The final 15 check into their luxury mansion but stumble when they have to explain why they should be captain.  The boys meet their mentor for the series, Graham Manou, before they take on their first match of the series.

Well, I didn’t make it to the first match of the series.  The synopsis of the episode sums up what I did see fairly accurately, though.  The mansion had all the trappings of luxury – marble entry, sweeping staircase, manicured lawns, a pool – and most of the final fifteen summed up their suitability for the role of captain with a series of variations on the syllable “um”.  Oh, and they met Graham Manou.

Then there was a lot of smoke, the sound of approaching fire engines, and then the luxury mansion was evacuated for… a challenge that was going to focus on “communication”.  And that’s when I turned off.  Sure, there seemed to be a lack of urgency during the evacuation that hinted that the guys were aware that it was a set-up, but that only makes it more pointless, doesn’t it?

Not interested.  Goodbye, Cricket Superstar, perhaps I’ll see one or more of the fifteen in the baggy green one day. Or, if not, in some Big Bash pyjamas.

At least I watched for long enough to have the life of a pro-cricketer summed up for me in one word.  ”Freebies!”  Thanks, Lee.

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This item has been cross-posted over at Reality Ravings.

The whole concept is I travel around and show people some of the really amazing food and recipes you can get from all over the world.

I still really want to do it and I’m looking at other options so we can make it happen as food and travel are two things I am really passionate about.

Two things, Hayden.  First, that’s not really a concept.  Second, food and travel are things a lot of people are passionate about, but they don’t expect to be paid for it.  As Mr Rufus said, “that’s not a show, that’s a junket”.

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Reality Ravings’ take on the story is here.  She also has a piece on Curtis Stone’s new show, which perhaps fills the need for surfie-foodie-travelling types.

Some of the best Great British produce is under threat and in this campaigning series, ten of the BBC’s best-known chefs and cooks are on a mission to bring our traditional produce back from the brink.

I’m a sucker for any food show with “Great British…” at the beginning of the title, so I am predisposed to like this.   Having Michel Roux Jr as one of the chefs in this episode is an almost unnecessary additional drawcard.  Let’s see how it goes…

Michel Roux Jr on bread

3% of bread in Britain baked by bakers – MR(jr) wants us to eat artisan loaves. The Chorleywood process, by which industrial bread is made,  entails whipping dough full of air, pumping it with carbon dioxide and adding things to make sure it goes through machines easily.  Chris – a bread guy – counts off 14 ingredients in the industrial loaf.  Michel goes to meet an industrial bread guy to tell him that he wants a baker on every street, which obviously this bloke won’t agree with.  He’s all “we don’t want to criticise the consumer” which is the usual “we are just giving people what they want” nonsense.  He points out that British bread is the cheapest in Europe.

A simple white loaf

This is made with milk, which is heated, butter and then some golden syrup.  (I wonder if Michel is surrounded by Union Jacks in his kitchen for a reason).  MR(Jr) adds yeast, white flour and some salt.  Rest for  five minutes and then start working it for ten minutes.  Rest for half an hour and pose in a doorway with a hot beverage. I wonder if MR(Jr) is English enough for tea…  Form into balls and put into a tin, then rest for 30 minutes.  Slash with a sharp knife and put into a 200C oven.  Turn down to 180C after 10 minutes and in another 20 you should have your lovely fresh bread.  (The proper recipe can be found here.)

Being a perfectionist

MR(Jr) heads off to meet John Letts, a wheat farmer, to talk about heritage wheat. Unfortunately he visits at harvest time, so we don’t see the 6ft wheat in the fields, however we watch it being freshly threshed (it’s stored on the stalk and processed as it’s needed).  MR(Jr) feeds the thatchers with John’s freshly made bread and they all seem happy with the bread that “tastes like it’s good for you”.

Bread charlotte with confit duck

MR(Jr) uses his first loaf – the simple white – to make a pie with confit duck.  Confit duck gizzards! Wow…  It looks like a savoury summer pudding, with bread soaked in duck fat instead of in berry juice.  My kind of pudding.  The recipe is here.

Next, we meet Ben McKinnon in his bakery in Hackney.  His sourdough starter is the stuff dreams are made of, with a 200 year old culture from Lappland.  MR(Jr) gets almost scarily excited by the bread – it turns him on – and he recommends viewers take bread-making courses.

Diplomat Pudding

This is described as a “French version of a bread and butter pudding”.  MR(Jr) uses a loaf of Ben’s sourdough and some of the white loaf.  This is the first recipe MR(Jr) made as an apprentice, and I’m sure I’ve seen him ask this of prospective Masterchefs in a past season.  The recipe is here.

The Hairy Bikers on cauliflower

From MR(Jr)’s restrained passion, we hit the ebullient bikers, who are singing the praises of the cauli, complete with neologisms such as “caulilicious”.  Sales of this veg are falling and broccoli is partly to blame.  Philip Lowery from the Real Food Festival explains that people think that caulis are less nutritious than other veg, largely due to their pale colour.

The perfect cauliflower cheese

The Bikers find a yellow version of the veg for this recipe, which they promise will be “cauliflower cheese as you’ve never seen it before”.  They even munch on the raw stem in their efforts to sell the versatility of this particular brassica.  The “twistarooni” is the inclusion of smoky bacon, and at that suggestion, I develop a sudden craving for the Bikers’ Cauliflower Cheese. The full recipe is here.

Lincolnshire – the cauliflower capital

The Bikers pop out to visit George Read who explains some of the problems with cauliflower farming.  The main issue appears to be that caulis grow quicker in summer, but demand is highest in winter.  The crop also grows at different rates, so the field needs to be revisited a number of times to harvest.  Phillip Effingham of the Brassica Growers Association is trying to promote different varieties, and is struggling with the romanesco.  Six out of ten households don’t even buy the standard version.

Seared scallops with a cauliflower and pancetta puree

This sounds fab, but perhaps the Bikers should consider not putting pork products into all their cauliflower recipes!  It looks lovely, although I’m yet to be convinced that the scallops really can take a strong cheese. Recipe here.

Taking it to the streets

The Bikers recruit chef Yotam Ottolenghi and food scientist Linda to help them convince shoppers in what looks like a bitterly cold street market to rediscover cauliflower.  Ottolenghi cooks a charred cauliflower salad and Linda makes a soup out of the stems, and both dishes are a success, despite the lack of pork.

Saag aloo with roasted gobi curry

The Bikers use a standard white cauliflower and a romaneso for their last dish.  This is another vegetarian-friendly dish, and it looks simple and delicious.  I was surprised to see that you can get dried curry leaves in supermarket spice packets in the UK.  Recipe here.

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Great British Food Revival is on Lifestyle Food on Mondays at 8.30pm, with repeats during the week.

The search for Australia’s best young cricketer begins with the hopefuls tested under the watchful eye of Allan Border, as the dream starts to become a reality for fifteen talented sportsmen.

After a montage of high-energy international games, we zoom in to Lee Furlong (“Foxtel personality and cricket lover”, according to the narrator) and Allan Border. “Are you in?” she asks, “Or are you… OUT?” completes Allan Border, who has clearly been put through dramatic-pause bootcamp.  More montage-ing, in which Ricky Ponting observes that he’d have liked Cricket Superstar to have been around when he was young, although I can’t see why.  He managed to get a baggy green and take the national captaincy without the help of a televised talent quest, which promises to include challenges of no cricketing value whatsoever.

This is the first episode and I was diligently taking notes whilst watching only to decide that the entire 61 minutes (including ads) was preamble and that I’d have to watch at least one episode with the top 15 to decide whether or not to persevere.  Some observations:

• Watching cricketing hopefuls drop catches is not as much fun as Pants on the Ground-type Idol auditions.
• In terms of entertainment value, the over-confidence of the Victorian “ladies man” was just as difficult to watch as the tongue-tied awkwardness of the poor South Australian contender.
• There are 18 year-old radio relationship counsellors? I weep for the future.
• The camera work needs to improve.  I was having some grumpy David Stratton “keep it STEADY!” moments.
• Tension over who was to be selected was almost non-existent as most of those through had been featured heavily throughout the episode. Makes me wonder why they bothered with the “tryouts” episode at all, really, given how dull it was.
• Really not sure why they needed to include a keeper and a range of bowlers in the fifteen. We need opening batsmen!

Next week – a fire!

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This item has been cross-posted over at Reality Ravings.

I have recovered sufficiently from the disappointment of the finale to go back and spend time on Craphole Island with this bunch of loveable – and in many cases, doomed – misfits (hi Shannon, bye Shannon!) but on this go-around I am noticing things that just didn’t get resolved. Ever. (Or maybe they did, just not to my satisfaction. Or they did, and I forgot to notice.) So, a to-be-continued – and probably revised – post. [Edited to add: also included - things that just generally shit me. Which is likely to be Kate.]

S1E09

• They never play golf again, right?

S1E10

• Claire’s psychic – do we ever find out more about his cunning plan to put her on a doomed trans-Pacific flight?
• Oh, and while we’re there, why are all the Australian minor parts played so badly? (And points to whoever can tell me which ad/s the woman who wanted to adopt Claire’s baby is from…)

S1E11

• Does Hurley ever pony up the $20,000 he owed Walt after their Backgammon play-off?
• Does Kate ever apologise to Jack – or Charlie – for deciding that Charlie was dead and intervening to stop Jack from continuing CPR?
• Kate promises Charlie that the Claire search will resume at first light. It doesn’t. Whole episodes go by…

S1E12

Masterchef Australia

Unlike the previous two seasons,  I’m not watching this every night.  When the cast list was announced I was really looking forward to tuning in.  The presence of two (some people have suggested more, but Billy and Mat were the ones I had read) food bloggers and George in the same space promised a volatile mix.  The launch publicity indicated a return to the “basics”,  which I misinterpreted to mean “this lot have a really firm grasp on the basics of cooking so will be presenting a high standard of food”,  rather than “we’ve had to teach them how to separate eggs”.  My level of frustration is such that I only watch now when Reality Raver asks if I’ll recap¹.  Otherwise,   I read her site to keep in touch with how things are going in the Masterchef kitchen.  It’s not about food,  it’s about drama and manipulation.  But it’s also about influencing how people talk about food,  and how new Food TV is framed. Which brings me to…

Everyday Gourmet

There are obviously people out there who get something out of this show –  it’s the number one post on this site and my blog stats take a leap at around 4.25 when her show finishes.  Justine is a direct product of Masterchef and her show picks up where that leaves off.  Every product is strategically placed,  every ingredient is described as “beautiful”  and recipes are presented in a vague manner that I can only assume is a deliberate tactic to drive people to the web to continue being bombarded by advertising.  I’ve watched it a few times,  mainly after seeing outraged tweets from athena_here,  and I haven’t been persuaded to alter my original assessment.  In a recent episode in which  Justine made chile con carne,  she dissed “prepared”  spice mixes,  but used pre-ground sponsor product to “mix”  her own.  I would have been far more convinced of the flavour improvement over pre-mix had she toasted whole spices and ground them –  it’s not that difficult.

Secret Meat Business

I was really looking forward to this one and I do need to sit down with a clear head to give it a proper go.  Adrian Richardson won my heart when I first saw him in Jamie’s Kitchen Australia –  he came across as a wonderful mentor to a young man who seemed to really thrive under his care.  I have watched a couple of episodes of the show but I haven’t sat down to watch it,  if you can understand the distinction.  I was disappointed that the “beautiful”  virus has spread to Richardson.  Seriously,  what does it even mean in relation to food?  There are dozens of adjectives to describe flavour,  texture,  quality… “Beautiful”  is meaningless,  particularly on television where we can see what is being described and can make our own judgements on superficial appearance.  So,  sorry Adrian,  but I’ll have to wait until my cliché meter has been recalibrated to ignore “beautiful”  before I can be objective about the show.

The Cook and The Chef

I have been watching reruns of this on Lifestyle Food and I wish TV executives would sit down to watch,  as Maggie and Simon serve two purposes simultaneously.  One is that they showcase a diverse range of ingredients,  use them in creative ways,  and share techniques and tips from a vantage point of being experts at what they do.  The second is that each episode is a masterclass in how a good food show should look.  I want more of this.  Perhaps Secret Meat Business fulfills the brief –  I promise I will try to overcome my aversion to meaningless adjectives in case I’m missing a gem here.

It does make me wonder what I look for in food television.  Like all things,  it’s a matter of preference. I prefer my food television to offer something new: a new cuisine, new techniques,  new recipes,  a new point of view.  Not all of those things in the one show,  necessarily,  but retreads just don’t cut it for me.  For people who are already armpit deep in sustainable living,  the River Cottage shows might be a bit ho-hum,  but I am captivated by Hugh F-W’s enthusiasm for his various projects.

Whilst we are not all perfectly satisfied with our lives,  becoming a chef is not a universal aspiration.  Perhaps it’s my age –  I learn from people whose experience I trust,  not a blow in from a casting call for ‘x-look-y-age-group, must love food’.  If it’s a competition to find good cooks,  I want it to be about the food they prepare,  not the hoops they jump through to get the sponsor’s product on a plate.  I’ll restrict my banging on about the superiority of “real”  Masterchef (UK,  natch) to this.  When I first fell in love with that show,  it was for people who were good cooks.  Perhaps you know people like them –  you’re invited to their place for dinner and you count the days down until the date because they always put on lovely food and you have a spectacularly good time.  Contestants knew the format of their challenge and were able to showcase their skill.  I can’t remember talk of food dreams and journeys and wanting to quit [insert job here] for a life in food.  That was the beauty of the show,  and –  even though it has evolved and recent contestants have been looking for a new career –  participating in the program does not require an employer who’ll grant an extended leave,  or unnecessary isolation from friends and family.  It’s about cooking.

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1. So, yes, I’ve been writing… just doing it more there and on Les Vaches du Tour then here.

Marco Pierre White puts three celebrities to the test in a busy London restaurant. Their challenge: to run its professional kitchen single handedly.

There are three words that have me automatically adding an unheard-of show to my viewing schedule. Marco. Pierre. White.  There is something compellingly menacing about him, which makes you wonder where the line is between the “real” Marco and the kitchen performance without questioning that there is such a line.  His two seasons of Britain’s Hell’s Kitchen featured regular segments where Marco, in a tone that always suggested barely controlled rage, would share his philosophies and anecdotes. Unfortunately I can’t remember any of them, but perhaps I recorded some when I blogged it here and over on Reality Ravings way back when. Great British Feast was an enjoyable ramble around the countryside with Marco and his “devoted sidekick”, Mr Ishii.

Unfortunately, this show is really a lukewarm remake of the UK Hell’s Kitchen – which was always a celebrity beast – and unfortunately provides neither a showcase for Marco or his guests. The format is slightly different to HK – each “celebrity” (I haven’t recognised any of them so far) is playing for him/herself.  Marco doesn’t provide Masterclasses to his celebs, he just watches them get into the weeds during service, repeats phrases such as “where are your herbs, your herbs, your herbs, your herbs, your herbs, your herbs”, and tries to encourage them to “buy” his time.  At one point per minute, buying Marco’s time will take a chunk of the maximum 100 points available from the diners.

I’ve watched the first two episodes, and I’ll keep watching as it’s on at a good “background” timeslot, but it’s certainly not great food TV, reality TV, or MPW.

Marco’s Kitchen Burnout is on Lifestyle Food, Sundays at 5.30pm.

From the simplest of meals to more sophisticated recipes, MasterChef’s Justine Schofield will inspire you to get more from your home cooking experience.

As season three of Masterchef revs up, I have to wonder what direction its contestants will head in once it’s all over.  Maybe – just maybe? – some of them will actually go on to work in restaurants.  Season two’s lot seems to have been content with filling our supermarket shelves with packaged food, whilst season one’s ambitions appeared limited to churning out TV shows. “Look! Oi’m famous!”

Poh was the first to make the transition from contestant to TV cook, and has been the best by a country mile.  Her show is fun, she has a real TV presence, and she interacts with her guests in a really natural way.  She even brought Andre (of the famous risotto) along for the ride for a couple of episodes.  A (very) distant second was season one’s winner, Julie Goodwin, whose mediocre food makes Donna Hay look like Heston Blumenthal. In last place, Julia’s Delish showed that it is possible to make to make food TV dull.  She had assistance from another season one alumnus, Josh the fish boy, who was equally as charisma-free in his al fresco pieces.  Julia seems to have realised that her strengths do not come across on the screen, and has opened a restaurant with fellow season one contestant, Chris Badenoch, who I spotted in an advertisement for Peter Berner’s new show on the Comedy Channel¹.

So, where does season one sweetheart, Justine, fit in to this hierarchy?  Let’s find out…

“This is my favourite part of the show where we get to meet different people who specialise in different things” is how Justine opens the episode I watch first. This suggests that the editing team is on crack, as that seems to be an after-the-second-ad-break link.  Anyway, this episode we have Sam Herde from The Vegetable Connection with a range of beetroot. That explains the somewhat unbalanced menu we are getting today, where two of the three dishes are beetroot-oriented.  The second guest is from Weight Watchers, so that “mexican bean pizza” that already sounded pretty uninspired is looking even less appealing now. And explains why Sam was the part of the show Justine liked best.

Is this show functional as a cooking show? There’s no listing of ingredients at the beginning, a la Hewy or the Nutter, and there’s no detailed explanation of them, either.  Justine tells us she’s sweating her eschalots down (doesn’t tell us how many to use), then refers to her “onions” caramelising, then goes back to reminding us that the eschalots cook much quicker than onions. Well, which are they? Suddenly some pastry appears for beetroot tarts – where did it come from, Justine? What kind is it? (She mentions puff pastry once, after she’s banged on at length about the cookie cutter size – it’s clearly frozen, ready rolled, too.)  At the end of each recipe there is a slide that tells us how long the dish takes, how many it serves, and the “cost” (which for the tarts is “budget”, whatever THAT means).  There is a link provided to the website for the recipes. I watched more than one episode and have concluded that “gourmet” means “has goats cheese” and that the Weight Watchers segment works only in that it will put you off food. FOR LIFE.

Other observations

• When presenting a show with “gourmet” in the title, don’t say “REALLY?” with such surprise when told that beetroot leaves are edible.  You’re expected to know this.  We’re not, but you don’t have feign stupidity on our account.
• Repetition, and over-pronunciation, of “beautiful” seems to be Masterchef’s greatest legacy.  As does describing EVERYTHING as “rustic”. Somebody buy the girl a Word-A-Day calendar.
• Why specify “California walnuts”?  There are local walnuts, you know.  I guess all your recipes can be “budget” if you use cheap ingredients.
• “I love my Sirena” is the message that greets you when you visit the website. Sirena scores very badly in the Greenpeace canned tuna guide.
• While cooing over the Weight Watchers woman’s hideous food, Justine is quick to comment that it’s “beautiful” tasting food, to appeal to all those “people who think weight loss is all about brown rice”. People who think “weight loss is all about brown rice” are, quite frankly, too stupid to live.

Recipes are available on the show’s website.   For some reason, the Everyday Gourmet page on the Ten website hasn’t caught up with the fact that the show is screening, rather than COMING SOON.

Everyday Gourmet is not even, to use a fast food slogan, “a little bit schmancy”.

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1. I haven’t watched the show; I don’t even remember what it was called. It appeared to be a cross between the execrable Nine series, 20 to 1, and the quite wonderful The Soup. It wasn’t clear how – or even if – Chris fitted into the line-up.

Students: Two student friends from Durham want to improve their cooking skills and learn to make delicious, easy and cheap Chinese food to replace their usual mince dishes.

I was interested to see how this English show covered Chinese food.  It’s presented as an introduction to ingredients and techniques for a couple of budding cooks each episode and the lovely Ching-He Huang selects accessible recipes and introduces any specialty ingredients well.  In this episode, she takes a couple of students to a local supermarket to shop for produce. I’m sure her heart must’ve sunk when they admitted to not being able to distinguish between a marrow and a cucumber, although I suspect they weren’t quite as clueless as this makes out.  They were, after all, shown sitting down at the dinner table in their share-house to eat one of their aforementioned “mince dishes” with a glass of wine each.  Anyway, their admission didn’t put her off her game, and she happily cooked up a storm with chinkiang vinegar, chilli bean sauce, yellow bean sauce and shaohsing wine.

The cooking is billed as “in minutes”, and our host certainly races through the script swiftly enough, however these things do take time.  When the cooking started in the outdoor kitchen in Chinatown (Durham has a Chinatown? – I guess the filming must be done in London, although I was surprised to see that Newcastle has one!), the sun was blazing in the sky.  By the time we get to the second dish, it is very dark and the students and cook were all rugged up and looking a little miserable.  The food soon cheered them up and, after a demo, they were sent to do some cooking of their own.

Chinese Food in Minutes is on the Food channel on Sundays at 7.00pm and repeats are scheduled during the week.  The website contains video links to individual recipes as well as printable recipes.  It’s well worth a look.

Modern Classics: Donna revamps some classics with her chic and easy version of Steak and Three Veg and her special twist on Pasta Carbonara.

The televisionisation of food (sure, that’s a thing, right?) has been getting along just fine without my blogging, however I have been meaning to get back into a rhythm with posts.  For some reason, I thought that the new Donna Hay show would be just the kick-start I needed.  [Hollow laughter]

I’ll be brief. Dot point brief, in fact.

• adding cream to a pasta carbonara is Donna Hay’s trick to “lighten” it up and make it “simple”
• chocolate and cinnamon wontons make “perfect sense” to Hay
• to “lighten up” steak and three veg, choose sweet potato, potato and parsnip as your veg, then smother them in butter and parmesan and bake¹
• the perfect condiment for this refreshing new take on an old classic is garlic mayonnaise, “or aioli, for the fancy ones”
• two of the four savoury dishes are based around skinless chicken breast fillets [yawn]
• make lemon mayo by adding lemon juice to mayo

There is nothing new about this show. It’s a televised Donna Hay book. It’s not that different to [insert small number here] Ingredients or Giada or Bill.  She seems comfortable in front of the camera and it’s certainly not a disaster.  It’s just… boring.   The only really “fresh” part of the proceedings is a welcome lack of product placement.  That doesn’t mean everything is made by Hay, but then she doesn’t claim it is; in fact, she starts off by saying that it is based on using fresh produce and bought products to create simple dishes.  Instead, products such as mayonnaise and icecream are repackaged in plain containers.  That is not enough to make me tune in again.  If she starts doing something interesting, let me know in the comments.

Donna Hay – Fast, Fresh, Simple is on Lifestyle every Tuesday at 8.30pm

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1. That’s not to say I don’t fancy the idea of some potato strips baked with butter, thyme and parmesan, it’s just that I don’t see how that can be described as “lighten(ing) up” veg.