comfort food to me.
There would be unlimited wine during this meal, bottles of robust, rustic red from Italy.
I would like to start the meal by nibbling on an appetizer tray - some really good salame, some sharp provolone and creamy ricotta salata, a few olives, and some roasted peppers, accompanied by a loaf of crusty, seeded bread.
Then, I want a big bowl of penne rigate, doused in "gravy" and showered with grated Pecorino Romano, followed by a meat course of meatballs, sausage and braciole.
Wrap it up with a green salad dressed simply with vinegar and olive oil. The next course would be a pan of roasted nuts - filberts, almonds, walnuts, and if in season, a chestnut or two. Then I would have an orange, or, again, if in season, a peach or some melon.
If I'm given any time to digest at all, I would like to enjoy one last bowl of chocolate ice cream about two hours after the main meal.

Then, they can kill me in my sleep.

I could eat your last meal, too!

[Jenise]

Bill, I don't believe you've ever posted your own last meal menu.

Also, what about SWMBO? I asked Bobo this question the other night and he said Roast Chicken. When I asked what else with it, thinking of my request for lobster thermador or Chinese fried shrimp and all manner of things I wouldn't normally put on one table, he mentioned a potato dish and peas because he was trying to complete the plate correctly rather than satisfy culinary urges or imagine a world in which anything nothing is impossible or unreasonable. Sigh. Love that man to death, but he does think entirely inside the box!

I hope to live to such a ripe old age that whatever my last meal turns out to be will have to be vitamized!

[David M. Bueker]

A multi-course affair is required. I am going to make this a little more structured by serving wines from the cellar (can I just take a corkscrew to the basement?).

real Maryland crab cakes served with 1988 Krug
seared foie gras with apples served with 2001 Domaine Weinbach Gewurztraminer Furstentum VT
aged rib eye steak with a side of truffled mashed potatoes served with two wines - 1996 Chateau Haut Brion, 2001 DRC Richebourg
spinach salad with candied pecans, crumbled blue cheese & a light balsamic dressing served with 1975 J. J. Prum Graacher Himmelreich Riesling Auslese
cheese plate served with 2001 Donnhoff Niederhauser Hermannshohle Riesling Auslese & 2001 Donnhoff Oberhauser Brucke Riesling Auslese
post dinner drink: 2001 Selbach-Oster Bernkasteler Badstube Riesling Eiswein

David, I'm stealing one of your courses. The foie gras with the Furstentum sounds fabulous and I happen to have one bottle of that wine.

A multi-course affair is required. I am going to make this a little more structured by serving wines from the cellar (can I just take a corkscrew to the basement?).

David,
Please feel free to invite me over when you plan on expiring, or at least when you plan on having this meal. In return, I take back everything I said about you in that "replacing '88 Clos Fourtet" thread

Mark Lipton

[Jenise]

A multi-course affair is required. I am going to make this a little more structured by serving wines from the cellar (can I just take a corkscrew to the basement?).

I enjoy your decorum. You have planned a perfect meal that harmoniously progresses from start to finish. My meal was more about having all my favorite foods one last time, convention be damned.