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.
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.
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 RealityRavings, 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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
Families put their reputations to the test, relationships on the line and decades-old recipes in the firing line, when they come up against each other in a head-to-head cook off.
The blurb captures the essence of this show fairly well, if with a pinch of predictable hyperbole. If you’ve seen the original British Masterchef and are dumbstruck by its transformation into our local version, then perhaps you can imagine this as a British My Kitchen Rules, with the added stipulation that the pairs must be from a single family. It’s low-key competitive cooking, with most of the drama being in the promotional para above. Paul Merrett and Amanda Lamb are the judges and their job is to choose between the pairs competing each episode. Each pair has an hour to prepare their three course menu; the winning pair is sent on the next round.
In the episode I watched, two sisters from Surrey, with a “traditional English food” background competed against a mother and daughter, who talked about their Iranian-Armenian heritage. The three course menus each side put up were fairly dull and the most-commented upon aspect of the competitors seemed to be how calm they were. The result was close to a tie – the judges were underwhelmed by both teams and, for a while, it seemed that they were reluctant to see either team again.
Will I watch Family Food Fight again? With Lifestyle Food as my background viewing, I wouldn’t turn it off or switch over, like I would for Good Chef/Bad Chef, but I’m not linking it and wouldn’t be distraught if I never saw it again. The concept is a bit ho-hum and needs something to lift it. Whilst it is good to see a food show where the emphasis is not on manufactured tension or interpersonal drama, this only works if the food is interesting which – at least in this episode – it wasn’t.
Poh moves out of her kitchen and heads off overseas – to Malaysia, the country where she was born. She is on a three-week trip starting in Kuala Lumpur to find out more about her heritage and traditional Malaysian dishes.
Poh wasn’t one of my favourite contestants in the first season of Masterchef. Her inclusion in the competition came after the judges rejected her first dish and told her to go home and cook something “from the heart” (or similarly cliché location). Her second dish got her through and the show did its darndest to eliminate that early mis-step from viewers’ minds by constructing a “Poh cooks from her heritage” narrative. When she was brought back as a “second chancer”, grudge-holding viewers (which could well be a set of, say, one) seethed at “third chancers”. Of course, when the final came down to Julie versus Poh, I would have preferred to see Poh through, as at least she’d consistently shown competence and creativity in the kitchen.
Coming second did not damage Poh’s food-related ambitions; the ABC recognised her potential and signed her up for a series to fill the old Cook and the Chef spot. I tuned into the first couple of episodes and, whilst she seemed very natural on TV, the giggling and fawning over guest chefs grated. Was that Poh? Perhaps it was just me, because after a few weeks I tuned back in and have become a regular viewer.
… which is how I came to be browsing around on YouTube looking for some Nutter magic. Actually, I was hoping to get a sound file of the Simply Baking theme tune to embed here as a tribute to the Nutter. I was unsuccessful in that, but I did uncover a short treasure trove of more recent Nutter appearances.
In this clip, we not only get the Nutter magic, but the special gnominess that is Anthony Worrall-Thompson. And that’s not all! A recipe for Lancashire style Welsh rarebit – really – is yours, if you want it. Enjoy!
MasterChef Australia judge Gary Mehigan and nutritionist Janella Purcell bring their own styles of cooking for a food showdown. Today Gary makes a ricotta pudding and Janella cooks a chunky peasant-style soup.
Look, I’m not really going to go through this in a great deal of detail. I’ve got the Food Channel on in the background to warm me through this bitterly cold day and have been enjoying wacky Ming and the BarefootContessa… and now this has come on. Usually I turn it off because it pisses me off no end, but today? I’m sharing with you.
Why does it piss me off so? I don’t like the morality attached to the good/bad dichotomy; that there is food that is inherently “good”, or “bad”. Nor do I like the peculiar smugness with which Janella presents her “superior” food, or the fact that Gary’s sugar-, cream- and fat-laden creations are set in contrast with her freekeh salads and farro soups without the benefit of any narrative of balance, moderation, or even a dash of STFU.
Today’s episode is focussed on the food of Italy, which means that the food of Italy will provide a minor distraction to Janella as she makes fun of Gary’s weight, which she can apparently do because she’s the “good” chef and a woman. He cops it because… he’s been told to? The producers think this nonsense is entertaining?
Janella’s recipe is the first one up today, and she starts with “lots” of extra virgin olive oil. Gary raises a quizzical eyebrow, given that whenever he adds oil to anything she responds with a variation on “piggy piggy pig pig”. She gets away with it, though, because it’s the good oil (and – did I mention? – she’s the good chef).
Gary is cooking octopus and discusses how it takes a long time to cook as it needs to be looked after to remain tender. Or something. I lost track when Janella interrupted this with “just like women!”. Perhaps I’m on edge after reading Bettina Arndt’s ridiculous SMH “opinion piece” on Julia Gillard being a bad role model for Australian women (and then Mia Freeman’s inevitable look-at-Mia response)1 but I am just exhausted by women who use their public profiles to display attitudes that would be decried as obsolete, patronising and offensive if they were held by men.
Okay, I’m turning off. That fake (at least I’m hoping it’s fake) “i’m so dumb!” squeal-giggle shtick that Janella has just demonstrated has done me in. Janella (having been asked to switch on a food processor): “Are you trying to trick me, Gary?” Simper. Gary: “Huh?” Janelle: “You’ve turned the food processor backwards”. Seriously.
Good Chef, Bad Chef is on Lifestyle Food, but I recommend finding something less maddening to do, such as cleaning the grouting.
1. No, I don’t follow Mia on Twitter, but – inexplicably – I follow someone who does and her response was retweeted by them. I feel dirty.
