books and media

Julie and Julia: An overly long and very late review

maki — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 13:42:42 +0200

Last night I finally got to see Julie and Julia, the much-talked-about movie based on the books Julia and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously and My Life In France. Julia and Julia is a blog-turned-into-book that recounts how Julie Powell, an office cubicle worker who hates her job and is having an identity crisis, cooks her way through Julia Child’s first masterpiece Mastering The Art Of French Cooking (Volume 1) as a project to bring meaning to her life. My Life In France is the autobiography of Julia Child, a legendary American cookbook author and TV chef. I thought I would put in both descriptions here, since contrary to what American may think, Julia Child is not universally known. In fact, as Anna Picard wrote on The Guardian’s World of Mouth blog, internet savvy non-USens are more likely to know about Julie Powell, Famous Blogger Who Became Bestselling Author, rather than Julia Child, an odd-looking woman who had some cooking gig on the telly years ago.

I pondered these things as made our way to a movie theater in Lyon, France, for a pre-premiere, or sneak preview (the movie officially opens here in France on the 16th). Julia Child may be credited with introducing fine French cooking techniques to American housewives, but she is not a household name in the country that inspired her by any means, even if she did receive a Legion d’Honneur from the French government. I was even wondering if anyone else besides us would be there for the show. As it happens, the theatre (one of the smaller ones at the multiplex) was about 80% full, and as far as I could eavesdrop on, mostly by French people, not expats like me.

Perhaps because I viewed the movie in a place where Julia Child is not a culinary diety and pop-culture icon, I was able to watch the movie in a different way I think than most Americans. I think that this really is a movie about Julie, not Julia. The Julia parts are there to enlighten us about this legendary Julia figure, and why someone would give up a year of her life, more or less, to immersing herself in the Cult of Julia. Parallels are drawn between the lives of the two women, to be sure, but I think they are there to give weight and credence to Julie’s experience.

Like most people who have written about this movie, I did yearn for more Julia, a whole movie about Julia. The scenes of France and Paris in the late ’40s onwards are gorgeous, and the acting of Meryl Streep, Stanley Tucci, and everyone else in the Julia segments are just wonderful. I wonder if there is enough footage there to cobble together an only-Julia Director’s Cut version (I doubt it, but it would be nice). But that’s another movie entirely. In this movie, Julia is perfect because she’s a mythical figure. She’s the Julia that Julie worships and idolizes, and the Julia that is actually a reality in Julie’s world, the one who tells a reporter that she dislikes whatever it is that Julie is doing (though it’s not specified in the movie or in reports about the real-life incident exactly what she objected to) is not really the same person.

Compared to the perfect Julia, Julie is going to come off worse by default. How can a depressed almost-30something woman stuck in a boring job, living somewhere she can’t stand, compete with a woman who seems to be on an extended honeymoon in a dreamlike city? More to the point, she’s just a blogger. If you have been blogging for any length of time, you may know by now that the world at large, the part that only use the internets for email and looking at cute cat pictures, not to mention more than a few “professional” journalists and writers, tend to sneer at bloggers. They regard them - us - as self-centered twits who gaze too intently at our navels, then have the nerve to expose our navel lint to the general public. Amy Adams made her about as appealing as possible probably, but she had an impossible task to begin with.

Nevertheless, Julie is the one who most people are closer to in reality. We can dream about and aspire to becoming like Julia. But when we blog, in some way we are being Julie; using our writing to express ourselves, as an outlet for our thoughts or our stunted creativity, to find an audience out there who just might appreciate us. There are thousands, if not millions, of Julies out there. I’m one of them.

When I started Just Hungry in late 2003, I was at a pretty low point mentally. I had recently finished writing a book about web tech things, which ended up being something very different from what I set it out to be. I had a personal blog already, but somehow could not get myself out of the rut of writing about web-design this or CSS-that. Not that there is anything wrong with those subjects, but I felt like writing for my blog was like taking a busman’s holiday - I could never get away from the day job. So I started a little blog about one of my lifelong obsessions, food. My blog did not grow as fast as it should have perhaps - I was very unfocused, and I even stopped blogging for no good reason during 2004. And my writing at the start was pretty blah. (Derail: I got a chuckle out of this post on Tigers and Strawberries that I stumbled on when I was looking up links for this article. Apparently, my blog “iwasjustreallyveryhungry.com” (which was never the actual URL, though my blog’s name used to be I Was Just Really Very Hungry) was dissed by a food anthology editor way back then.) Still, it brought a different kind of focus to my life.

I almost clapped my hands at the little things in the movie that only a blogger could appreciate - when Julie gets her first comment; when her husband tells her she has the no. 3 blog on Salon.com. (I never got hot sauce in the mail from a reader though. That part is sort of zeitgeist I guess. If it really happened, it was ok in 2003 perhaps, but 2009, I think we are wary of random strangers knowing our real addresses, let alone sending us food in the mail!) I’ve had those little “You Like Me, You Really Like Me!” moments too - when Just Hungry was a Featured Blog on Typepad, its original home; when I got my first email from a mainstream media reporter asking for an interview; when I got a heartfelt email from someone saying how my bento recipes were being used as inspiration by a group of women with eating disorders, to get them back into eating small portions of real food. Being quoted several times over in a feature article in the New York Times this week was another highlight. And if getting a book contract is supposed to be the measure of a blogger’s success, I have one actually, and am in the throes of working frantically on the first draft. (Details to come.)

I can also relate very well to the struggle of trying to cook in an inadequate kitchen. I’ve been doing that for most of this year, as we move around from holiday home to holiday home, waiting for the Final Word to come on whether we can purchase the house we want or not. (I’ve been technically homeless since March. It’s really getting old.) The desire to cook something delicious that uplifts the soul and fills the belly can overcome a tiny two-burner stove that slopes towards the center so that you can only cook in a pan straddling the two burners, and the limitations of a kitchen sink placed at such an odd angle that you bang your head on a hard corner cupboard every time you try to rinse some vegetables.

So despite her foibles and the comparative smallness of her vision, I loved the Julie parts as much as I loved the larger-than-life portrayal of the larger-than-life Julia Child.

One other thing: I think that this is a movie about writing, as much as it is about food. It’s about the power of writing to inspire and change lives. Julia’s life is transformed first by falling in love with French food, but it’s really changed by her book. Julie’s life is changed mostly by her blog, and her book - the cooking thing was mostly a hook to hang her writer’s hat onto.

In any case, I think that Julie and Julia is a wonderful movie, that should be appreciated on its own merit, rather than trying to twist it into something that it is not.

Notes

Julia Child. I didn’t want to interject my own feelings about the real-life people involved in the movie in the above review. I really wanted to see the characters just as they are portrayed in the movie, and I think I succeeded. I do happen to love the real Julia Child - she’s one of my major inspirations, and she wrote my favorite English-language cookbook of all time. I have My Life In France in three formats - as a hardcover, as an audiobook, and as an ebook. I re-read it all the time. If you have not read it yet, please, go and get it!
Julie Powell. On the other hand, I was never a fan of Julie Powell the blogger and writer. I read her blog quite some time after she stopped updating it - as a matter of fact, I only found it when Julia Child passed away. I was looking around to see what other people’s reactions were, and I found her heartfelt post about it. I then started going back through her Julie/Julia blog, but stopped after a few entries - it was just so, I don’t know, messy. Maybe I shouldn’t have - maybe her writing improved too with practice, as I like to think mine has. But anyway, for this reason I was very surprised by how much I liked the Julie in the movie, and I am tempted to buy the book after all.

What’s holding me back is the real Julie Powell’s annoying post-movie comments that have appeared all over the place about how the movie Julie is different from her, please don’t hate her because of that Julie, et al. Ugh, please shut up about that. Also, I can’t get away from the niggling feeling that any theme would have done as a hook to get herself a writing project. It could have been ‘build 365 Lego projects in a year’ or ‘knit 52 hats in a year’ or something. For Julie Powell I really think it was the writing first, food/cooking second. Which may explain why she doesn’t seem to think of herself as a food blogger and distances herself from food bloggers, unless it’s convenient for her to do otherwise. But as she likes to repeat, the movie Julie is not the same as the real-life Julie Powell, and I do like the movie Julie a lot.
Nora Ephron. The director Nora Ephron used to be a writer/journalist (interestingly she lists her books before her movies in her Huffington Post bio). She has written a lot about food - for example Scribble Scribble (out of print but you can find it used), which is a collection of essays she wrote for Esquire Magazine about the media, she has a very funny critique of Bon Appetit magazine, and ends another essay about the New York Post with her recipe for borscht, which is really quite good. And her autobiographical novel Heartburn (which was turned into a movie starring - Meryl Streep!) is peppered with some great comfort food recipes. I try to avoid reading it when I’m hungry, otherwise before I know it I’m in the kitchen toasting some almonds in butter or whipping up a bowl of mashed potatoes or something. So this script really was a good fit for her, and I think it shows - it’s the best movie she’s made in my opinion, right up there with When Harry Met Sally.
Julia Child’s impact on American women. The best account I’ve read of the huge impact Julia Child and Mastering The Art Of French Cooking had on a generation of American women, appears in a wonderful book called Feast Here Awhile by Jo Brans, who is listed on the dust jacket as a journalist and writer. It’s out of print, but you can get it used for a bargain price. If you’re interested in what impact certain chefs, cookbooks and so on had on American society from the late ’50s up to the early ’90s, this is a must read. I wish there were more books like this out there. What would be cool is if the writers of Mad Men managed to get a reference to Mastering in there somewhere - maybe have Betty Draper discover an outlet for her ongoing frustration? Well, maybe not…she may gain weight or something.
Julia and France. In the movie, Julia is portrayed as being enamored of Paris, and only Paris, when it comes to France. But in the book she fell in love with Marseille and adored the food of Provence. Later in her life she and Paul built a house called La Pitchoune in Provence, on land owned by Simone (Simca) Beck, where they and many of their friends (among them James Beard) spent a lot of time. (The house is now a cooking school for well-heeled tourists.) I guess this dissing of Marseille was done for the sake of expediency, but it reinforced, yet again, that notion held by so many Americans and others that Paris=France=Paris and there’s nothing else. (OK, a lot of Parisiens think like that too.) As someone who has fallen in love with this corner of France, it does grate on me. But hey, there are enough tourists here from the Netherlands and Belgium and Germany and the UK here in the summer so, maybe it’s a good thing there aren’t more Americans! Also note that she falls in love for the first time with French cooking at the restaurant La Couronne in Rouen, in Normandy, not in Paris. (On the other hand, Julia really did hate Bonn it seems…) Anyway, if you wonder whether really friendly market vendors like those that Julia interacted with still exist in France, yes they do - in the provinces mostly, but even in Paris - but you need to become a regular, and speaking a bit of French and above all, being friendly yourself does help. (My mother does not speak a word of French but manages to charm market vendors everywhere by her sheer enthusiasm.)
Queens. Just in case you get the impression that the NYC borough of Queens is a food desert, Robyn will disabuse you of such nonsense. I lived for a year in Flushing, and while I hated my apartment and the long commute to work, I loved the neighborhood for its wide variety of delicious food.
Watching Julie and Julia with a French audience. It was a lot of fun. They laughed heartily at Julia, and gasped audibly at the gorgeous food porn, starting with that sole meunière in Rouen. They laughed the loudest when Meryl Streep/Julia uttered a throwaway phrase or word in French.
Sole meunière in the movies, again. Sole meunière also features prominently in the movie that is still my favorite food-theme movie, Tampopo.
Other interesting food personalities to make movies about. Perhaps another Julia Child movie will not be made soon, but how about James Beard, M.F.K. Fisher, Escoffier, Elizabeth David (ok a TV movie of sorts was made about her)? All larger than life fascinating characters. An M.F.K. Fisher movie could be really interesting - that lady had a very complicated life, to say the least. And she was beautiful too.
Bloggers liking Julie. Finally, a couple of prominent non-food bloggers had a similar take on the Julie part of Julie and Julia: Matt Haughey, who relates his early experiences with Metafilter, and Tom and Lorenzo of the site formerly known as Project Rungay.

Book review and giveaway: Izakaya, the Japanese Pub Cookbook

maki — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 12:48:04 +0200

When a Japanese person dreams of quitting his or her rat-race job and opening a restaurant, the type of restaurant they usually envision is either a kissaten or kafe (a café-restaurant) or an izakaya. An Izakaya (居酒屋）is a small traditional pub that serves food, rather like a Spanish tapas bar. Many are quite tiny, with just the counter and maybe a few tables. The best ones are run with a lot of passion and love, and have fiercely loyal customers.

Izakaya, the Japanese Pub Cookbook conveys the atmosphere and love of food and good sake that are hallmarks of good izakaya perfectly. Written by Mark Robinson, an Australian journalist who fell in love with izakaya establishments in Tokyo, with gorgeous photography in both color and black and white by Masashi Kuma, it is part cookbook and part ode to the cult of the izakaya. You don’t just get recipes here, even though it’s called a cookbook. There are profiles of izakaya masters, useful advice on izakaya etiquette, notes on sake types, anecdotes and a lot more. I think it can reside as happily on a bedside table as in the kitchen - a quality I look for when I buy cookbooks.

The recipes themselves vary in difficulty. The main difficulty you will encounter is the availability of ingredients. But the photos and descriptions are so enticing, that you’ll want to try them out anyway. And there are plenty of simple, home-cooking type recipes here, since izakaya cooking is nothing fancy. It’s really a refined form of good old ‘mom’s’ home cooking, as opposed to the haute cuisine that is served in formal restaurants - friendly and accessible.

Some recipes that caught the eye of The Guy, who just loves this book (and loves sake more than I do):

Japanese Style German Potatoes (potatoes with onion and bacon, flavored with soy sauce and butter)
Motsu Nikomi (Beef intestine stew)
Ichiyaboshi (Overnight dried fish)
Simmered Eggplant and Pork Loin
Gomadare Udon (Udon noodles with spicy sesame sauce)

Another likely outcome of reading this book is that you’ll start researching airfares to Tokyo right away. I’m scheduled to go to Japan for a long-delayed satogaeri (homecoming) in the new year, and it reminded me to make some time for a little izakaya-hopping, even though I’m not much of a sake drinker.

Izakaya: the Japanese Pub Cookbook

Author: Mark Robinson
Photography: Masashi Kuma
Book web site
Publisher: Kodansha International
Amazon link; Amazon UK; Amazon DE; Amazon JP

And…of course there’s a giveaway!

Yes my friends, I have one copy of the book to give away, courtesy of the publisher. If you would like to get your hands on this lovely book, just leave a comment here. Make sure to include your email address in the comment form section that says email address (not sure why many people miss it…but well, don’t). And, to make it more fun, tell us what your favorite tipple is, and what you like to eat with it (doesn’t have to be Japanese)!

The deadline for getting your comment in is 23:59:59 CET on Friday, September 18th. (Note: There was a problem with the spam filters protecting this site yesterday which preventing people from commenting, so I’ve extended the deadline by a day.)

The giveaway is now closed. The winner will be announced next week. Thank you for entering!

Book review: The Enlightened Kitchen, shōjin ryōri (shoujin ryouri) for the home

maki — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 18:20:07 +0200

The Enlightened Kitchen: Fresh Vegetable Dishes from the Temples of Japan by Mari Fujii is a beautifully presented, easy introduction to the world of shojin ryori (or shoujin ryouri 精進料理), the highly refined vegan cuisine developed by Buddhist monks in Japan. I’ve often been asked by readers of this site and other people to recommend a good shojin ryori book: While there are many such books in Japanese, I haven’t really been comfortable recommending a book in English so far. Shojin ryori tends to use a lot of ingredients that are only available in Japan - even more so than ‘regular’ Japanese cooking - and it is a haute cuisine that requires a lot of skill.

The Enlightened Kitchen, on the other hand, is filled with nonintimidating recipes, that any amateur cook with decent access to Japanese ingredients could tackle. Some of the vegetables and dried ingredients may trip you up, but it’s easy to think up suitable substitions. The author, Mari Fujii, is married to a Buddhist monk, and has been teaching, speaking and writing about shojin ryori and other types of Buddhist vegetarian cuisines for 2 decades in Japan.

The book is divided into six sections: Soup; Salads; Tofu and Beans; Vegetables; Potato, Rice and Grains; and Desserts. There’s a small but essential Basic Techniques section, and a useful glossary. Most of the recipes are vegan, following shojin ryori teachings, but a few do use dairy products, which are used in Chinese Buddhist temple food for example. It’s a really beautiful book, with gorgeous photos and layout. It’s a pleasure to hold and just flip through.

You may have read my rave reviews of the Japanese vegan cookbooks by Yumiko Kano here before. The recipes in The Enlightened Kitchen are more straightforwardly traditional than those of Yumiko Kano, but are still very accessible and modern. And of course, this one is in well-translated English! I’ve tried a few of the recipes already, and they’ve all turned out very well with minimum fuss, even in my current tiny holiday home kitchen. Some of our favorites so far are the eggplant dishes, since eggplants (aubergines) are abundant here in southern France: Sesame-Flavored Eggplant (miso) Soup is rich and toasty, and Eggplant Salad with Lemon-Flavored Plum Dressing is a great side dish or starter. Even the resident dedicted omnivore approves heartily. (Check out the bento-friendly lentil salad inspired by a recipe in this book over on Just Bento.)

The Enlightened Kitchen: Fresh Vegetable Dishes from the Temples of Japan: Author: Mari Fujii; Translated by: Richard Jeffery; Photography: Tae Hamamura; Published by: Kodansha International; Amazon link (Amazonk UK link; Amazon.de link)

And now the part you’ve been waiting for (or skipped forward to): The Giveaway!

I have one copy of The Enlightened Kitchen to give away, courtesy of the publisher, Kodansha International. Just leave a comment to this article, making sure that you put a valid email in the email box (don’t worry, no one but I will see it). To make it a bit more fun, tell us what your favorite vegan dish is, linking to the recipe if possible. Your comment must be posted before 23:59:59 CET (Central European Time) on Sunday, June 7th. One winner will be selected at random, and announced sometime next week. Good luck!

The giveaway is now closed. The winner will be announced later this week!

Savings Techniques for Women Who Can't Save

maki — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 18:44:11 +0200

This article about my favorite Japanese personal finance book is part of Frugal Food Month. While it’s not directly about food, I hope it’s of interest to Just Hungry readers anyway!

Previously, I wrote about some household budget management tools and methods which are fairly standard in Japanese society. While I’ve known all about these things for years - the kakeibo household ledger, the envelope management method, and so on - I had a hard time following these methods myself for a very long time. As a result, my personal savings have always been on the meager side, to put it mildly.

It actually took a small book that I picked up a couple of years ago to make me really see the light. The book is called Finally This Time! Savings Techniques for Women Who Can’t Save (貯められない女のためのこんどこそ!貯める技術). It’s actually a manga (comic) book. In Japan, it’s quite common for difficult concepts to be explained with manga. And what’s more important to really understand than how to manage your money?

The book starts by recounting how the author, Kyoko Ikeda, was totally unable to accumulate any kind of savings. One day she discovers that she only has about 11,000 yen in the bank (roughly US $110 at current exchange rates), and that has to last her for 10 days until her next client payment (she’s a freelance illustrator and manga artist) is due in. She somehow manages to make it through those ten days, and goes to the bank fully expecting the client payment to be in…and it isn’t. She has a serious moment of panic, especially when she goes home and tries to get online - and she can’t. Has her internet already been cut off due to nonpayment? What is she going to do? What about the rent that’s due?

She survives that crisis when the payment is credited to her account later that day. Some time later, she goes to a class reunion, where she talks to a former classmate who not only have bought their own home already, but has paid off the mortgage. She realizes that she’s single, in her late 30s, has no savings or any kind of assets to her name, and is always living from payment to payment, walking a financial tightrope.

She wonders, where has all the money gone? It’s not like she hasn’t been earning a good income. Her basic expenses like rent are not that high either. She doesn’t buy expensive clothes or accessories, or go on lots of trips. When she really analyzes her past spending habits, she realizes that she’s just been frittering her money away. Where did it go: On things like an expensive computer she really couldn’t afford (on ‘easy monthly payments’ of course); lessons for things she was all fired up to learn, but never followed through on; equipment and stuff for hobbies soon abandoned. She also has a habit of comforting herself with food (chocolate, an ice cream sundae, a nice curry at the local restaurant…) or little trivial, non-lasting purchases (Aromatherapy! Miracle skincare products!) Finally, she’s also always fighting clutter and disorganization at home, and constantly buying new organizing gear - more shelves, more boxes, more…

Does any of this sound familiar to you? To me, it was almost like reading about myself, especially the parts about using small purchases to make myself feel better. And getting frustrated with all the clutter and going out to buy more and more organizing gear. Oh, and the part about spending too much on computer stuff too. And the supplies for soon-abandoned hobbies (ouch!). And the lesson fees for half-finished courses (ouch again!). And, and… The similarities were quite shocking.

Keeping it simple

Of course, it wouldn’t be a personal finance book without solutions. What made sense to me was that she kept it very simple.

Every month, she’d subtract her fixed costs - rent, utilities, and so on from her income.
The rest, she withdrew as cash and divided up into envelopes (see the envelope method described previously). She made a strict pact with herself never to let one envelope/category “borrow” from another; e.g. if her entertainment expenses envelope ran out, no transferring from her office supplies envelope!
She kept a kakeibo (household ledger), but didn’t use a commercially available one, since she found the categories to be too complicated. She just used a regular notebook, using 2 pages per week, and used broad categorizations that fit her lifestyle and spending patterns. One that made a lot of sense to me is that she divided her food spending into ‘food for survival’ and ‘food for comfort/entertainment’ categories. Things like eggs, milk, vegetables were ‘food for survival’; chocolate, cake, or eating out for the sake of eating out were ‘food for comfort/entertainment’. Most if not all Japanese pre-printed kakeibo divid ‘food’ into too many categories (carb, protein, vegetables, etc) which can get tedious to keep track of.
Instead of writing down what she spent, she just stuck down her receipts and wrote down the totals.
She got rid of unplanned spending. Whenever she wanted to buy something, she would write down her requirements first, and carry the notes around until she found something that fit.
She had a couple of variations on the coin saving scheme. First of all, whenever she could she paid with bills rather than coins, so she’d always end up with change. Then any change, especially ‘big’ change (500 yen coins) left at the end of the day was put into the coin jar. (That would be easier to duplicate in countries that have big-denomination coins; here in Switzerland I try 5 franc and 2 franc coins. In the US, you could try quarters, those elusive dollar coins, or even $1 and $5 bills.) At the end of the month, the contents of the coin jar were deposited into a separate savings account, at a different savings institution from her regular bank (she chose the post office).

Decluttering leads to saving

Ms. Ikeda’s best known books are actually about decluttering and organization. I picked those up before getting to her savings book. In any case, she says, and I agree from my own experience, and decluttering your personal space leads to saving money too. Not only do you stop wasting money on duplicate purchases (10 pairs of scissors because you keep misplacing them, etc.) but clearing your physical space seems to clear your mental space too.

So, has it worked for me?

Since reading this book as well as her decluttering books, I can say that I have improved my personal finances quite a bit, as well as decluttered my environment and life. It’s been a small yet significant factor in leading to the situation I’m in now, looking for an ideal place to live and work, with just enough funds to make that choice. So I’d say it has worked, and is continuing to work.

Ms. Ikeda has a lot of other ideas in her little book, some of which go a bit too far for me (like when she determines that white flour is the cheapest carb, and tries to live on udon, okonomiyaki, and so on). But I truly love this book. Maybe it should be translated into English! In any case I’ve tried to cover the highlights of the book here. If you do read Japanese at all, and have problems with saving money, I highly recommend it. Besides being practical, it’s very cute and funny too, and while the title says ‘For Women Who Can’t Save’ it’s just as useful for men too I think. (Her organizing and decluttering books are just as good, if not even better. If you all are interested I’ll try to describe them also in an upcoming post. She’s also published a couple of books on investing in stocks, and new one on dieting, but I haven’t read those yet.)

(Note: a related post on my language blog about a term she uses often…that leads to a lot of wasteful spending!)

MasterChef 2009, the best and worst of food TV in 2008, and upcoming

maki — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 14:06:29 +0100

My favorite food TV show MasterChef is back for another round of competitive cooking fun! The hosts are John Torode and Gregg Wallace again, or Pasty and Toad as they are affectionately (or not) known in MasterChef fan circles. (I can’t remember who is Pasty and who is Toad though.) See my thoughts on the 2008 MasterChef finals and you’ll see why I love this show. I hope that 2009 will reveal equally exciting talents.

As with last year, the episodes will be shown Monday to Wednesday at 9:30pm (22:30) CET / 8:30pm BT for 30 minutes, then for one hour starting at 9:00pm (22:00) CET / 8:00pm BT on Thursdays. M-W and the first half hour of Thursday will be the first rounds, and the last half hour of Thursday will be the quarter finals. The quarter finals will have a repeat airing on Saturdays after Saturday Kitchen at 11:30am CET / 10:30am BT.

Unfortunately, it seems like the Beeb is no longer going to have a dedicated website section for MasterChef. The old MasterChef page has a big fat ‘mothballed’ alert on it. (They didn’t have anything useful for MasterChef Professionals either.) This programme listing page is all you get now unfortunately. I guess this is a result of all the budget cuts at the BBC in recent times. (Maybe they can take some of Jonathan Ross’ salary away for a decent site, heh.) I’ll try to keep up with MasterChef news as it develops and post anything interesting here.

A brief look back at food TV in 2008

(See my look back at food TV in 2007.)

MasterChef 2008 was indeed terrific, but there were quite a few other food highlights in 2008. I do have to confess that this is the first year that I basically stopped paying attention to, or attempting to acquire by legitimate nefarious means, U.S. TV food shows with the exception of Top Chef. The current season of Top Chef is pretty interesting so far, and it’s back on iTunes, which is a great thing. When I was back in the U.S. I did watch some Food Network, but…it was mostly just so ‘meh’. Perhaps the highlight of food TV in U.S. terms was the return of the original Iron Chef on the Fine Living network. (I periodically get updates from their nice PR people about the series about special weeks and such, but all I can say is - if you’re a fan, you should just watch it, period. And they actually have a nice dedicated site section.)

Anyway, UK TV had plenty of good to great food related programming. I guess some of it will make it to BBC America or BBC Prime, if it hasn’t already.

The best

Best of 2008 for me was definitely the Supersizers Go series, which I reviewed in copious detail. It revived my interest in food history and retro cooking. Maybe this will be the year I finally open up a site section dedicated to Fanny Cradock, or throw a medieval banquet. And, it’s supposed to be back later this year for another series! I give this 5 out of 5.
As I mentioned above, MasterChef 2008 was terrific, especially 18 year old finalist Emily. I give this 4.5 out of 5.
MasterChef: The Professionals was a spinoff of MasterChef, with young professional restaurant chefs competing against each other. The host/judges were Gregg Wallace (the ‘bald one’ of the Pasty and Toad team) and Michel Roux Junior, of the famed Roux family. It was much more tightly edited than the original MasterChef, and all in all excellent. 4.5 out of 5.
Celebrity MasterChef was yet another spinoff of MasterChef. Considering that it was a competition between ‘celebrities’ I’d mostly never heard of, it was pretty good, and the finals were surprisingly moving. 4 out of 5.

The good to ok

In Jamie’s Ministry of Food, Jamie Oliver attempted to teach ‘regular people’ how to cook, on the theory that the health of Britain was so bad because people ate too much junk food/takeaways. I admire his apparent sincerity, but am not sure I totally buy the premise, and it got a bit forced, so I give it 3.5 out of 5.
Kill It Cook It Eat It, a show I thought was outstanding in its first series in 2007, was back for another round. It was basically more of the same, so I give it 3 out of 5. (Similar shows were Jamie’s Fowl Dinners, where Jamie Oliver tackled the subject of battery grown chickens, and Hugh’s Chicken Run, where Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall set up his own chicken farm and so on.)
Top Chef seasons 4 and the current 5 are not bad. 3.5 out of 5 for both. (But really, it’s no excuse to mess up Project Runway ffs! But I digress.)
Jamie’s Christmas was a one-off At Home episode, but boy was it great! Pork pork pork! I recorded it and have already watched it 3 times. Jamie (with his mentor Gennaro) at their finest.
One reason I didn’t feel the need to pursue extra food programming was that in 2008 we got access to Channel 4 and More 4 on free-to-air satellite. More 4 has lots of Channel 4 programming repeats, and that is where I discovered that guilty pleasure called Come Dine With Me. It’s not really about food, it’s about strangers giving each other dinner parties and the ensuing hilarity/cringe-worthiness. But it’s a lot of fun! I understand there is a U.S. version of this show upcoming. I give this 3.5 to 5 out of 5, depending on the set of diners.

The bad and the meh

The new Delia Smith ‘cheat cooking’ series caused an uproar in the UK. I just thought it was ill conceived, like Sandra Lee style cooking executed by a someone who really should know better. 1.5 out of 5.
None of the straight-cooking shows on the Beeb were that interesting for some reason. The problem with both Chinese Food Made Easy and the second series of Indian Food Made Easy was the gimmick of getting a n00b to cook whatever it was that was being presented, I guess to show how ‘easy’ it was. Well…I don’t really like seeing these n00bs fumbling around at all; it drags things down unnecessarily and ultimately put me to sleep. (I honestly could not watch at single episode of Chinese Food… without dozing off.)
Previously, I used to look forward to gorging myself on Food Network whenever I went back to the U.S. But this year, I found most of what I saw just bland and…meh. What happened to the old Food Network? Only Alton Brown and the Challenge shows were interesting enough to keep me there.

Upcoming

All in all, Channel 4 is doing a much better job with food TV programming than the BBC. Their upcoming Great British Food Fight programming looks interesting too, starting with Heston Blumenthal (who was lured away from the Beeb) trying to make over the menu of a tired roadside-cafe (pronounced ‘caff’ for non-Brits) chain in Big Chef Little Chef. Also, Jamie is back tacking the subject of pork in Jamie Saves Our Bacon; Gordon Ramsay is in Ramsay’s Great British Nightmare which sounds exactly like Kitchen Nightmare with a scarier title, and Hugh F-W pesters Tesco about the quality of chicken they sell again in Chicken, Hugh and Tesco Too.

I ask you, wouldn’t you be excited if Food Network came up with such innovative food-related programming?

Oh noes, dashi is trendy now

maki — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 01:21:05 +0200

In the past few years, the popularity of Japanese food has exploded, with sushi leading the way. You might think that as the owner of a blog that is mainly dedicated to Japanese cooking, I’d be ecstatic about that.

I am happy, sure. It’s gratifying to gradually see the cuisine of my birthplace being recognized as something special. But on the other hand, I’m more than a bit skeptical. I wonder if, in a few years, hipster ‘foodies’ are going to turn their noses up at Japanese cuisine. “That was so naughties” they might be saying sometime in 2015, as they tuck into the latest craze for - I don’t know what.

There’s still a lot of misinformation bandied about about Japanese cooking. Take this article in this week’s New York Times Food Section, about how trendy chefs who are trained in traditional French techniques are using dashi more and more. It’s great to see this fundamental base of Japanese cooking (it’s so important that it’s the first basic Japanese recipe I ever posted here, almost 5 years ago) being embraced by Western chefs, but why the need to describe it as a substitute for meat flavor? Dashi certainly did not develop as a way for compensating for a lack of meat. There’s a pretty simple reason why kombu (a seaweed) and katsuobushi (dried fish shavings) are the most popular combination for making dashi: they both come from the sea. If you look at a map of Japan, it’s quite obvious why this would have come about. Even before the eating of four-legged animals was formally banned in the late 17th century by the Tokugawa Shogunate (生類哀れみの令), the staple protein for most Japanese people was fish, not meat - simply because most people lived near the coasts than inland. This may be more obvious if one looks at other popular dashi ingredients, like niboshi (small dried fish).

In any case, it’s no surprise that dashi has become popular. It’s so much easier to prepare than a meat based stock, and the base ingredients are easy to store. It’s so handy to make that any home cook can make a dashi as good as that of professional chefs - and many do, even though even easier to use dashi granules are available. (Do you know many people who still maintain a stock pot? I don’t.)

I just hope that the use of dashi doesn’t turn out to be a fad, along with the rest of Japanese cuisine. But if it happens, I won’t be surprised, given the fickleness and the food-as-fashion thinking that drives much of the culinary world.

(Footnote: Someone reminded me that Swiss cuisine has been a big victim of food-trendiness. First there was fondue, which was wildly popular in the ’70s and then became oh-so-totally passé after that. Then there was the mid-’90s craze for making piles of food on top of rösti, the crispy potato pancake that is a staple of the German parts of Switzerland. What do we call trend-chasing food dilettantes - foodistas? Food victims? :))

From the $1500 dinner to Russell Baker's Francs and Beans

maki — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 10:19:39 +0200

Are we heading for tougher times economically? Are we already there? I am not sure if we are indeed heading for the meltdown that some have been declaring, especially last week. In any case, the announcement of a $1500 dinner jointly produced by two of the most renowned chefs in America, Grant Achatz and Thomas Keller, coming as it did in the midst of the Lehman Brothers collapse and all, could have probably been timed better. I haven’t seen that much outrage over it, except for this on Food Musings. I must say that I don’t feel upset or anything (and if I had the money to spare, which I don’t, I’d sign up for a couple of seatings for sure), but it is a lot of money to spend on a single meal. Of course, fine restaurant dining is not really eating, it’s entertainment - and some people don’t bat an eyelash at paying such amounts for prime seats at say, the Superbowl or a concert.

Speaking of a lot of money to spend on a meal, the most famous such incident in not-that-ancient history was the $4000 (for two) feast consumed by former New York Times food critic Craig Claiborne and his friend chef Pierre Frenay, back in 1975. They actually only paid $300 for it - Claiborne had won a prize for ‘dinner for two anywhere in the world’ in a charity auction. In true bon vivant style, they had a 31-course, 5 hour blowout extravaganza at a Parisian restaurant called Chez Denis. This display of extravagance outraged many, including even the Pope. There is a nice summary of this incident here (scroll down to Critic’s Revenge).

The best thing to come out of this was a classic piece of writing by Russell Baker, called Francs and Beans. The entire text is here. I have a tattered book of his collected writings, of which this essay is by far my favorite. It should be required reading for anyone who writes about food, especially those (whether newspaper critic, food blogger, or Yelp.com reviewer) who take it far too seriously.

Now where’s my bottle of cheap gin.

(I Twittered about this briefly so my apologies for repeating myself if you follow me there.)

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…)