Happened to catch some of Sandra Lee's new show, Restaurant Remakes, in which she takes famous signature dishes and ruins them. In this episode, she takes a lovely dish from Andre Rochat of Alize, herb-marinated duck medallions and duck sausage in a huckleberry reduction with a sunchoke and "recreates" it (and I use the term not loosely, but completely erroneously) with salt and peppered chicken breast and chicken sausage, salted frozen fried artichokes, frozen blackberries cooked in olive oil with balsamic vinegar, and a zucchini ribbon salad.  Don't ask me what zucchini ribbons have to do with anything.

And while Andre drizzled a tiny ribbon of delicate huckleberry reduction around the plate for a bit of sweetness, Sandra freakin' LADLED frozen blackberry crap half an inch thick all around the plate and then poured more on top of the zucchini.  I checked the web and it appears Andre Rochat is still alive and well, so I'm glad he has not committed seppuku on his santoku in shame, but I notice the dish is gone from the menu - merely a seasonal change to autumnal tastings or horrified embarrassment?  One can't be sure.

Lastly, she did this one thing that is fingernails-across-the-blackboard to my aural and linguistic sensibilities.  While she was making the vile frozen blackberry thing, she kept talking about the balsamic vinegar-ette she was adding.  Don't add more than a tablespoon of this vinegar-ette!  Look at this good balsamic vinegar-ette I have!  (which couldn't have been that good as it was obviously domestic, not from Modena) - AAAAUGH!  It is NOT miniature vinegar!  It is vinaigrette!  Vinaigrette! Not vinegar-ette!  Between vanilla egg-stract, the groshery store, melk and vinegar-ette, what she's doing to the English language is almost - ALMOST - as vile as what she did to poor Andre Rochat's duck sausage dish.

And you know the most egregious irritating part of the whole thing?  Her mispronunciation of vinaigrette gets on my very last nerve anyway, but the lovely, tasty condiment from Modena isn't vinaigrette anyway!  It's VINEGAR.  Balsamic vinegar.  Say it with me now:  vin.  uh.  grrrr.