TRASH IN THE PAN
Hilariously horrible celeb chefs are here to make you feel better about your quarantine food fails
IN an episode of “The Real Housewives of New York City” that aired last month, Sonja Morgan left a vibrator to marinate in a plate of chicken cacciatore after a debauched night in the Hamptons.
Now, the reality-TV mainstay is on the Food Network getting schooled on how to make eyepopping dishes without sex toys — or help from staff.
“We actually learned how to fillet a whole fish,” the socialite tells The Post. “I had a Philippine chef who used to do that for me.”
Morgan, along with New York City cabaret comedian Bridget Everett, is competing on the latest season of “Worst Cooks in America: Celebrity Edition,” led by pros Anne Burrell and Tyler Florence and airing Sunday nights.
In the premiere episode, Morgan actually attempts cooking both a rack of lamb and some haddock in a toaster oven. Bravo fans weren’t surprised by this unconventional method: Morgan’s been using toasters instead of real ovens for years. In her early “RHONY” days, she even contemplated putting out a toaster oven cookbook and line of appliances. Perhaps it’s best she didn’t — on the show, both of her dishes end up on the plate still raw inside.
Meanwhile, Everett makes cornflake ranch chicken, which she boils and submerges in an entire bottle of Hidden Valley ranch dressing. Neither judge is impressed.
“Stars who struggle in the kitchen” has become its own genre of quarantine entertainment. Earlier this month, Robert Pattinson went viral when he blew up his microwave during an interview with GQ while making pasta with cheese, cornflakes and sugar. And Everett’s best friend Amy Schumer is also trying to get food-literate during self-isolation: She and her James Beard Award-winning chefhusband, Chris Fischer, premiered a show last week on the Food Network in which he tries to teach the comedian to cook.
Everett just might be the worst of the bunch.
“[I’ve served a] friend a mediumrare chicken breast by accident,” Everett, 48, tells The Post. “There’s been times when I’ve made some macaroni and cheese, and sort of taken a quick little nap and woken up to the smell of sulfur and the macaroni is melted into the pan.”
Morgan, 56, has also had her share of fails. Once, when making bacon at her grandmother’s house, she scorched the ceiling.
“The grease set on fire. I looked up and the whole ceiling had a snaking brown line following me around,” she says. She has a similar accident on “Worst Cooks,” while making a steak.
She admits she could use a little help — despite claiming that during her marriage to JPMorgan heir John Adams Morgan she cooked for a count in Venice and Winston Churchill’s grandson at her home in France.
“Just because I have a repertoire of Italian recipes from when I lived in Italy, it doesn’t mean I’m chef level,” she says.
Being in “boot camp,” the show’s term for cooking class, “was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done,” says Everett. “You’re facing a fear, and I’m somebody who only likes to do things that I’m good at.”
The first and most important lesson that the gals learned was how to correctly hold and use a chef ’s knife. “You pinch it between your thumb and forefinger, three fingers downtown,” instructs Burrell on the show.
Knife lessons “changed my life,” says Everett. “I didn’t know how to dice an onion, and I know that sounds so basic. But it keeps you from doing so much in the kitchen, when you don’t know how to chop or cut a vegetable.”
Morgan, on the other hand, enjoyed testing her slicing skills for a
different reason: After cutting her hand, she was attended to by a medic “who’s hot, with dreadlocks,” she says. “I had never seen such a hot medic! You can’t change the stripes on this tiger.”
Morgan and Everett, who’ve known each other through the cabaret scene and appearing on “Watch What Happens Live,” say they enjoyed their time on set together, with Everett describing it as akin to walking “into, like, camp or school on the first day and you see somebody you know and you’re like, ‘Thank God.’ ”
Because of her newfound kitchen skills, Everett has only ordered takeout twice during the coronavirus lockdown.
“I’m making scallops. I made a puttanesca sauce. I made focaccia,” she says. “I’m watching cooking videos for fun now.”
She’s already planning a dinner party for when the pandemic is over: a homemade Mexican feast paired with gingerturmeric margaritas.
Although Morgan is using quarantine to drop a few pounds in Palm Springs, Calif., she’s grateful for her culinary education.
“I came out here to do my colonic, you know . . . I’m juicing, fasting, eating vegetables,” she says. When she’s back to eating normally, she’ll make her favorite new dish: ceviche, which she pronounces sa-veech.
“Forget parsley, forget basil. We’re talking about cilantro with the red peppers and the mango, jicama,” she says.
As for dishes that require cooking, Morgan says: “It was good to get acquainted with the big-girl oven — [but] I’ll never give up my toaster.”