Global Kitchen: Michael explores the globe and finds that formerly exotic flavours of the world can become everyday mainstream.
Chef at Home is soothing background food TV. Michael Smith is a pleasant host, presenting a range of simple dishes for everyday cooking. I’ve never been prompted to pick up a pencil to note anything down; much of what he cooks is already in my repertoire, although sometimes it prompts me to think of cooking something I haven’t had for a while.
Before today, I’ve never thought to blog it before, either. It’s probably a little unfair that I was prompted to do so by today’s episode, since it was the off-note that had me reaching for the notebook. Today’s focus was on Indian dishes and I really only started to take note when aloo gobi was mentioned. I love aloo gobi and was interested in Michael’s approach – clearly he was presenting Indian food to an audience who might be intimidated by it, and he did a good job of showing that it was easy and unintimidating. He made a simple palak paneer to go with it, having made his own paneer (for some reason he didn’t go into any details of how to do this, despite saying how easy it was) and all seemed pretty peachy. After this, there was some sort of turnover thing from an unspecified part of Asia and I started to lose interest until I heard him comment that “dishes from Asia go really well with Indian food” in a kind of who’da thunk it way. I’m not sure what part of the world he thinks India is, nor what – exactly – he means by the generic “Asian flavours” he went on to talk about. Look, it didn’t turn me off deciding to put a version of aloo gobi on the menu for tonight (looking forward to it!) or dredging up my paneer recipe, but it did make me question his overall credibility on Asian food.
Am I being pedantic? Probably, but there’s enough food programming to rule out the ones that don’t hit the mark. I won’t turn it off when it comes on (hello, Good Chef/Bad Chef), but I doubt I’ll be paying it even the scant attention I was before today.
It was never on my regular viewing schedule anyway, largely because Foxtel follows quite a bizarre screening schedule for it. It is on six times a week, but this week’s episode was on today, and will be repeated twice tomorrow; there are two new episodes on Tuesday with repeats on Wednesday, and… well, I can’t figure out the pattern. Check the Lifestyle Food Chef at Home page or the Foxtel Guide for further details.
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I haven’t seen this show in ages. Does he still have an amazingly organised (and huge) pantry? I think a good proportion of what made me watch the show was so I could look at his pantry.
His pantry is amazing! Thanks for reminding me of that… perhaps I’ll switch it on one day and watch with the sound down, just for some pantry pr0n.