I was alerted to the fact that the font on comments is really small. Like, TINY. Everything looks dandy when I check the blog on my browser (I use Chrome), but I did have a look using Firefox at work and… yeah. Could hardly make out the bottom part of half of my posts. (Admittedly, the work computer also decided that my header was an ad that needed to be blocked, so I’m not sure how reliable that system is.)
I’d hate to be straining people’s eyes unnecessarily – please let me know if there are some strange things afoot when you view the site (it would be good if you could also tell me what browser you use).
Hoping to get this sorted…
As TV shows end, there are new ones to attract my devotion. Knowing that Bret Michaels had found love with one of the gawjus laydeez in Rock of Love II might be good news for the Poison singer, but bad news for this fan of his poignant search for a meaningful relationship1. Fortunately I mentioned the approaching end of the show to a friend at lunch and she reminded me to check out Simply Baking on 7Two on Friday afternoons.
Simply Baking is hosted by Andrew Nutter, a celebrity chef from Lancashire who isn’t shy about capitalising on his surname (one of his books is called Utter Nutter). I’m so lucky that my first viewing of Simply Baking featured puff pastry, because I can’t get enough of hearing a northern accent say “puff pastry”. And three minutes in, he’d said “puff pastry” more times than I can count. I’d been warned that he’s also fond of the word “actually” – he did say it a lot, but it definitely came second to “puff pastry” in this ep2.
It’s possible (probable) that the show has the backing of a proper production company, but the look and feel is of a public television spot shot in Nutter’s bedsit. Cooking shows these days are all about the slick appliances; Simply Baking features real whitegoods! There’s not an inch of stainless steel in sight. I did spy a KitchenAid on the bench, but it was in muted green (or navy?) and was hidden away. More eyecatching was what looked like a prop from the TV version of Hitchhikers Guide. It turned out to be a ridiculously small fridge.
Everything about the show is daggy and old-school. Nutter demonstrates the recipes, then reads through them again while the ingredients and amounts are displayed on the screen – I’m pretty sure that, before this section, he even reminded viewers to grab a pen and piece of paper. Bless! Wardrobe consisted of the largest, orangest shirt I’ve ever seen and it coordinated nicely with the collection of orange tea-towels. It wasn’t until he popped over to the oven (gas mark 5!) that I could confirm that it was actually a shirt and not a dhoti of some description.
Simply Baking is a nice little cooking show. The host is chirpy (“personable” would be damning with faint praise, I guess) and the recipes – today at least – were simple and looked reasonably tasty. Plus, I’m now prouder of my knife skills than I was before viewing; Nutter’s crowing about being able to slice leeks finely whilst looking at the camera and talking (wow! Multi-tasking!) elicited a snort and “call that fine?!” from me (and a startled leap from the cat, who still isn’t used to the fact that I talk back to the TV)3.
Not long after the Nutter half hour is Tamasin’s Weekend. The eponymous Tamasin is the sister of Daniel Day Lewis and the show is a longer version of Posh Nosh, without any satire (and without Richard E. Grant, of course). In today’s episode, Tamasin’s uni student daughter was “cooking” for some friends, which offered her mother both the opportunity to say “darling” more than Nutter said both “puff pastry” and “actually” combined and the chance to make all sorts of dated judgements about students and their pot noodle dependencies. Tamasin also indulged in some self-congratulatory “I’ve taught her all about cooking” stuff, and then did all the cooking while her daughter got dressed and made up. The “cooking” involved slicing raw vegies, making a bagna cauda, and cooking some pasta to be served with what turned out to be some stringy-looking chicken. They also said “hoomus” a lot, which might be the correct pronuciation for all I know. I’m glad I’ve seen Tamasin and, while I’d like to say I won’t watch it again, it has just enough fingernails-on-the-chalkboard appeal to make it a keeper.
The last new show that hasn’t made it onto the recording schedule, but is still ridiculously addictive (and is probably the one that is the true successor to RoL) is RuPaul’s Drag Race. Basically, it’s America’s Next Top Model with a more appealing host and, in some cases – Ongina! – more attractive contestants. The contestants are vying for the honour of winning the race, I guess. To be honest, I haven’t paid much attention to the endgame, since the challenges are the major entertainment focus. Once contestants have passed the challenge, the bottom two “lip-synch for their lives” and the loser is eliminated. It’s a fun show and I’m enjoying seeing Project Runway’s Santino on the judging panel.
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1. The fact that I know there’s another RoL series is some comfort to me here.
2. One of the recipes also featured mushrooms. Mushrooms! And “bootton mooshrooms” at that.
3. I see that quite a few new visitors have come here looking for Nutter recipes. Sorry! No recipes here, but there are some here, here and here. Enjoy!
Sure, you can outrun a tsunami...
Disaster movies follow a certain formula. There is the perfunctory introduction of characters who are written in broad strokes to make it easy for the audience to identify the heroes, the survivors and the doomed. Amongst these will be a family man, spurred onto heroic deeds by a limited imagination that reduces an existential threat to humanity as an imminent threat to his own loved ones. His family has usually already been torn apart by his own lack of attention to it; it’s as though he don’t know what he’s got til it’s gone (and even fails to notice that it’s gone). There’s a expert of some sort who provides exposition as to the nature and potential destructiveness of the looming disaster with some pseudo-scientific jargon that rarely seems plausible. Comic relief usually comes in the form of a bumbling character who always seems to survive in spite of making some fairly risky choices (to say their survival is against the odds is not just cliche, but a redundancy – everything in these films is against the odds).
Plot exposition is as superficial as the introduction of characters, and these two facets are rarely integrated. Disaster movie scripts zoom through this phase because – let’s face it – we’re paying for the destruction, not the human insight. That’s what makes disaster flicks such good big-screen-bucket-of-popcorn viewing. On DVD, they are the kinds of films you can happily rent for a Sunday night, knowing that you won’t be agonising over the meaning at work the next day.
…and it absolutely crawls when you’re not. February’s the shortest month of the year. It certainly didn’t feel like it this year because I decided to spend the month not drinking. Now, lest you start thinking that I have some sort of unacknowledged alcohol dependency, I don’t. And I offer the fact that I haven’t had a drink for 28 days as evidence for that. It’s just that not doing something that you normally do takes more effort than doing it. Instead of going out for a drink after work on Friday, what do you do? You either have to make a plan to do something else, or you do nothing, and doing nothing is dull.
January (well, December and January. Well, summer) was a time for afternoon drinks in the sun, evening drinks, long lunches – with drinks. I didn’t break any of my normal strictures, since you can’t drink on a work night when you’re on holidays, but I did feel that I was drinking more than what I’d admit to drinking when asked by a doctor. Or, should I say, given that I usually do some mental maths when answering that question, more than twice what I’d admit to. In other words, I felt that it wouldn’t do me any harm to give it a break.
Going out for dinner is fun. Going out for dinner somewhere where there’s a lovely wine list, and not being able to have a glass just feels arbitrary. Telling a waiter that you don’t need to see the wine list and then being presented with a range of sweet, fizzy alternatives that really don’t enhance the food you’ve ordered is disappointing.
The worst part of Febfast, though, was that without any other effort I lost a few kilos. This means that unless I’m prepared to have them back (which I’m not, really) I’m going to have to make some other changes now that I’ll be having those glasses of wine and gin and tonics. Boo.
I love this version of the UK’s Masterchef. It follows pretty much the same pattern as the standard MC (new contestants each night, a final at week’s end, rinse, repeat until semi finals) but with more specific challenges and higher expectations Some of the contestants are way up there on the kitchen food chain, some are working in restaurants with serious reputations and others are young guys working hard in small pubs and bistros. In any case, there’s quite a bit at stake for them as far as their own self-esteem goes – imagine pitching up to work having performed abysmally in front of such a large audience.
Skills Test and Palate Test
In this MC, the first round is a knockout, literally. To “earn the right to cook for Michel Roux Jr” the four chefs face Monica Galetti1, his senior sous chef, in an elimination based on a ten minute test designed to showcase the contestants’ skills and palates. Only three go through. Skills tests have included the following: Clean and butterfly prawns, bone a trotter, bone an oxtail, fillet a fish, shuck oysters, julienne vegetables, turn vegetables, clean a squid, open scallops, joint a rabbit. Palates have been tested on how well the chefs can make a tasty pesto, omelette, scrambled eggs, bearnaise, pancake and creme anglaise, amongst other things. Usually there’s a standout contestant who romps it in; often there are two that don’t seem to have a clue in at least one of the two tests. In one episode this week, one guy didn’t get to the palate test, another made the pesto, but didn’t use the mortar and pestle (his dish apparently tasted good, but it looked beyond chunky), yet another mistook julienne for dice. Even when contenders haven’t ever tried doing what they are tested on, Monica is able to see whether a spark of potential exists – sometimes extraordinary knife skills see them through; at other times, an error such as a sliver of butter cut with a bloody knife on a bloody board makes for an easy decision. Occasionally, when there are two contestants who have performed badly on the test, it seems she would rather send neither through to her boss (in the aforementioned butter case, Monica made it clear to the other poorly performing chef that he was only there because of someone else’s more egregious error).
Monica is a natural on TV, and something of a rarity in this male-dominated arena. In her five years working with Michel, she has clearly taken on some of his characteristics – her facial expressions while the chefs tackle the challenges are one of the highlights of this section. She and regular season judge Gregg Wallace discuss and discard, calmly, with no shouting.
Versatility test
Two dishes, one ingredient (some sort of fish, meat or poultry), 50 mins
Michel lets us know what he’ll be looking for in the treatment of the ingredient, and then wanders around with Gregg interrogating the contestants and exercising his facial muscles to entertaining effect. Fortunately, the chefs are too hard at work to see him, otherwise some would probably withdraw from the competition prior to judging. Some chefs crumble under pressure, but I haven’t seen a contestant fail to plate up two dishes until this week (strangely, he didn’t leave himself time to sear scallops).
When tasting, Michel doesn’t stuff as much in his gob as John Torode tends to do during the regular season. Both judges provide constructive criticism and I’d imagine all contestants aim for “I’d put that on my menu” from Michel and “Phwaor!!!!” from Gregg. It’s great to see the look on a chef’s face when his (or, unfortunately rarely, her) offering is greeted with enthusiasm. I challenge you not to have a little joyous weep for contestants who reap the judges’ praise. One such beneficiary was this week’s jug-eared ranga, who had to deal with a gentle Michel Roux Jr compliment-fakeout2 and was still beaming in his post challenge interview saying “it’s not as good as when my daughter was born, but almost!”. Both judges show respect for these guys – after all, all contestants, successful or not, will be heading back into kitchens once this is done. There’s no annihilation of egos, but there’s no unearned praise: chefs are told when their food doesn’t work, but – crucially – are told why.
Classic recipe test
Two dishes, 1 hr and 20 minutes
In the final test, the chefs are given two “classic” dishes and 80 minutes to demonstrate their understanding of the fundamentals of French cooking. Some days it might be a Boeuf Bourguignon and madeleines; another day devilled kidneys and a fruit tart. One of the more subtle challenges this week called for a consomme and a roasted pineapple. I didn’t catch the name of the pineapple dish, but it looked more like something you’d get at the Island Trader than at Le Cinq (apparently it’s a classic – let me know if you’ve ever encountered it).
As with the very first test, there are often dishes the that chefs have never made; indeed, sometimes they’ve never seen or tasted what it is they are supposed to be recreating. They are given recipes, of course, but if you’ve got no clear idea of what something should be, that can be challenging (as we saw with the Paris Brest turned out by one contender).
When all’s said and done, the judges weigh up the pros and cons to come to a consensus over who should go through to the quarter finals. Unlike the regular MC, there haven’t been many knock-down disputes between the judges. Perhaps Gregg holds Michel in higher esteem than he does John?
This is not a “reality” show; it’s more like a cooking Olympics. It’s also not the kind of food show you watch for how-tos, although there are definitely some tips to pick up along the way. I think there are still a few weeks to go – if you have the food channel, and love watching people cook, check it out.
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1. I’m wondering whether there’s a “southern hemisphere judge” clause. Unlike John Torode, though, Monica’s accent hasn’t Britified.
2. These judges aren’t immune to the possibility for drama when judging, but they don’t aim for Seacrest “You’ll be disappointed to hear that… you’re back next week!” levels of fakeout. In this instance, Michel said something along the lines of “Michelin star restaurants are able to put three ingredients on a plate… and you have produced a dish of this quality”.
This is now officially a problem. I’m planning my lunch breaks on my days off to coincide with Rock of Love. With only six creatively named women left in the house, at least I’ll be in detox soon. And I do draw the line at recording it, so I’ll miss tomorrow’s episode…
Kristy Joe is one of the six left. She’s also still married and has decided that the best way of “telling the world that (she’s) here for Bret” is to call her (second) husband. I’m assuming he’s her current husband, and also the guy she has a restraining order against. He’s surprised to hear from her and not that pleased to discover that his wife is calling him to tell him about the “connection” she has with Bret. Bret? Is scared, and running away in his red Ferrari. Kristy Joe is getting emotional because he’s running away from her drama and she can’t tell him that she’s there for him.
The “insanely awesome” challenge for the day is to make two videos for two of Bret’s songs. Two teams, winning team gets a group date, winning creative director gets a solo date. Ambre and Destiney are duking it out for that honour. Jessica is not only glad she doesn’t have to work with “that crabby ho, Kristy Joe”, but pleased to be on a team with Destiney, who has done music videos before, apparently, and Daisy, who “can sing… in her own mind”.
Kristy Joe is perfect for the video for “Fallen”, since it really reflects her “internal struggles”. Eew. “Crying? And laying in bed all day long? That’s the same thing she does every day. Not such a hard acting job for Kristy Joe,” smirks Megan. In fact, Megan’s job in her team seems to be to slag everyone off. Ambre is derided as “an old lady” because she’s unable to hold the camera steady. She is so confident in her directorial ability, though, that she doesn’t mind that the other team is “monopolising” Dean. He seems happy to be hanging out with the scantily clad girls “acting” as strippers.
In editing, Ambre discovers that pressing “pause” all the time has cut the scenes, which is going to make the process much longer. With 30 minutes to go, the system crashes. Botox having rendered her face inexpressive, Amber is reduced to conveying her emotions by gaping like a guppy and swearing. In the other editing suite, Destiney’s team is still dressed in their stripper garb and are all talking over one another.
Judging. Ambre’s team video is dull black and white angst in lingerie, cut with colour footage of Bret with guitar. Ambre pays homage to The Wizard of Oz in the final scenes where the Kristy Joe footage turns to colour when presented with a rose. We are so not in Kansas anymore. I would have thought that much was obvious. The other video has even less energy, which is quite an achievement since it features pole dancing and fake girl-girl snogging. Fallen wins! Ambre gets her solo date! Destiney is annoyed that “that stupid skank Kristy Joe gets another date with Bret”. She screams a lot. Unfortunately she doesn’t smack KJ.
The date is in Bret’s bedroom. They both think it’s “awesome” and “very cool” to be sitting on the floor in front of a low table. Low expectations. Some sort of questionable swami arrives to look into Ambre’s flinty soul. Bret has donned a paisley bandana in honour of the occasion. Heads are bowed reverently and Satish discovers that Bret and Ambre have a connection that has lasted for over 900 years. (Ambre is quick to reassure him that she is only 32 years old, which… WHAT? Why aren’t the birthers investigating this claim?) Will their age-old connection be strong enough to withstand the imminent arrival of Kristy Joe, who seems unable to respect the santity of the solo date? Just as Bret says “just me and Ambre in the here and now. That’s where I wanna be,” there’s a knock at the door. “Unless this is God, or big John with a beer, I’d best not be interrupted right now.”
Bret sends Kristy Joe to her room and says something ambiguous that makes her think that he’ll be following her once he makes his excuses to Ambre. Not so fast, KJ! He sends Satish to try to sort out her “soul in turmoil”. Heh. “Have you seen a sad tree? Have you seen a frustrated ocean? Have you seen a crazy mountain?” Kristy Joe answers “no” to all of these questions. Her interview reveals her true reaction: “What the fuck did you say?”.
Back in Bret’s bedroom, Ambre and Bret are snogging and it’s not pretty to watch. Bret thinks she’s the best kisser in the house. After the pashing, Ambre is dismissed and KJ is invited in. She tells Bret about the phone call and, instead of being all “yay, thanks KJ” he realises that this means she’s been lying all along about having ended the relationship before going into the house. Oops. Destiney is sobbing on the stairs, imagining what is going on behind Bret’s bedroom doors. Her tears are contagious: Jessica and Daisy join in.
Group date: Megan, Kristy Joe and Bret. He’s taken them to a bar lit with no-shooting-up-here blue. Megan jumps him and they start snogging, forcing KJ to take refuge in the lime green lounge. “It’s like, wait a minute, where’s Kristy Joe?” Bret interviews, seemingly surprised that she wouldn’t have hung around to watch the Megan’n'Bret show. He abandons the face sucking Megan for some “Kristy Joe time”, which Megan soon interrupts.
Elimination time. Bret’s not looking forward to it, since he just loves all these beeyootifull ladies. I guess it doesn’t really matter what they wear to elimination, since the backstage passes have already been printed, but I would have advised Ambre against the midriff-baring tank-top-long-skirt combo if she wants to hold the “I’m 32″ line. She’s the first to be called, since Bret has taken it on trust that they have known each other since the 12th century. I think he trusts Satish more than anybody else in the house. Daisy gets the “spiritual connection” line. Jessica has “stepped it up”, so gets her pass. She thanks God. God says “um, this one’s not on me, dude”. Destiney is next to stay and rock Bret’s world. Now it’s down to Megan and KJ. KJ is called down to take Bret’s hand and Megan thinks her world is about to be rocked, but not in the good way. He’s practically begging KJ to stay, but is leaving the decision up to her.
She needs to go home. He walks her out.
Megan is, literally, the booby prize. And the remaining five will battle it out to be Bret’s second-choice-girlfriend (or third, if you count the first season).
Rock of Love is brought to us by Mindless Entertainment. I’m not even kidding.
The way I see it, reality television is meant to be fun. Some shows have an element of the practical (learn how to do something whilst being entertained!), some are probably aiming to be inspirational (if these people can lose weight, maybe I can too!), and some are meta entertainment (people on TV competing to be famous). A lot of them are probably at the top of the televisual nutrition pyramid – they’re not going to do you any harm but should be enjoyed in moderation. Rock of Love wouldn’t even make it onto the diagram: it’s highly processed junk food that could quite probably be damaging to your health, but it’s something you crave every now and again.
I’m supposed to be working. This means I shouldn’t have Tweetdeck running, but I thought I’d be able to manage both (clearly monotasking never really took root). A tweet that began “Fucking Mumford and Sons…”1 led to the compilation of this list of annoying musicians. Feel free to add the word “fucking” as the middle name to the rest of these:
- James Fucking Blunt
- Fucking Mumford and Fucking Sons
- John Fucking Butler
- John Fucking Mayer
- Cat Empire
- Jason Mraz
- Pete Murray
- Xavier Rudd
- anybody from any of those TV talent shows
Who have we missed?
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1. Say this in your hammiest Oirish accent. You won’t be able to stop!
…but so rewarding!
I was feeling a little otherwise, which is probably how I came to completely mistime my walk into the city for a lazy lunch. How to fill a 45 minute gap?
1. Mecca Cosmetica, Little Collins St
Amazing staff, always very helpful and friendly and totally non-judgmental when an unmade-up person with scarily unkempt brows walks in and starts poking around. As soon as I’d said “lipstick” the assistant was rummaging around painting colours she thought would both appeal and suit on the back of her hand. We narrowed it down to two, and I walked out with an Ellis Faas lipstick and a booking for the Nars event. Huh?
I was tempted to buy the Nars "Damned", just because of the name...
2. Myer – 35% off cookbooks
No, I don’t need any more cookbooks. Let’s face it, I don’t need any material possessions beyond basic clothing, right? The frivolity of cosmetics purchases needed to be balanced by something more practical. Something more useful. Something I could almost justify as being a money-saver in the long run. So now I am the proud owner of bourke street bakery – the ultimate baking companion. Of course, now I think I’m going to need a proper electric mixer… Recommendations welcome!
3. Sole Devotion, Degraves St
Last year I bought some shoes online from John Fluevog Shoes, which means that they now send me regular emails to tempt me into further purchases. As far as I’m concerned, the existence of these shoes makes up for Michael Buble and Celine Dion. Anyway, SD in the city also stocks the shoes and I was in the area… sort of… and couldn’t resist dropping in. Once you’re in there, it’s impossible not to try on shoes and once you’ve tried them on, it’s unlikely you’re going to be able to walk away without them. My new black Viardots are similar enough to the Malibrans to sneak under the shoe-monitor’s radar for a while, I suspect.
Remember the Seinfeld episode The Comeback? George is at a meeting and is scoffing some seafood and a co-worker snarks “Hey, George, the ocean called. It’s running out of fish!”1. Given the amount of fish and other ocean life we’ve consumed since starting the 2010 food routine (footine?) I’m expecting that comment directed at me any day now. Less surprising, I guess, is that the meatless day hasn’t escaped beyond Monday.
Meatless Monday
Last Monday did not catch me unprepared. Having checked the weather forecast over the weekend I’d already picked up a variety of mushrooms for a risotto. Determined to do it properly, I raced home from work and popped a pot on the stove for vegie stock. Stephanie Alexander suggests halving a tomato and an onion and bunging them in the oven until they’re “black”, which I did, albeit only to “brown”. While they were caramelising, I was sweating a bit more onion and some leek, then threw in a bunch of vegies rescued from the bottom of the fridge. The result was surprisingly nice, as was the risotto2.
Fresh Fish Thursday
The Ponytail, aka Neil Perry, came to the rescue on Thursday with his suggestion of a tomato, green olive and caper sauce to accompany snapper. Simple and gorgeous. I added some smashed kipflers that were fried off with sliced spring onions for a bit of zestiness, which I adapted from the Strodes’ Two’s Cooking3
No Booze February
One down, three to go.
I won’t be making this routine a habit. As soon as March hits, I’m having a glass of wine. It’s only been a week, so I can’t say “this is easy” because… it’s only been a week. Perhaps if I was feeling better and could trace the betterness to not drinking, I might consider taking it further, but I’m not, so I won’t. I was dreading going out for dinner and having to wave the wine list away, but Friday’s seafood feast at Esposito was not ruined by the lack of wine and I doubt that Wednesday’s Libertine bouillabaisse will be, either. Maybe it really is all about the food (and the company!).
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1. For a recap of the whole episode, Wikipedia has this article. It’s very detailed, but… convoluted.
2. Full disclosure: I thought the stock was so nice that I was actually dancing ’round the kitchen singing “I am the stock queen! I am the stock queen!”.
3.This book has been getting a bit of a workout. The recipes are straightforward and reliable and perfect for weeknights.
