masterchef

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?

Some food TV news: Supersizers Go repeats, The Restaurant is back, more

maki — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 15:26:49 +0200

Some food TV news for you if you live in the UK or regions of Europe that get British TV:

Supersizers Go… repeats

The Supersizers Go series is being re-aired on BBC Two this month, startin g on Wednesday September 3rd ( or early on Thursday, September 4th if you’re in CET). And, it look like they are going to be showing them in chronological order instead of the jumbled up order they were broadcast originally.

Here are the airtimes I’ve seen so far:

Elizabethan: 11:20PM on September 3rd BT or 12:20AM September 4th CET (reviewed here)
Restoration: 11:20PM on September 4th BT or 12:20AM September 5th CET (reviewed here)
Regency: 11:20PM on September 9th BT or 12:20AM September 10th CET (reviewed here)

I’ll update the list as I see more showing up either on BBC’s What’s On or Digiguide.

The Restaurant (aka: Last Restaurant Standing) is back for another round

The Restaurant, an Apprentice-like competition reality show in which the winning couple gets to run their own restaurant within the Raymond Blanc empire, is back for another round, starting on September 10th at 8PM BT/9PM CET on BBC Two. I really enjoyed the first season, though I found the winning couple really annoying so sort of phased out towards the end. Since it seems that the show was quite successful when it ran on BBC America as Last Restaurant Standing recently, I am guessing that series two will also be shown there eventually too.

Some other current and upcoming shows

Masterchef, my favorite TV food show, is currenty showing an offshoot version called Masterchef: The Professionals. This is a contest for young professional chefs (so far I think all of them have been 25 years old or younger), and it started last week (I think it runs for two more weeks). For some reason the Beeb is not really pushing this series much - it doesn’t even get a mention on the main Masterchef page - but so far it’s been quite fun. And instead of John Torode, Gregg Wallace’s judging partner is Michelin-starred chef Michel Roux Jr., who actually has a pretty good on-screen personality (and eyes that get bigger and bigger when he’s surprised, annoyed, or whatever.)
ITV’s Britain’s Best Dish is back for another round too, starting today. I rather skimmed through this show (recorded on my DVR and consumed in weekly batches while doing something else mostly) but it was not too bad. It was certainly better for me than BBC Two’s Eating With the Enemy, which is just unwatchable on many levels (food generally looks horrible, food critics/judges come off as prats, Kate Spicer looks so angry/pissed all the time.)

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.

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.

The Winner of Masterchef 2007 is...

maki — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 05:55:31 +0100

[Update: Steven has a very gracious post about his win on his blog.]

The winner of Masterchef 2007 is Steven Wallis, a trend analyst from London. Here’s how he looked when he was proclaimed the victor.

As with previous seasons the final three-course original menu test was the one deciding factor for determining the winner. While both Ben and Hannah tripped up a bit on at least one of their courses, Steven really excelled with all three of his dishes.

Unlike last season, where the perceived failings of eventual winner Peter in tasks leading up to that final three-course test lead to some dissatisfaction about his being declared the winner over crowd favorite (and hottie) Dean, this season’s finalists were fairly even in the tasks during the final week. For me at least there was no clear favorite going into the final episode.

There were definite stylistic differences though. Ben was the avant-garde pseudo-molecular gastronomist - sort of like Marcel from Top Chef without the attitude and the hair. He had foam in one of his final dishes, and earlier on had an ‘anise salt’ on the plate of one of his desserts which got the jaded food critics who were the tasters on that occasion quite hot and bothered. His very ambitious dessert for the finals, which had a sweet biscuit (cookie for Americans) with olives in it and a sort of fennel marmelade, didn’t quite do it for judges Gregg Wallace and John Torode (or as they are known affectionately on the BBC Food message boards, Pasty and Toad :)).

Hannah, labeled the ‘country cook’, seemed to do best when she cooked homey, no-frills, traditional English food. Although she did rise to the occasion at times and execute great looking fancy dishes, especially an amazing looking chocolate dessert plate that got raves from a panel of top class chefs including Raymond Blanc and Pierre Gagnaire, overall she had ongoing self confidence problems which lead to a lack of finish. Her final dishes, while really mouthwatering (especially that squid starter!) really didn’t look as finished in presentation as those of the others, though the judges raved about the way they tasted. But, what ultimately let her down was the fact that she undercooked the lamb for her main dish. She had timing problems before, and it hurt her again at the last hurdle.

Steven, who had serious problems with time management mainly due to being over-ambitious or over-fiddly, really got it together for the final round. Here are his three winning dishes (screenshots here since the BBC Food site doesn’t have them).

Starter:

Dandelion salad with poached quail eggs, lardons and mustard vinaigrette (recipe on the BBC food site)

This really got my attention. So simple, yet potentially tricky - poaching quail eggs perfectly? Yipes! And it looked so amazing. It was as sophisticated as Ben’s dishes, but not as precious, and more elegantly presented than Hannah’sdishes.

Main:

Duck breast with smoked potatoes, glazed baby turnips, leek crisps with buttered winter greens and duck jus (Recipe)

Smoked potatoes! I just have to try this. The baby turnips looked amazing (that’s how they are often prepared in Japanese cooking, incidentally, with a bit of the green tops left on). The duck breast with jus sounded perfect.

And dessert:

Poached pears with vanilla ice cream and a serious to-die-for chocolate sauce (a.k.a. Poires Belle Hélène) (Recipe)

Ohhh my god, was all I could think. Vanilla ice cream studded with vanilla seeds! Perfectly poached pear! And…that chocolate sauce!

So, Steven really deserved to win I think. I hope he can achieve great things from this.

Overall it was another great Masterchef competition. Once again they proved that it isn’t necessary to put ridiculous gimmicky twists on things or to dwell on the interpersonal soap-opera aspects, to make a cooking competition exciting. If I lived in the UK I would seriously consider applying myself, but alas, unless they extend their eligibility to the rest of Europe that is not possible. Even if one doesn’t win, if one can make it to the finals, the experiences that contestants get to experience are just amazing. I’m not sure about the tasks like cooking for an army battalion or lunch for schoolkids (though both of those would be a serious challenge and could be fun), but what serious cook wouldn’t love to do things like this:

Work in a starred restaurant kitchen. The three finalists got to work a lunch shift at three starred Paris restaurants: Le Meurice, Hélène Darroze and Le Relais d’Auteuil, and had the respective head chefs of said restaurants to comment on their dishes.
Be judged by a panel of top class chefs like Pierre Gagnaire, Raymond Blanc and Michel Roux.
Get a personal instruction session with Heston Blumenthal (that was in season 1)
Cook for dignitaries or food critics in settings like the Ritz, the Savoy, or even 10 Downing Street - for Tony Blair and the Irish Prime Minister.

I guess the only minor nitpick I have is that the winner seems to be determined 100% by the two main judges, Gregg and John, who have their own personal prejudices and such. It would be fun to invite in a guest judge or two with real say in the proceedings, especially for the final round.

My predictions for where the three finalists will end up, culinary career-wise:

Steven - becomes a ‘food consultant’
Ben - becomes a caterer in Cheltenham (where he has a cheese shop)
Hannah - gets hired as the head chef in a historical country estate-turned-catering hall (she looks the part)

Masterchef Goes Large 2007 finale is tonight!

maki — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 12:02:30 +0100

A quick reminder to everyone within viewing range of BBC Two: the one hour finale of Masterchef Goes Large 2007 is on tonight at 21:00 CET / 20:00 BT! Will it be artistic but palate-deficient Ben, passionate but nervous Hannah, or the man with a fine palate who has a problem with time management, Steven? It’s too close to call…and besides last year we all thought Dean was going to win and Peter won instead, so who knows what will happen? Although I haven’t written much about this season, it’s been a great one, with some amazing challenges. I’m really looking forward to tonight!

MasterChef Goes Large 2007 (Season 3) starts today

maki — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 14:49:45 +0100

Update: The season is over and the winner is announced.

MasterChef Goes Large, the best competitive cooking show on television today*, starts its third round today. If you live in the U.K. or anywhere else where BBC Two is viewable (that includes Switzerland if you have a satellite dish aimed at Astra 2D or the right package from Cablecom) don't forget to tune in, or set your recorders, for 7:30 CET / 6:30 British time tonight! There will be a special, MasterChef - What The Winners Did Next, right after the first episode of this year's competition, following up on the three finalists from Season 2.

I won't be doing all the daily challenges as I did last year, since it sort of took over my life for a few weeks and I'm too busy, but I will probably pick out one or two interesting ingredient sets a week to try out. Following along last year really helped to expand my repertoire and made me think about what it takes to come up with 'original' menus and dishes on the spot. I highly recommend it if you're up for a great cooking challenge.

(It's much better than Top Chef, Iron Chef America, or any of the Food Network competition shows, and is on a par with (but totally different from) the original Japanese Iron Chef. Yep I've seen them all. I know, I need a life.)

Food and being green on the BBC

maki — Mon, 11 Sep 2006 23:13:33 +0200

I am eternally grateful that the BBC broadcasts free-to-air on satellite, and that I live within reception range. I feel a bit guilty that I don't have to pay anything to view the Beeb as UK residents do, and believe me if they started to bill me something I'd pay it without question. The BBC has the best programming, bar none, of any network I've ever seen in any country. (I'm even a closet East Enders watcher, but don't tell anyone.)

Tonight the Celebrity version of MasterChef Goes Large, the best cooking competition show on TV (yep, much better than Top Chef) started. Usually Celebrity-anything is pretty horrible, but the first show of Celebrity MasterChef was not bad at all - mainly because they kept the format of the original. No pandering to celebrity egos, no having professional chefs teach them hand and foot to mimic their dishes. The celeb contestants had to create their own dishes, just like the people on the regular MasterChef. And even though there were three female celebrities on the first show, there was absolutely no cleavage on display! Amazing. (Correction: a male viewer points out that Sarah Cawood had a bit. Of cleavage that is. But it was discreet.)

Longtime readers of this site will know that I played along with the MasterChef season 2 challenges earlier this year. I'm not going to do so with the Celebrity version, but I'll be watching. Linda Barker from Changing Rooms won the first day - although her presentation was rather messy, the lady can clearly cook. (Uhm, Charlie Dimmock has been eating a lot of her own cooking it looks like.) U.S. viewers shouldn't miss season 1 of MasterChef which will be airing soon as Nicole from Slashfood has noted.

Another great food show on the Beeb started a new season this weekend. Ever Wondered About Food is a program produced by the Open2.net, the TV programming for the Open University, so it's part food science, part cooking. The recipes are few but they are really good, and the science parts are very interesting too. Above all the host, Paul Merrett, is terrific. I'm not sure why he's not higher up on the Celebrity TV Chef scale - he's dynamic, passionate about food, and really cute too (imo). He did have a show some time ago called The Best, with two other adorable chefs, Sylvana Franco and Ben O'Donoghue. Why all three of them haven't become food mega-stars is beyond me. The companion book (UK link) is one of the best of its type - think Jamie Oliver with more variety. Anyway, I hope that Ever Wondered About Food also filters around the world. (I've seen older seasons on BBC Prime, the stripped down poor version of the BBC we get on cable in continental Europe.) In the meantime, check out the Open2.net web site for recipes and more.

Finally, on the local BBC London station they are making a typical London family go through a "greening" experiment. The web site has plenty of information, and it's interesting to see what they recommended the family do and compare it to your own situation. Some areas I'm good (I bring my own bags along to the supermarket instead of relying on their shopping bags), and some not (didn't have the time to grow veggies in the garden this year beyond a few herbs...)

MasterChef wrapup

maki — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 15:37:35 +0100

MasterChef is the BBC cooking contest program to find the "best amateur chef in the UK", ended last Friday. The winner was Peter Bayless, a 60 year old former advertising executive. His selection was quite a surprise to a lot of people, and the discussion about this on the BBC Food message boards has been quite heated, to put it mildly. He wasn't my pick: I was rooting for either Daksha, a very excitable 44 year old mother of 2 whose speciality is food from the Gujarati region of India; or Dean, a very sincere 28 year old who showed the most cool under pressure. Peter did produce some delicious looking French food along the way and did the best in the final 3-course cooking test. But I don't know, his food did not excite me at all - it was actually sort of yawn-inducing. On the other hand some of Daksha's Gujarati dishes had me flipping through through my Madhur Jaffrey books to see if she had a similar recipe, and her attempts to meld her own flavors with European cooking techniques and ingredients were truly impressive. And Dean probably has the most potential of the three. He is also very cute. He's the overwhelming favorite on the message boards.

I watched almost every show, and did the Invention test, so needless to say I really liked it. I can sort of understand why many people are upset at the choice of winner, but neverthless I think this was the finest cooking contest type program in recent memory. Here's why.

Plenty of time was given for the show - 40 half-hour episodes, broadcast every weekday over 8 weeks. Compare this to the U.S.'s Top Chef, which will have 10 45 minute episodes. This meant that the four finalists, Dean, Daksha, Peter and Becky got really tested repeatedly. (Becky, an American girl who specialized in a sort of Cajun/Creole/Southern type cooking, was eliminated at the end of the penultimate week.)
There were 30 preliminary round contestants, plus 6 more that were callbacks from the previous season (Daksha, my favorite finalist, was one of those callbacks). You really got to see the difference between the people who thought they were good cooks, to the ones who really were.
There was a focus on food and cooking, with a refreshing lack of soap opera elements. You did see some personality clashes, especially in the final 2 weeks when the finalists had to work closely together, but they weren't played up more than necessary.
A variety of challenges for the finalists, from straightforward cooking assignments to those that tested their ability to cope with stress (cooking in a field kitchen for a ravenous RAF troop in frozen northern Norway, doing made-to-order eggs for the breakfast buffet on the QEII).
It gave a peek into the amazing variety of fine restaurants operating in England, and the great selection of fresh produce available.
The variety of contestants was great - you had young and old, male and female, posh-sounding and not-so posh. It wasn't even limited to British people - it seems that the requirement is that you are a UK resident. An American, Becky, was even in the finals. I found this very refreshing. Best of all, most of the contestants seemed really passionate and dedicated, in a non-fake kind of way.
Lots and lots of delicious looking food!

I really hope that the Food Network can license the MasterChef format, because a similar contest in the U.S. should be really exciting. It would give great exposure to various restaurants that agreed to participate in various challenges, highlight lots of ingredients, engage the audience in furious debate over the results, and just be tons of fun. And I think only the Food Network can do justice to the hard core foodiness of it all. Let's hope some execs are reading!

Residents of the U.K. can apply for upcoming MasterChef series here.

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Closing thoughts on my MasterChef challenge

maki — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 18:43:34 +0100

Seven weeks ago, when the second season of the UK food contest show MasterChef Goes Large started, I set myself a personal challenge: to play along and make a dish (or for the last week, 2 dishes) with the list of ingredients provided in the Invention Test that was the first part of the preliminary rounds. I've made 26 different dishes, based on 23 different ingredient lists (I skipped one day).

It's been a very educational experience, and it has reinforced my belief that this challenge (to come up with an original plate of food from a set of specified ingredients) really is a great way to test someone's cooking abilities.

It has taught me how creative cooking can be when you are forced to come up with original creations. Of course, I drew upon the recipes that I had filed away somewhere in my brain, but ultimately I had to make something that was tasty, fit well together, and could be cooked within the allotted 40 minute time limit (50 minutes and 2 dishes for the final week). I didn't always succeed, but overall I was happy with the results.

It also made me pay a lot more attention to plate presentation. I do try to make the food I serve reasonably attractive, but sometimes I get too tired to bother. But simple things like mounding spaghetti cleanly in the middle of the plate instead of slopping it on, or paying a little bit of attention the color balance of a salad, makes so much difference - not only for the sake of the photographs you take for your blog or flickr stream, but also to the way the people that you serve your creations to react.

It's also helped me to discover what kinds of flavors I really like to cook and eat Just keeping up this site since late 2003 has helped to define my food personality, but this concentrate exercise has accelerated that process. While I may be a culinaric polyglot, I have an instinctive urge to add a Japanese twist to most of my creations.

The one thing that continuously bothered me throughout the challenges was that I was forced to cook out of season, because as I noted several times, it was quite obvious that the show was taped during the late summer or early autumn. But I now realize that emphasizing the importance of cooking "within the season" was one of the points of the cooking challenges presented throughout the show. If they were taping the show right now I'm sure they would have included ingredients like rhubarb and omitted ones like pears.

If I had one quibble with the ingredient selections, it's that I think they occasionally threw in an intentional clunker: the sticky rice on Day 22, which is the only day I skipped, comes to mind.

Many of the ingredients pushed me out of my comfort zone, which was rather stressful at first. I did think about chucking the whole thing several times. I'm glad I didn't though, and I'm glad I was pushed out of my comfort zone, to explore unfamiliar combinations and tastes. While I'm relieved that it's all over and I can move on to new things culinarically speaking now, I'm really happy that I did it. It's really changed and refocused my food life.

The show itself is about to enter its final week. I can't wait to see who is going to emerge as the MasterChef. And, my respect for all the contestants who entered is limitless.

Finally, here's the Best Of list of recipes that were born during the challenges. These will be entering my regular rotation for sure.

The Really Asian Fusion Soup I made on Day 2. I've already made this several times since, though with chicken breast instead of monkfish. Salty-sweet-sour yumminess!
Tomato-cream-saffron fish pie, made on Day 6. That tomato-saffron combo is really nice.
Seared Tuna, Arugula and Basil Linguine salad made on Day 8: if only fresh tuna was more affordable, I'd eat this every week.
The Vegetable and Mussels Risotto I made on Day 10 was good not because of the mussels, but that sweet combination of veggle flavors produced with minimal added fat.
The Fish Quenelles in Soup I made on Day 15 were surprisingly good, and another great low-fat, low-calorie dish. I need to develop more of those.
Putting tofu into the frittata on Day 17 really worked out great. I love frittata anyway but I think I will be doing the tofu things more often now.
I re-discovered Syllabub for Day 18, and it was very very good. So were the tuilles.
The Anchovy Bread Pudding made on Day 21 sounds odd but it's so easy and so tasty. It also looks great when it comes out of the oven.
And last but not least, the cider, prune and apple sauce I made on the last day is really good.