This week I have been Reading
The 2011 Tour de France race guide.
Watching
An Idiot Abroad
Listening to
The xx
Discovering
(Or rediscovering) Hamlet - Nicki Greenberg's beautiful new version, thanks to the fabulous Snarkattack, who invited me along to see Nicki talk about the creative process behind the book.
Eating
- An enormous serve of bangers'n'mash and a nourishing pint of Kilkenny at the Town Hall one dismal Tuesday evening.
- A "Chachi" - chianina meatball sandwich - another brioche donut and some amazing chocolate tart at Beatrix, which Essjay has reviewed.
- A lazy Sunday lunch at The Crimean. The Polish hunter's stew (bigos) was just the thing to revive me after a chilly bike ride.
- Generous piles of fried food with oodles of chillies and sichuan peppercorns at Sichuan House
- Succulent suckling pig at Liberteene.
- An array of bright, zesty flavours at Chin Chin, where the only problem was having to choose only some of the items from what looks to be a menu that is all hits, no filler.
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By Injera, on November 7th, 2010% It’s been ages since I did a proper post. Updating my weekly This week I have been… has just made me lazy; I tend to view it as a real post, but we all know it’s not. Even less “real” since I’ve been belt-tightening just in case of unemployment. Of course, I guess I could include salad and avocado-on-toast in the eating section… but all those fabulous degustations and wagyu-burger-battles have focussed my attention on recording, well, more interesting food – and other entertainments – for posterity.
So, here’s what I’ve been watching, in slightly more depth than the side-bar allows:
Continue reading TV roundup
By Injera, on October 30th, 2010% This week it’s the turn of the chefs from the Central region – Daniel Clifford, Richard Bainbridge and Will Holland. Only two chefs can make it through to cook for the formidable judges and one will be going home early. All the chefs are desperate for the honour of cooking for The Prince and today they’re launching their culinary assault with the starters; braised hog’s head with apple sorbet, white onion soup with roasted muntjac and rabbit and smoked bacon salad.
When I typed the heading for this, I accidentally typed “Good TV”, which describes Great British Menu perfectly. Each week, three chefs from a geographic region of Britain (Scotland, northern England and central England so far) put up four courses over four nights, with the top two taking their menus to the judges on the fifth night. One is judged the regional winner, who moves on to the final, aiming to get at least one of their dishes onto the banquet menu.
I guess it has the potential to be a bit dry, but these guys are all pros with the competitiveness, creativity and ego that goes with that. Think Masterchef: Professionals rather than Britain’s Best Dish. In previous years, two chefs have competed for each region and have had a local “mentor” to provide feedback on the dishes as they’re developed. This season the “mentor” is now giving scores to each dish, which definitely provides some extra drama. One of the high points of each episode is the tasting – the chef disappears with the mentor to taste one plate, leaving the competitors to taste the other at the pass. You know it’s a good dish when the competitors praise it as they are extremely talented in the art of negativity, picking up flaws that the mentor and judges are unable to detect.
One of the strengths of the show is the judging panel: Prue Leith, Oliver Peyton and Matthew Fort. They bicker, occasionally agree, and always express surprise when the menus are revealed at the end of tasting. Oliver can usually be relied upon to wear the crankypants, but Matthew Fort often belies his teddy-bear demeanour in his comments. The choice of mentors has been great this season: past contestants – and big personalities – Marcus Wareing, Glynn Purcell (whose battle with Daniel Clifford for last year’s central spot was a highlight of season 4) and Jeremy Lee so far, with the website suggesting we’ll see Michael Caines and – one of my favourites – Angela Hartnett amongst others over the next few weeks.
Great British Menu is on each weeknight on Lifestyle Food. It’s repeated the following day and weekly marathons are scheduled on the weekends.
By Injera, on September 28th, 2010% Romance: Sophie presents her perfect dishes for the three stages of romance.
Before we even get into this thing, I have to admit to being less than enthusiastic about it. That’s not to say Miss Dahl doesn’t have a decent food pedigree. Her grandfather wrote about an amazing chocolate factory, a giant peach and showed his love of food in the way he wrote about it in most of the books I can remember. Not only that, but he demonstrated the importance of food to his family with the release of a cookbook. Sophie is no stranger to celebrity – famous family, model, author – and will no doubt have a reasonable screen presence, but I doubt that she has anything new to bring to the genre.
“I’ve always been interested in food. Primarily because I’ve always been interested in eating it.” So says the eponymous Miss Dahl over the credit sequence of animated lip-smacking. She talks about having been both Rubenesque and a “mere slip”, and of learning to cook at her grandmother’s knee, thus establishing her credentials as a food show host, I guess.
Find out whether this is worth persevering with after the jump.
Continue reading Food TV – The Delicious Miss Dahl
By Injera, on September 16th, 2010%
Masterchef UK is down to the final three and, as is only proper for this end of the competition, is adding location porn to the regular food variety. In the first episode of the final three competition, our three contenders – Dhruv, Dr Tim and Alex – land in Jodhpur – stunning! As is customary at this point in the competition, there are challenges all week, but no eliminations until the final day.
Naturally, they haven’t made the journey alone. Gregg and John, looking more dishevelled than is really appealing, are waiting and bellowing that they’ve chosen India because it’s all about FLAVOUR. This seems to be particularly targeted towards Alex, who has been putting up stylish plates of food, but his lack of seasoning has been the grand narrative. Dhruv uses a lot of spices in his cooking, so hopes to do the cornucopia available justice, while Dr Tim merely notes that it is “not like Norfolk”.
The challenges, after the jump.
Continue reading Food TV – Masterchef UK: Finals Week
By Injera, on September 4th, 2010% Ready Steady Cook has been on afternoon TV for, oh, ages1. It’s not something I tend to watch as it is not a program that sits nicely in the background. It is, for want of a better description, “high energy”: it’s nominally a competition and there is a lot of chat and cheering. Nothing wrong with that, it’s just that daytime TV for me is usually a murmur in the background while I pretend to work.
This week was different. I actually recorded Tuesday’s episode as the gorgeous Reem was appearing, “competing” against Tim from the Urban Food Market. The producers must have been beside themselves with joy to have found two such articulate participants who seemed really natural on TV. Oh, and who had some mean kitchen skillz, too. For those who are unfamiliar with the set-up, contestants (who have some sort of pre-existing relationship) arrive with a grab bag of ingredients and are matched with a chef who develops a series of dishes based around the bags. There’s a ridiculously short time limit and then dishes are described and tasted, but not by the audience, which is responsible for deciding the “winner”.
It’s an old-fashioned kind of show: very good-natured and chatty, with a “nobody goes home empty-handed” approach to rewarding the contestants. The host, Peter Everett, is almost frighteningly upbeat and clearly gets most of his job satisfaction from trying to interview people at the worst possible times. His schtick is to wring maximum double-entendre from any utterance and to play the himbo host. His elaborate what’s-this-new-fangled-thing enunciations of terms such as “blog”, “blogger” and “twitter” when chatting to Reem were gold. The show manages to attract some of the big-name chefs in the country and it is a good chance to see them in action in a less structured, controlled way than seen in other shows.
Reem has a link to the episode on her blog.
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Ready Steady Cook is on at 2.00pm, Monday-Friday, on Ten.
1. Since 1994 in the UK, to be precise, and for nearly five years here.
By Injera, on August 28th, 2010% The original and the best. Discerning judges John Torode and Gregg Wallace are back to put more undiscovered amateur chefs through a series of increasingly difficult tasks in this iconic show. Don’t miss the ultimate culinary competition. Twelve contestants, picked from thousands of hopeful amateurs, will face 3 high pressure tests to see who has the passion, the skill and the creativity to make it to the quarter finals.
One of the many things I love about the real Masterchef (by which I mean the UK show, which has a title and not much else in common with our breezier, sleazier version) is that the synopsis is almost the same for each episode. Each episode has the blurb above; the quarter-finals – held after four “heats” – have their own generic blurb. That’s because the show is about cooking. And food. Not personalities, journeys and back-stories. Sure, we are introduced briefly to contestants to hear about where they developed their love for food and where they would like this to take them, but with six contestants per heat [the scheduling has changed this season, with two heats shown in an hour-long episode] this is not about making a connection with a particular “character”.
I’ve written about Masterchef before, over on Reality Ravings, so I won’t bang on too much about it here, except to note a couple of very pleasing changes. The first quarter-final elimination is no longer a “name the ingredient” test, but a 15 minute skill test, which seems much fairer. The initial skills test was a highlight of the most recent Professionals – I only wish Monica had been brought in for this section. The other change, which I think was also pioneered in Professionals, is that Gregg and John have been a lot more flexible with eliminations and finals places. Some heats have a number of strong cooks to choose between, whilst others are a case of identifying the least-bad. Rather than grade on the curve, the judges have – on two occasions – put two cooks through to the quarter finals. In a recent episode, rather than cull three from the first test, they could only identify two Masterchef level cooks, so culled the other four. I’ve always had confidence that the contestants can cook – these changes just strengthen that perception.
The real Masterchef is the perfect balance of food TV and competitive TV. I’d love a local version…
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Masterchef is on Lifestyle Food. First-run episodes are (I think – the guide is ridiculously difficult to navigate) on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays at 7.30. They are repeated throughout the week and in “marathons” each weekend.
Note: the Lifestyle Food website has links through to the BBC site for recipes – be wary of spoilers, since the show has finished over there!
By Injera, on August 20th, 2010% Heston designs a feast inspired by Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
There is really nothing I can usefully say about Heston’s Feasts – if you watched it (as almost all of my corner of the twitterverse did last night), you would understand this. If you didn’t, make sure you tune in for the remainder of the series. It really is the most amazing television.
It is by no means a show aimed at giving the home cook ideas on spicing up weeknight dinners, in fact Heston even jokes “don’t try this at home” at one point. You wouldn’t, unless of course you have a kitchen centrifuge and some willing firefighters. It is, however, inspirational in the way that watching anybody who is creative, driven and completely passionate – I know that word has been devalued by overuse, but it is spot-on for Heston – is inspirational. Not Imma-quit-my-job-and-become-a-chef, but a recognition that enthusiasm and knowledge and curiosity are immensely appealing.
Seriously, watch. This. Show.
Heston’s Feasts is on SBS, Wednesdays at 8.30pm. Next week he is taking on fairy tales.
By Injera, on August 13th, 2010% The Pitch: Raymond Blanc is back in the compelling third series which gives one couple a chance to open and run their own restaurant.
As the blurb says, The Restaurant is a successful show which is now in its third season. BBC Knowledge was showing the second season recently and I only stumbled upon it for the final episode, which had me hooked despite the fact that I’d missed all the preceding episodes and thus had absolutely no emotional investment in the outcome. This is the mark of a strong show in my view: it doesn’t rely on the viewer having established a “relationship” with the contestants, or having developed an understanding of the various personalities involved; it succeeds on the basis of a strong, well-executed concept.
A full recap, after the jump.
Continue reading Food TV – The Restaurant
By Injera, on August 8th, 2010% Winter Warmers: Julie Goodwin has inspired Australia by rejuvenating the appeal of cooking no fuss family meals. In Julie’s new show, prepare for sumptuous meals that are easy to cook, delicious to eat and designed to impress.
“Oh, really?” was my first reaction to this TV guide fluff. “Inspired Australia”? Well, I guess she may have inspired Masterchef‘s Kate to think she had a shot at fame despite having a comically limited repertoire.
Glad are proud sponsors. Of course they are. This means we will probably get double the inspiration: program-Julie and commercial-break-Julie.
Opening credits, and it seems that Julie’s been taking giggle lessons from Poh. I’m not sure who has been giving her the inappropriate touching lessons.
Julie welcomes us to her kitchen to the strains of Guy Sebastian, which is worrying. I’m already fearful that the cooking won’t be enough to keep me awake. Soft-rock isn’t going to help any. What will she be rejuvenating into sumptuousness today? Find out, after the jump.
Continue reading Food TV – Home Cooked! with Julie Goodwin
By Injera, on July 16th, 2010% 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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