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.
It’s “Kitchen Time” on 7Two! And today, we’re joining Reza Mahammad on the Coconut Coast. Reza, strangely enough in this day and age, doesn’t seem to have a Wikipedia page – I know! – but the Good Food Channel and Performing Artistes have short bios. My favourite quotes from each:
The Observer Food Monthly described meeting Reza as “like being ambushed by a cross between Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen and Freddie Mercury”.
Good Food Channel
Okay, so I had to Google Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen1, but even before I knew who he was I liked the description.
And from Performing Artistes:
He inherited a piece of 1950′s London, flock wallpaper and all, and set about inflicting his own brand of artistic flourish. Voila; from flock to Baroque! But with his inimitable concentration span of approximately five minutes, another revamp promptly followed. This time a cross between a Zeffirelli production and the Sistine Chapel.
There are so many food shows on TV these days. How many of them offer something new or different? If Delia has already shown us how to roast a chook, do we really need to see Nigella doing it, too? And Jamie? And how many times can we watch pizza-making before it becomes aversion therapy?
Over the next few weeks, I’m going to try to add a post-a-week on a food show. New shows will take priority, but there are only so many launches in a year, so there will be recaps and round-ups of some stayers, and some that are quite possibly new only to me. I’ll also keep writing up the Nutter magic on Fridays for as long as channel 7Two continues to show it.
To kick off I’m taking a look at the show that debuted on 7Two the Friday before last: Delish. There’s been a bit of build-up to it, largely over the participation of last year’s MasterChef contestant, Julia Jenkins, so let’s see what it’s like, shall we?
Andrew Nutter welcomes us to his kitchen with an eye-bleedingly red shirt. He’s certainly not one for blending into the background, although this top is uncomfortably close in hue to the shelves to his right. I wonder what baked delights he has in store for us today?
He doesn’t keep us guessing. We’re making pizzas today, and one will be a sweet one. The other will be… Peking duck with plum sauce? Let’s start with the, ahem, savoury one then, shall we?
It’s Nutter time, although it feels like it’s been that all day today. Nevertheless, this is the real deal, with baked goods, not just ranting on street corners. What does the baking Nutter have in store for us today, apart from a lemon shirt?
“We’re barring mad” is Nutter’s introduction. He’s pleased with the phrase, so repeats it. I think is meant to sound like “barking” with an intense glottal stop. What it means is there will be bars, and we’re hitting the recipes right out of the gate. (I’ve just realised why this is such a surprise to me – I’m so used to the drawn-out start of Masterchef, that any cooking within 10 minutes of opening credits appears to be unseemly haste).
I wish I could get a MPG file of the Simply Baking theme toon. As soon as it comes on, it makes me bounce more than George Calombaris in the Masterchef kitchen. I’m going to do a YouTube search. I need this in my iPod – I think it will go well in a shuffle with Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass.
Today I am excited to report that Nutter is wearing the bright orange shirt that could well be the one he was wearing in the first episode I ever saw. He is excited to report that he will be making cakes. With a Nutter twist, of course.
Reality Raver is away at the moment and has entrusted the Masterchef recaps to me. This means that I’ll be busy blogging over at Reality Ravings, trying to cover most episodes.
I was pleased to see that the tears have dried up (I’m hoping that last night’s challenge was the beginning of a new tear-free era), but less pleased that good and the bad were so clearly revealed by the editing, and displeased that so many faces – and, more to the point, dishes – didn’t make it to the screen last night.
My relationship with Masterchef last year was as hot and cold as the theme song, but for the most part I loved to hate it. If things continue the way they are now, though, I’ll be more tempted to kneecap than recap.
Nadia Sawalha won Celebrity MasterChef in the UK. Who is Nadia Sawalha? I’ve no idea. Now, if it were Julie Sawalha, I’d be all over that, but Nadia is a mystery. Don’t you get up, though – I’ll googleitmyself1.
In Eating in the Sun, according to the TV guide,
Winner of Celebrity MasterChef, Nadia Sawalha, is sent to some of the most beautiful restaurants in Europe to cook for a mystery challenger. With her pride at stake she has just two days to perfect the complex dishes for her guest.
I had seen an ad for the show and thought it looked good, possibly because I was only paying scant attention to the details, so added it as a series link. It started on April 15 on Lifestyle Food, so the episodes are piling up as this is the first chance I’ve had to watch. I’m already disappointed, because I thought it was the real MasterChef winner, not the winner of the Celebrity version.
Today’s theme on Simply Baking is cheesecake. Our Nutter knows we’ll all be thinking with our sweet teeth right about now, but he’s changing it up a bit and starting with a savoury cheesecake (which some may prefer to think of as a quiche with cream cheese – I know that would appeal to me more than a savoury cheesecake). I’m hoping that he’s not going to be matching anything to the colour of this particular shirt today, unless he’s going to do a pea puree. Actually (it’s catching!), the shirt might be the result of the pea puree prepared earlier. I get the sense that today’s recipes might take a bit of time, given the speed at which Nutter is talking.
And if it’s Simply Baking, then it must be time for my blog stats to jump dramatically, as fans of the Nutter search for the recipes they’ve seen on the show. Knowing how frustrating it is to search for one thing and land in something completely other, today’s post is dedicated to the recipes! (If, however, you are also interested in attempted analysis of recent junk food commercials, or exhaustive descriptions of crappy MTV/VH1 reality shows, please look around.)
Today Nutter promises classic French recipes. I hope my eyes can withstand the onslaught of his shirt, which is French-ish, I guess… possibly chartreuse? Anyway, let’s crack on.
There are many ads I hate, but some of the companies responsible are less than obliging when it comes to posting them on YouTube. The fact that I’ve found both the “I’ve made the right choice” McDonald’s ad and this Hungry Jack’s one on the web leads me to suspect that the respective companies are proud of their hideous campaigns.
This is not offensive in the same way as the Maccas ad (or its equally horrid “sequel”); it’s merely annoying. It seems that HJ’s are (is? I really can’t figure it out – what is the apostrophe in the name for, anyway?) trying to dress their junk fare up as “fresh”, but it falls flat. For a start, the bloke has to inspect his burger closely to identify the ingredients – I’d rather that, having tasted it, he’d be able to do that automatically. Then, when he tells the woman that it contains aioli, she breathes “Garlic mayo!” in wonderment, as a way of letting all us dolts in our lounge-rooms know what this exotic ingredient is1.
At least it’s given me another catch-phrase I can use inappropriately. Try it! It’s fun. Just interject a breathless “garlic mayo!” at meetings, in conversations… it’s truly versatile.
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1. It bothered me that the writers were patronising the audience so much, but seeing Matt Moran in the Masterchef Masterclass teaching a handful of Straya’s best amada chefs how to make garlic mayonnaise leads me to conclude that I over-estimate the knowledge of the audience.
