books and media

Update on the book situation and ruminating on cookbooks

maki — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 07:53:30 +0200

A month ago, I asked how I should get rid of cookbooks and craft books. There were lots of great suggestions in the comments - thank you! Here’s an update…

I posed that question a month ago, when I was just starting the packing-and-purging process. At that time I thought I’d just have say, one box of books to get rid of. But as we went through the zillion books that have accumulated, we realized that there were far, far more. (I don’t spend much money on stuff like clothing or shoes…well ok not much on shoes…but books are another story). So, the issue became one of speed and convenience above anything else. Just the idea of listing the piles and piles of books tome by tome became overwhelming.

So, we chose the easiest option and have been carting books every few days to the local charity shops, who happily take them off our hands. So far I think we have gotten rid of about 10 to 12 cartons of books, I kid you not. We’ve also been able to sell a few (mostly sci-fi stuff and the like). Many also went to recycling (computer books mostly, which no one wants, not even our local Bring-und-Hol (swap meet). I swear I am never buying another computer how-to book again if I can help it.)

Nevertheless, I still have about 2 cartons of books that are sort of too nice to just bring to the charity shop. Most are Japanese cookbooks and craft books, plus a few manga. I’m not sure if I will get around to listing them up before we have to leave (the house may be sold faster than anticipated) but they will be leaving my hands sooner or later, at which time you will mostly likely hear about it.

Thoughts on sorting cookbooks

I’ve still packed away about 4 cartons of cookbooks so far, and still have about 1 or 2 cartons worth to go. My cookbooks are part inspiration source, partly for research, and to be honest with myself, a security blanket too. Still, I’ve tried to get rid of as many as possible. Here’s how the sorting has gone:

Themed cookbooks (cookbooks for movie lovers, book-themed cookbooks, etc.) are the easiest to get rid of. They are mostly filled with fluff and I rarely cooked anything out of them - and when I have, I’ve found that many recipes just don’t work. (There’s one called the Nero Wolfe Cookbook that has a recipe for Chicken Fricasee with Dumplings, with dumplings that are just all wrong.) The only ones I kept of this genre: The Star Trek Cookbook (the Guy insisted) and a Walt Disney World cookbook which has a few nice recipes.
Regional cookbooks, from regions that are very different to where you live or how you cook, also get very little use in reality. I’m not talking about general cookbooks about a type of cuisine, but those ones you often pick up when you travel somewhere - From Massachusetts With Love, The Celtic Cookbook from Wales, New Orleans Home Cooking. etc etc. I’ve purged most of these, with a little regret.
As you might expect, people tend to give me cookbooks for Christmas and so on. At the risk of alienating most of my friends, it is rare that a cookbook received as a gift fits into my general library. I guess for me, choosing a cookbook is a very personal thing. Also, people do tend to gift big, glossy coffee table type cookbooks…which are mostly quite hard to actually use.
‘Diet’ cookbooks are on the whole, awful. I got rid of almost all that I had accumulated over the years, about 10 of them with no regrets! I’d much rather try ‘cooking lighter’ on my own, and I think I’m getting better at this as the years go by. (The only one of this genre I kept is Cook Yourself Thin, mentioned here previously.)
Celebrity cookbooks. These vary wildly in quality and usability, even from the same author. Jamie Oliver books for instance tend to be loaded with nice photographs, but for me at least score fairly low on the usability scale. Martha Stewart’s recipes and I just do not mesh. On the other hand Nigella Lawson’s books are on the whole quite useful. Other TV-personality or famous-chefs whose books are actually worthwhile in my collection include Madhur Jaffrey, Atul Kochhar, Heston Blumenthal, Thomas Keller and Rick Stein. This is a very personal bias of course. As for cookbooks written by non-chef ‘celebrities’…forget them.

What I’ve noticed is that I only repeatedly use a small handful of the cookbooks I own. Of the rest, I try maybe one or two recipes, but that’s about it. With so many recipes available in the interweb, I already see myself getting much, much pickier about what cookbooks I buy.

My most used English-language cookbooks

After all the purging, I realized that I only really use a handful of cookbooks. Here are the general purpose English-language ones that I really use regularly. (I’m excluding baking and confectionery books here.)

The Way To Cook, Julia Child. Also used quite a lot by the Guy. No. 1 in our house by far.
James Beard’s American Cookery, James Beard. This one has lots of good American basics, and is peppered with just enough history.
Simple Indian: The Fresh Tastes of India’s New Cuisine, Atul Kochbar. Atul Kochbar is the owner chef of a Michelin starred restaurant in London. I need cookbooks to cook Indian cuisine, and this one is my favorite.
New York Cookbook: From Pelham Bay to Park Avenue, Firehouses to Four-Star Restaurants, Molly O’Neill. I have the hardcover of this, which I bought when it first came out. It has so many and varied recipes and everything I have made out of it has been terrific. (Though I must admit I have avoided a few that that don’t sound too good.) One of my favorite ways to roast pork, my favorite blini recipe, my favorite butterscotch brownie recipe, and on and on…all come from this book.
The Frugal Gourmet series by Jeff Smith. Remember the Frug? He has disappeared from the media due to some shady business, but the books that accompanied the PBS television series are really pretty useful. The first one, simply titled The Frugal Gourmet, is the best, but the others are good too. They’re all out of print but are easily available used (and cheap too).

What are your most-used, most-splattered cookbooks?

Now I have to finish going through my Japanese cookbooks….

In Shojo Beat Magazine

maki — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 18:13:07 +0200

I was interviewed recently for Shojo Beat Magazine, an English magazine published in the U.S. dedicated to shojo manga (manga for girls), and the results of whatever I said are in the most recent issue. Unfortunately the articles isn’t online, so I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but the whole issue is dedicated to Japanese food and manga - sounds like fun!

Update: Here is the link to the article (an excerpt I think). (Thanks heatherbug!)

Incidentally, I am periodically asked 1. if I read manga, and 2. what manga I like. The answers are 1. yes, sometimes, and 2. I’m a bit of a classicist (or you could say, jidai okure or ‘behind the times’ old fogie). I am not fond of most recent manga really, though if I were pushed to name some I did like I guess Nodame Cantabile is pretty good - the idea of a whole manga series based on a love of classical music is just awesome. It does bug me a bit that the heroine is some sort of idiot savant, who is frequently (and willingly?) thrown and bashed about to get sense into her! Karekano (or kare to kanojo no jijou) went from awesome and funny to more serious then WTF to a sort-of-satisfying ending (I have the whole manga series).

My favorite manga are from a select group of authors who are considered to be masters of the shojo manga genre. No. 1 by far for me is Moto Hagio (萩尾望都), who writes everything from fantasy/SF to extremely gritty drama to sweet romances. No. 2 is Yumiko Ohshima (大島弓子）, who writes almost ethereal, delicate manga with a bite. (Many of her most popular works feature cats.) No. 3 is probably Ryoko Yamagishi (山岸涼子; her forté is ballet drama manga, but she’s also written historical dramas and more. All three of these authors (all women) made their debuts in the　late 1960s to early 1970s, and are still turning out top notch manga. If you want to know more about them, American manga scholar Matt Thorn has written extensively about them, especially Moto Hagio, with whom he conducted an extensive interview.

Early on in her career, Moto Hagio wrote a sort of novella-length manga called “Cake Cake Cake” (ケーキ　ケーキ　ケーキ). It was about a girl who had no special talents to speak of, not even cooking, but loved sweets and cakes more than anything in the world, and could turn out terrific pancakes. Her love of cakes leads her to Paris, where she becomes the apprentice of a downtrodden patissier. I read this manga when I was about 10, and while it’s not the best work by the author by any measure, it’s one of my favorites because it’s so full of life. I think it even started me on the road to somehow end up living in Europe as an adult!

Alimentum Summer 2008

maki — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 14:58:06 +0200

The Summer 2008 issue of Alimentum is out. This quarterly journal of food writing which includes non-fiction, short stories and poetry, is one of my favorite magazines of any genre, let alone food. In my current purge-decluttering mood, it’s one of the few magazines that I am keeping all issues of. See my first review of it here. The summer issue is as wonderful as usual. Did I mention that the illustrations (proper illustrations, no photography) are as great as the writing?

If you’re in the New York area, they are having an issue launch party this Sunday, June 29th. There will be a reading, wine, cupcakes(!) and maybe even omelettes. Details here. (This kind of event makes me almost with I still lived in New York, except for the July weather…)

Going Out For An English, the greatest restaurant sketch ever

maki — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 16:59:41 +0200

Oh no, two YouTube posts in a row! Well on Saturday we went to an Indian restaurant in town, and invariably our favorite restaurant related video was brought up. Goodness Gracious Me (Wikipedia entry) was a half hour comedy sketch show that ran on BBC One and Two from 1998 to 2001. In case you have never heard of it and you’re in the U.S., it was a little bit like the ’90s comedy show In Living Color, except that the cast in GGM was almost all Asian (as in South Asian, or Indian), who also wrote all the sketches. It poked fun at many British and British-Asian things. One of the best routines was one that made fun of a typical outing to an Indian restaurant. This sketch is called Going Out for an English. I don’t think you have to be Asian (as in South Asian) or British to find it funny…it’s how a lot of people still behave, at any ‘ethnic’ restaurant!

“What is the Blandest Thing you have on the menu?”

Pondering the new Delia Smith, plus acceptable cooking shortcuts

maki — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 17:34:47 +0100

While I was mostly lounging around for the past week, I did get to catch up on a lot of TV. One of the shows I’ve cleared from my DVR is the new one from Delia Smith on BBC Two.

Delia Smith is a giant in the world of cooking in the U.K. Unlike the younger set of TV/Cookbook chefs like Jamie Oliver and Nigella Lawson, she hasn’t translated well over the pond, but I think it’s safe to say that she’s the most influential cooking instructor in Britain, at least since Fanny Cradock. Many legions of fans have relied on her cookery (as they say there) books to learn how to cook real food properly.

To put her in perspective, she’s been known to cause sellouts of products she’s used on her cookery programmes at the supermarkets. She had more reach, relatively speaking, than Julia Child did in the U.S.

So when she came out of retirement or something (at least she hadn’t done any cooking shows or published any books for some years) and published a book called Delia’s How To Cheat At Cooking, accompanied by the ubiquitous television series on BBC Two, outrage broke out around the land. Just look at some of the blog reactions (the comments to the Guardian Word Of Mouth blog are pretty typical). I don’t own the book, nor do I plan to buy it, so I can only judge from the BBC series. In a nutshell, she’s cooking things that are rather similar to what Sandra Lee does for the Food Network in the U.S. - combining fresh ingredients with lots of storebought, prepackaged foods with abandon. (And yes, you can read lots of vitriol against Sandra Lee too out on the interweb.)

I think that there’s so much angst and outrage and disgust because up until this latest effort, as far as I know Delia Smith was all about cooking real food. I only own one of her books, Summer Collection, which I can highly recommend - and in there she sticks to real, fresh ingredients. I gather that that is the case for the rest of her prolific output, until now. (Edit, added a bit later: as a friend of mine pointed out, to put it into perspective for Americans, it’s as if Julia Child had suddenly started making Pommes Dauphinois with Stouffer’s Scalloped Potatoes, or macaroni and cheese with Cheese Whiz. A lot of people who learned cooking with Delia Smith’s older books and TV series seem to feel rather betrayed.)

Now, any practically minded home cook uses shortcuts of all kinds. I do, and I’m sure you do too. But it’s a matter of to which products you use, and how you use them. There’s a line to be drawn somewhere. The position of the line differs from person to person, and exactly how much you actually cook.

For example, I do cook a lot (well that’s a surprise), so my line is quite different from, say my friend M. who has a spotless kitchen and barely bothers. His freezer is stocked with frozen dinners, and he buys prewashed bagged salad, and he relies a lot on the deli counter for quick-to-eat food. When he cooks pasta, he uses a jar of sauce. For him, spending more than 15 minutes in the kitchen is pretty unusual.

Which is what puzzles me about the new Delia. She’s using processed food like meat sauce or ‘tinned mince’ in a can, frozen potato cakes, and frozen rösti (hash browns to Americans). Being that rösti is a Swiss dish, there’s a steady demand for it around here, so I tried the frozen kind. Once. Since then we’ve decided we’d rather make it from scratch or just serve something else. In my teens I was rather addicted to Tater Tots, but I think I’ve outgrown that phase…

But back to Delia. What is really odd is that she takes these processed ingredients and then combines them in a rather time consuming way. The frozen rösti, for instance, was used in a potato and cheese bread.She used frozen mashed potato to top off a fish pie. She also used them with chopped leeks in a soup. (Cleaning leeks is one of the rather more bothersome tasks in the kitchen.) Now, my non-cooking friend who doesn’t spend more than 15 minutes in the kitchen is not going to be fiddling around with making bread with frozen potatoes. (He’s not going to be watching a cooking show on TV for that matter, either.) And I tend to think that the modern dedicated home cook who bothers to make any kind of bread at home is going to want the ingredients to be as good as possible.

So, watching the first two episodes of the series (the third one airs tonight) I was amused but rather puzzled. I think she’s gotten it all wrong. Totally wrong. Who did she envision as the target audience for this?

While Delia was ostensibly waiting for that potato-cheese bread to bake, she was shown going through her old cookbook collection. She curled her lip while stating her dislike for ‘poncey’ food, and pulled out a quote from a deceased Food Legend of the past, Elizabeth David (“theatre on a plate”) to back up her statement. Well sure, a lot of restaurant food is theatre on a plate, and it can be poncey (which means fussy, stuck-up, etc.) But so what? It’s restaurant food, and part of the reason why we go to expensive restaurants is to eat food that we wouldn’t dream of making for ourselves at home. High end restaurant food has always been a bit poncey.

Of course, she did not mention the fact that there are several other TV and cookbook cooks out there doing unfussy and often quick-to-make food to educate the masses. There’s Jamie Oliver, and Nigella Lawson (though I wasn’t too fond of her Nigella Express show, she did take the sort of shortcuts that I find acceptable, like assembling a salad out of bought olives and cheese and so on.) There are others like Anjum Anand, whose Indian Food Made Easy book and TV series I loved. (American TV producers looking for the next glamorous TV cooking star should really look her up, if they haven’t already.) These are shows aimed at home cook, unlike say The Great British Menu which is a cooking show about restaurant chefs, and they generally do a good job. In other words, there really was no reason for the venerable Delia to fill a gap in the market, because there was no gap.

On the other hand, Sandra Lee’s show in the U.S. is still going strong, despite the online howls against her. So I guess there must be an audience for this type of cooking in the U.S., and maybe in the U.K. as well. The How To Cheat book is either no. 1 or no. 2 on the Amazon.co.uk bestseller list, depending on when you look. Ironically the no. 2 (or no. 1) book is Jamie Oliver’s Jamie At Home. If you count the fact that he’s growing his own veg (well, with the help of a gardener), it’s not fast food, but the actual cooking is usually quite fast, easy and unfussy. If someday my non-cooking friend M. were to start showing any interest in the subject, guess which one I’d recommend.

Shortcuts - where do you draw the line?

The How To Cheat show did get me thinking about where I choose to use shortcuts, and what I refuse to use. I am talking about everyday shortcuts, not the occasional times when we all get too busy or something with other matters and rely on takeouts (takeaways) or frozen dinners.

For me, these things are ok:

Prewashed bags of greens, even though I know they are more expensive
Prewashed bags of sprouts and so on
Using things like olives and cheeses and bread for a quick dinner
Frozen vegetables - especially green peas and edamame
Some canned veg - tomatoes and corn are what I use the most
Canned fish (tuna mainly, mackerel, salmon)
Premade spaghetti sauce sometimes (tomato, pesto etc) - some of them are really good
Canned beans

These things, on the other hand, are not ok:

Frozen or vacuum packed rösti!
Frozen chicken nuggets (I used to love these…but no more)
Most frozen fried foods
Dessicated potato flakes for making mashed potatoes, unless it’s for a potato bread
Pre-marinated chicken and meat (they always sell this in the summer around here. Mainly I hate the way the marinade tastes like plastic.)
Weird plastic cheese spreads that someone has a tendency to buy when it’s on sale (grr)

What are your acceptable shortcuts and the ones you draw the line at?

The winner of MasterChef 2008 is....

maki — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 00:58:29 +0100

The three finalists of the BBC’s MasterChef 2008 wait anxiously for the winner to be proclaimed…

And the winner is James Nathan, an ex-barrister.

This was his final winning 3 course menu. The starter was smoked mozzarella ravioli with cherry tomato sauce and basil cream:

The main was tea infused venison with roast potatoes, pickled red cabbage and rich port sauce:

And his dessert was chocolate and orange sponge pudding.

There’s no denying that James deserved to win. He was the most consistent contestant in most of the final week challenges, and the semi-final week challenges too. He’s undoubtedly a very good cook, and he has a good chance to fulfill his stated goal of opening his own restaurant. For that matter, so does Jonny Stevenson, the banker slash single father from Belfast, who makes simple, hearty, crowd-pleasing type of food that I’d be happy to eat any day of the week.

But around Chez Just Hungry the contestant that excited us the most by far was the youngest MasterChef contestant ever, 18 year old Emily Ludolf. Our nickname for her was “Hester Blumenthal”. In a nutshell, she’s a budding molecular-gastronomist type of chef, but unlike Marcel from Top Chef 2, who was clearly copying the ideas of his mentors for the most part, Emily was entirely original. She made us sit up and take notice when she made a chocolate dessert that she called a ‘mud pie’ - inspired by, she said, mud pies she used to make in the garden. It was a chocolate mousse with raspberries and sugared tarragon leaves. She also made amazing things like a rhubarb soup.

Then, in the semi-final rounds that aired last week, she made this dish which she called “bacon and eggs”, which was actually chorizo, ricotta and soft egg ravioli with crisp parma ham and pea shoot coulis. It made three very jaded newspaper food critics exclaim “WOW”.

These were Emily’s final three dishes, starting with “Tagiatelle” of beetroot juice and smoked salmon with apple, mint and horseradish:

The main she made was rabbit saddle and languoustine mousseline with carrot, lemongrass and ginger purée. I think this dish let her down, as beautiful as it is. Rabbit and langoustine together? It also has a pear and water chestnut salad. (I am assuming she used regular Western pears. Maybe Asian pears might have worked better.) Nevertheless I’d love to taste it.

Her dessert was similar in concept to her earlier mud pie, a chocolate and paprika sorbet with marshmallows, truffle and pine nut sugar and passion fruit syrup. It was, she said, inspired by memories of toasting marshmallows and such on a campfire.

I am fascinated by what this young 18 (now 19) year old girl will do in the upcoming years. It seems she’s now at university enduring student food. She says she wants to combine English skills with her ‘hobby’ - “perhaps by becoming a food critic”. Nooooooooooooooooooo. The world does not need yet another food critic or ‘tv food personality’. I really hope Emily pursues her cooking career seriously and becomes a brilliant multistarred chef. Then she can use her earned celebrity chef status to write books or whatever she likes.

So, another terrific series of MasterChef, the show that puts every other cooking competition TV show anywhere to shame, is done. I can’t wait for the next one next year, and seeing how the 2008 finalists progress with the pursuit of their dreams.

Duck breast: pan-fried, poached and marinated in booze (Kamo ro-su)

maki — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 09:52:30 +0100

[Update: A couple of people emailed me about this, so I thought I would put it here unless others had the same question. Yes, this duck is meant to be served cold, as part of a cold appetizer or a salad. And yes it is that rare (though as I’ve written in the recipe you can poach it a bit longer until it’s well done.) It’s like seared rare beef. And yes duck is ok served rare. (Buy good duck of course.)

Incidentally, if you have a general question about a post or recipe here it is really better if you ask me in the comments rather than email. Everyone can read the comments, so other people who have the same question can benefit. Plus, I always get to comments before email.]

I had to make this beautifully easy duck breast dish three times over within a span of two weeks. The first two attempts disppeared before I could take a photo.

The original recipe is on the Kyou no Ryouri (Japanese link) (Today’s Cooking) website. They call it kamo ro-su, which means roast duck, but it isn’t roasted in the sense that Westerners understand roasting. It’s just pan-seared on both sides, then poached briefly, then allowed to marinate in the poaching liquid.

The original recipe uses red wine, mirin and a mere spoonful of brandy. I used about half a cup of the raisins and currents marinated in liquor that we still have a ton of, since the planned post-Christmas panettone I had planned didn’t get made. The saltiness of the soy sauce, the sweetness from the dried fruit and mirin, and the beautiful booziness of the liquors really enhances the flavor of the dark duck meat. I’ve also adjusted the proportions of the marinade ingredients a bit.

This is one of those recipes that only takes minutes of your kitchen time but still tastes like you did a lot more, because most of the work is done as the duck marinates.

Recipe: Japanese-style poached and marinated duck breast (Kamo ro-su)

I’ve found that making 2 breasts at a time is easier than making just one, because there’s more liquid to keep the breasts immersed. Halve the recipe for 1 breast.

2 boneless plump duck breasts with the skin on (mine weighed in at around 450g / around a pound each)

The marinating liquid:

1 cup dry red wine
1 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup mirin
1/2 cup raisins and currents marinated in liquor with a bit of the liquor, or 2 tablespoons brandy

The garnish etc.

A little grated or reconstituted-powder wasabi or mustard
Green garnish (The original recipe calls for shungiku, which is impossible to get in Switzerland in January, so I used a little flatleaf parsley. Arugula (rucola) should work well too.)

Pierce the duck on the skin side several times with a sharp knife or skewer.

Heat up a frying pan with no oil in it. Put the duck breasts in the pan, skin side down, and fry until the skin is dark brown in color. Turn the breasts over and sear the non-skin side briefly.

Take the breasts out of the pan, and drain off the fat. Wipe the pan out with a paper towel. Pat the duck breasts a bit to get rid of excess surface fat.

Put the pan back on the heat and add the liquids and the raisins. Heat up until the liquid is boiling, then lower the heat until it’s just bubbling slightly.

Add the duck breasts back into the pan. Poach for about 8 to 12 minutes (depending on how big your duck breasts are), turning over once about mid-way through. (Cook for a shorter time if you like it quite rare in the middle, as in the version shown here, and longer if you want it well done. Either way it’s good!)

Take the duck breasts out, draining off the liquid. Put on a plate and cover with Saran wrap or aluminum foil. Leave for about 20 minutes to let the meat rest. It will continue to cook a bit from the residual heat.

In the meantime, put the poaching liquid into a non-reactive container (such as glass or ceramic) that you can close up tightly. I would not use a plastic container, because the marinade will stain and odorize it forever. Let the whole thing cool down, then put in the refrigerator. Leave until it’s cold, for at least a couple of hours.

To serve, drain off a breast and slice as thinly as you can. Slicing it while it’s still cold from the fridge makes this easier.

Drizzle a little of the marinade over it, plus a few of the raisins if you like. Optionally serve with a little wasabi. (Reconstituted wasabi powder is fine, though freshly grated is better of course.) Mustard works too.

Serve on its own, on a salad, or on noodles.

It will keep for several days in the refrigerator, immersed in the marinade. As time goes by the saltiness gets more pronounced and the boozy flavors fade.

If freezing, freeze in enough of the marinade to keep it moist, and defrost in the refrigerator.

This is quite rich, and a little goes a very long way. One breast should serve 2 to 4 people as part of a main course salad, and you can get 6 to 8 appetizer servings out of each breast.

About Kyou no Ryouri, the longest running cooking TV program ever (?)

Today’s Cooking is a long-running cooking show on NHK in Japan. Last year they celebrated their 50th anniversay on air. Has any TV cooking program anywhere been on the air longer than that? I rather doubt it (though if you do know of one, let me know in the comments.)

The companion magazine is my favorite food magazine in any language. I have issues going all the way back to the ’70s, when my mother used to subscribe to it. (The new baby sister magazine, Kyou no Ryouri Beginaazu (Today’s Cooking [for] Beginners) is also good.) I don’t get to see the TV program because I can’t justify paying 80 CHF per month for JSTV when the only program I’d probably watch on it would be Today’s Cooking, but the website and the magazine keep me happy enough.

Kill It, Cook It, Eat It is back too

maki — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 21:51:23 +0100

I just realised that Kill It, Cook It, Eat It, the BBC Three show that brings you into a real working abattoir, is also back for another series (season) starting tonight at 10:30PM BT/11:30PM CET (also repeated at 12:45AM/1:45AM). I mentioned it yesterday as one of my top food TV shows of last year. It will be shown every night for this week, and the lineup looks interesting, to say the least. They are going for the baby animals…

Monday (today): Suckling Pig
Tuesday: Kid Goat
Wednesday: Veal
Thursday: Milk Fed Lamb
Friday: Omnibus (recap of the week I guess)

For more information, see the BBC Three site.

The return of MasterChef, plus the best food TV shows of 2007

maki — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 09:33:05 +0100

MasterChef (they seem to have dropped the Goes Large part) is back for a new season (or series, as they say in the UK), starting tomorrow! It’s still my favorite competition cooking-reality show. Even the short Celebrity version is not bad. I think the reason why it stays consistently watchable is that they take the food, and the contestants, very seriously. Unlike other shows there’s no soap opera drama, and no gaming. It’s just about food and cooking skills, as it should be. I do sometimes I disagree with the two host/judge’s decisions (and I still can’t remember who is Greg and who is John) but most of the time I think they are quite fair.

Can it be improved? Sure - they should take the opinions of the professional chefs that participate in the ‘restaurant round’ (where the contestants are thrown into the fire of a busy restaurant kitchen for lunch service) a lot more into account. Or maybe a guest judge would be nice. Or, maybe they should keep things just as they are. In any case I’m looking forward to another eight weeks of fun.

I won’t play along with the show every day as I did two years ago, though I may try some of the combinations. I may do a weekly recap. Regardless, if you get BBC Two where you live, don’t miss it! It’s on later in the evening this time, at 8:30PM BT / 9:30PM CET, Monday to Friday. My DVR is set.

The best Food TV shows of 2007

Here is my list of the best food-related TV shows of 2007. Noting of course that most of the shows I get to see ‘live’ are from UK television. US shows I grab…however I can. (There are some German food programs, mainly on TV Gusto and RTL Living, but so far their original programming leaves a lot to be desired. TV Gusto shows are so boring and all look they same, that they just put me to sleep. Maybe it will get better…)

MasterChef Goes Large 2007 had several interesting contestants and ended on a really high note. Unlike 2006, I think most people were happy with the winner. The spinoff show Celebrity MasterChef was not bad either, since it kept any annoying behavior from those ‘celebrities’ at a minimum.
Kill It, Cook It, Eat It was an eye opening program on BBC Three that took us into a real abattoir and a real chicken processing plant. I was repelled and fascinated at the same time. It made me really think anew about where my food comes from.
There were two great programs on BBC Four about the Edwardians and the food they ate, Edwardian Supersize Me and The Edwardian Larder. A great combination of history and food.
Kitchen Criminals was a surprisingly entertaining cooking contest show. I hope they can bring it back somehow, though the surprise element would be lost. (I talked about this and several other shows here).
The Restaurant, a reality competition show rather similar to The Apprentice that aired on BBC Two, had Raymond Blanc in the Boss role, and the winning couple got to run their own restaurant within his group.
Ever Wondered About Food is always shown after Saturday Kitchen (BBC One) on Saturday afternoons, when I am never in front of the TV, so I keep missing it if I forget to DVR it. Nevertheless it’s a great combination of food science and cooking, presented by a very hot host.
Indian Food Made Easy (BBC Two) made me a fan of host Anjum Anand’s way of cooking Indian with a light touch.
Top Chef Season 3 was better than season 2, which sunk quite low. I was happy with the choice of Hung as the winner.
The second season (series) of Heston Blumenthal: In Search Of Perfection (BBC Two), was a bit over the top, even for him, but he capped it off with an sensational Christmas show.
Rick Stein’s Mediterranean Escapes (BBC Two) was another great food and travel show from the amiable host.

Honorable mention: Jamie (Oliver) At Home (he returns to top form); the UK version of Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares; Sweet Baby James (James Martin cooks great desserts); Neneh and Andi Dish It Up (ex-popstar Neneh Cherry has become an earth mother and cooks great Caribbean-fusion food); Rosemary Schrager’s School For Cooks (a Masterchef wannabe but not too bad); The Roadkill Chef (mmm, braised hedgehog); The Truth About Food (a nutrition myth-debunking show, very entertaining); Cook Yourself Thin (cheesy presentation, great ‘lighter’ recipes that are right up my alley).

And ones I didn’t like…Nigella Express, the latest offering from Nigella Lawson, was disappointing. I want the serious Nigella back, not the one with the cheesy grin and the pseudo-fast-food. The US version of Kitchen Nightmares suffered from horrible editing and voiceovers and needless crap that watered it down unacceptably. The Next Iron Chef and The Next Food Network Star proved that the Food Network don’t know how to do competition-cooking shows right; they both started out promisingly but really went downhill. As for Hell’s Kitchen, both the US and UK versions were awful, for different reasons, and had little to do with food.

Nourishing food writing and music

maki — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 22:19:05 +0100

Some time ago, I realized that I was often using food to deal with anxiety and stress. I can’t say I’ve gotten out of that habit totally, but I know the symptoms now and can deal with them a bit better. One way is to read about food instead. I’m sure I’m not the only one who takes cookbooks to read in bed.

Better than most cookbooks though are fine writings about food. Secret Ingredients: The New Yorker Book of Food and Drink is a collection of essays, short stories, poems and cartoons with food as a theme that have appeared in the New Yorker magazine. It’s quite a hefty tome, at around 600 pages, and is one to savor in bits like a box of chocolates.

(I sort of wonder why this book hasn’t gotten more publicity, since it was just published in October. I guess I don’t understand how and why publishers put a lot of PR muscle behind some books and not others.)

Or how about a subscription, or even a single issue, of Alimentum, “the only literary review all about food”. I’ve written about it before ; the new winter 2007 issue just came, and it’s as good as the previous issues, including cover art that is so nice I want to hang it on my wall.

I’ve also been listening a lot these days to one CD - it’s not Christmas music, but the soundtrack for Rick Stein’s French Odyssey. This aired a couple of years ago on the BBC (I also loved his Mediterranean Escapes series that aired this year). There was one tune on the show that I couldn’t get out of my head, the French Cook. I Googled around looking for the CD, and found it on this site, but the price was bit high for me - £12.99. (Yes I also looked around for not quite lawful sources, but couldn’t find it). But oh joy, it’s available on the iTunes store for only $9.99! Here’s the iTunes link for the US store and and the link for the UK store (it’s £7.99 there). It puts me right into a Southern France kind of mood, and makes me want to pull out my Michelin maps to plan our next trip there. I think it may carry me through the cold grey days of January and February.