books and media

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.

Do you have cook's hands?

maki — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 17:17:51 +0100

At the moment I am reading a book called The Kitchen. It’s been reissued with another book by the same author, Nicolas Freeling, as a two-volume compilation called The Kitchen and The Cook. Both books were written in the ’70s, and are memoirs of the author’s experiences working as a cook decades before. I’m reading it as slowly as I can, because it is a book to savor.

One of the early passages in The Kitchen caught my eye, where the author describes the hands of a cook:

Even without cuts a cook’s hands are unmistakable. The fingertips are flattened and ironed by the touch of hot silver dishes and copper serving pans [….] the side of the forefinger becomes corrugated by the peeler, and the ball of one’s thumb ploughed by a mass of tiny cuts that have not severed the tough skin. [……]

Last mark, but characteristic, of a cook’s hands was the chopping mark. He holds the heavy chopping knife in a kind of golfer’s grip, thumb and forefinger forked over the join between the knife’s blade and its base: as with the golfer this gives precision of force and direction. At each blow the knife, flattened and squared at this point, jmps against the hand and the cook acquires a heavy callus at the base of his forefinger which would have puzzled Sherlock Holmes, who knew no cooks.

I checked my own hands. I don’t have a corrugated forefinger since I use one of those U-shaped peelers, but I do have other marks: tiny scars on both thumbs ; a deeper one on my right thumb where I drove a knife blade in while cutting chicken wings into ‘cherrystones’; slightly discolored circles on the sides of two fingers where I burnt myself. And sure enough, I have that chopping mark callous at the base of my left forefinger (I’m lefthanded). My hands are like a map of my cooking past, even if I’m no professional.

What do your hands look like? Are they smooth and unblemished? Do they have marks scars and callouses? I’m happy that my hands are marked, though I’m as much into pretty hands as any woman. I feel a bit guilty sometimes that I rely more and more on convenience appliances. As much as I do love my appliances, I’d rather use my hands to cook, whenever possible.

I’m only about two thirds of the way through The Kitchen, but already I know that it’s one of the best books about food that I have read in a long time, to compare with any of the best by my heroine M.F.K. Fisher. I’m looking forward to The Cook as well. The writing is deeply satisfying in a way that recently written books, or even recent movies, on the subject aren’t, quite, for me. (It seems to be out of stock at Amazon.com but is in stock at Amazon UK.)

Speaking of books, we’re waiting for the designated winner of the 4th anniversary book giveaway to get back to us; as soon as s/he does we’ll announce the winner!

House & Garden archives

maki — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 17:21:01 +0100

Many people who are interested in cooking and food are probably interested in the whole ‘shelter’ area - home design, architecture, crafts, gardening, and all kinds of domestic subjects. At least, I am. So it was very sad news indeed to hear that House & Garden will cease publication as of the December 2007 issue - even though I haven’t picked up an issue for longer than I can remember. (I guess there were lots of people like me in that respect, which is a reason why they did fold.) The web site is still up, though there’s no indication of how long it will be there.

For people interested in the past history of this venerable publication, The Online Books Page has a list of links to archived editions from 1911 to 1922. Browsing through those old pages makes for some fascinating reading.

A belated review of Ratatouille

maki — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 12:05:34 +0200

Yesterday, we finally got to see Ratatouille (the movie that is, not the dish), when it opened in western or French-speaking Switzerland. The movie theater in Lausanne was only sparsely filled, though since the weather was so glorious, and it was Swiss National Day (sort of like Independence Day in the U.S. in terms of the way in which people celebrate it, with barbeques and fireworks) I guess that was sort of understandable. Anyway, my review, with many spoilers, follows after the jump.

I’ve been a big Pixar fan ever since I saw the Luxor Jr. short many years ago. I have all of their movies on DVD. Despite the fact that Ratatouille combines three of my favorite things - Pixar, France, and the love of food - I don’t think it’s a perfect movie by any means - and, dare I say, not quite Pixar’s best either. (I happen to think that Toy Story 2 is their best.) That’s not to say I didn’t love it - I did, absolutely.

Like most other food lovers who’ve reviewed this movie, I adored the details - the burn marks on the chef’s arms, the logical and realistic layout of the kitchen at Gusteau’s, the explanation of mis en place by Colette. I loved the passion of Remy, who is, despite his ratness, a true artist. The animation and the artistry is, as with all Pixar movies, unsurpassed - it could be their best in that respect ever. (Whenever there was a scene with a swarm of rats, I couldn’t help cringing.)

I think what keeps the movie from being a real masterpiece is the weakness of some of the characters, especially Linguini. He rather reminds me of a typical Disney prince, in that he’s a non-character. Sure, he can’t cook, but it’s not really explained to my satisfaction anyway why he would endure having a rat pulling on his hair for so long - sure he wants to keep the job, but… I just found him to be quite unsatisfactory somehow.

I also wanted just a bit more about Skinner. What made him such a bitter, mean and small (not just in stature, but in thought and deed) man. Did being a sous chef to a chef with so many accolates ruin him? Was he destined never to be great himself, which is why he’s so bitter and out to destroy his former boss’s reputation? Is he Salieri to Gusteau’s Mozart? I know there’s a length limit to any movie, but I just wanted a little bit more there.

Speaking of sous-chefs…I thought that Colette, who by the end of the movie is effectively Remy’s sous chef in their new restaurants, was somewhat underwritten too. It did seem that she was destined to be a sous chef rather than the chief, the artist - she can recreate recipes flawlessly, but she can’t seem to create her own. This is rather interesting in light of what happened to Skinner. I suppose this was done to enhance the stature of Remy as the one, great artist in the piece.

Another bit of nitpicking I have, which I know is really esoteric, is the way in which the actual cooking/creative process of Remy is demonstrated, especially with the infamous soup. It plays up the cliché image of French cooking: add this, that and the other ingredient, more and more of them, until you end up with something delicious. I rather think that this just goes against all that is modern about cooking, and is certainly not the way the best chefs in French cook now. But I know, we are talking about an animated movie here…

There is one moment that really does raise Ratatouille to great heights: when Ego tastes Remy’s ratatouille, and is instantly transported back to a happy moment in his childhood. That moment of pure joy, of transcendence, is what great food can bring - and those few seconds captured that rapturous feeling so perfectly.

Ranking Ratatouille in the pantheon of great food movies

Despite my nitpicks, Ratatouille definitely belongs on the list of great food movies. Here’s my very biased ranking of the top 10:

Tampopo - still the greatest food movie ever. This has everything: food as art, food as sex, food as love…
Babette’s Feast - the best depiction of the chef as an artist who can bring transcendent moments.
Like Water For Chocolate - food as a metaphor for passionate love.
Eat Drink Man Woman - food, passion and family.
Big Night - food, artistry, and brotherly love.
Kamome Diner - onigiri as soul food.
Ratatouille - the rat as a great artist/chef.
Supermarket Woman - the supermarket! (See my reviews of Kamome Diner and Supermarket Woman.)
Mostly Martha - food and sexual repression.
Dumplings (Gaau ji) - food, greed, and the pursuit of perpetual youth (warning: this one is a horror movie!)

(A note for anyone in Switzerland: I’d thought that Ratatouille opening was delayed in the German speaking part until October because of subtitling problems. Well that doesn’t seem to be the case since the movie did have German and French subs! I’ll never understand the distribution system of movies in Switzerland where a part of the country gets a movie months before another…it’s so illogical. More thoughts about this on my personal blog.

We also thought about going to see it in France because we thought it would be fun to see it with a French audience, but we couldn’t find any theater within reasonable daytripping distance showing it in non-dubbed form. Boo to dubbed movies. At least here in Switzerland there are many theaters showing movies in the original language, as opposed to Germany and France where they tend to dub everything.)