The William

Asked, today, what would be my ideal stove top; my answer was:

Of course, it is strictly a concept now but I would love to see this developed, or at least some of its concepts.

THE Definitive List of The Top Ten Cooking Shows

Last week's post got me thinking about my favorite cooking shows of all time and I decided a Top Ten List was in order.  So, here are my top ten favorite cooking shows of all time, but first, I should list for you my criteria for their selection and ranking. 

As you know by now, I hate what I call "recipe shows", those shows which simply have a host demonstrating a recipe and listing off ingredients as they are added.  I find these shows useless and redundant since most come with an accompanying cook book and they do not take the time to thoroughly discuss ingredients and techniques.  Because these shows lack any pedagogical substance they are disqualified from my list.

You might also know about my complete loathing and contempt for Reality Television in general.  Well, even more bile inducing are the Reality Food Shows.  I can't stand any show which needs to manufacture confrontation and direct its reality.  That does not mean that I haven't enjoyed the odd documentary about the food/cooking industry, but these were one-off shows that followed some individual or group of individuals that was less about the characters and more about the experience.  Shows that documented such events as the Bocuse d'Or, Le Salon du Chocolate.  Examples of the reality variety I can't stand are Hell's Kitchen, Tough Cookies, Top Chef etc.

So, to qualify for the list a show must have the following characteristics: it must provide instruction on cooking style, technique or trends.  The host must be knowledgeable, entertaining and instructive.  The show should resist credulous ideas about holistic living, extreme diet or food as cure-all unless they can provide several peer-reviewed studies to support their claims.  The show should help people understand their food enough that a recipe is not a requirement.  So, with that in mind here are my top ten in ascending order:

10)   Molto Mario

Mario Batali is a walking encyclopedia of Italian cooking and is one of America's best chefs and certainly the best still working for the Food Network

9)  Jamie Oliver At Home

I am sure that Jamie Oliver is not the best cook in England.  But, I am just as sure he is their best teacher.  This guy could make passing kidney stones sound appealing.

8)  America's Test Kitchen

This show is produced by the publishers of Cook's Illustrated and is the epitome of instructional television.

 
7)  Good Eats

This is what happens when science meets hunger.  Alton Brown is to American cuisine what Jamie Oliver is to British.

6)  Barbeque University With Stephen Raichlen

Stephen Raichlen knows more about BBQ than most people have forgotten.  Watch any episode and I guarantee you will learn something you didn't previously know.

5)  Mexico One Plate At A Time

I would kill a family of 8 for a chance to spend one day with Rick Bayless in his kitchen.  This is a guy that never appears to be a dick.  Google his name and you will have a hard time finding anyone who would say anything bad about him.  Watching him take a traditional, simple Mexican dish and transforming it into haute cuisine is beyond words.

4) New Scandinavian Cooking w/Andreas Viestad

There are 3 versions of this show with two other cooks but, Andreas was the first and in my opinion the most entertaining to watch.  He has a sense of humour so dry that you can see why Norwegian's have a reputation for lacking one.  But, once you understand his personality, which doesn't take long, you will appreciate why he is on my list.

3) The Two Fat Ladies

I believe I have waxed poetic enough about these two gorgeous birds from Britain in last week's post.  Just watch and enjoy.

2)  Julia and Jacques Cooking At Home

No list of cooking shows would be authentic without including Julia Child and Jacques Pepin.  In fact, I could have filled most of this list with their shows from over the years. But, I wanted to include the rest of my picks and so have placed this show here because, to me, it represents a culmination of the years of experience the two have acquired in producing shows for PBS.  It also has some of the most touching scenes demonstrating the affection they have for one another.

1)  The Galloping Gourmet

Imagine you are nine years old and everything about food fascinates you and your mother has just shooed you out of the kitchen for the tenth time.  It's 1970 and television as you knew it was about to change forever.  Up till now you had a choice of about 4 or 5 local channels.  But, now your house has just been wired with the first cable system on your street and you turn the knob on the set and watch a whole new world reveal itself to you.  As you run through the channels the tube flashes pictures and you watch momentarily, focused solely on experiencing the sheer quantity rather than the content.  But, then your selector lands on a channel you have never experienced before and there on the tube is an overly animated cook who appears on the precipice of utter catastrophe.  You sit back and experience for the first time ALL that you are sure television was meant to provide.  Nothing on that television box would ever excite you this much, until one of the older kids tells you about CityTV and something called the Baby Blue Movies, which were only slightly more risque than Kerr's double entendre and near orgasmic reactions to the taste of his own food. 

So that is my top ten.  But, it was not an easy task and there are several shows that I have enjoyed watching over the years.  So, here is the, rather long,  honourable mentions list:

Gourmet's Diary of a Foodie, Gourmet's Adventures With Ruth, Taste with David Rosengarten, Biba's Italian Cooking, Cooking Live with Sara Moulten, Lidia's Italian Kitchen, The Frugal Gourmet, Great Chefs, Cooking Secrets from the CIA, New Orleans Cajun with Justin Wilson, Chucks Day Off, French Food at Home, The Food Hunter, Kitchen Sessions with Charlie Trotter

 

 

Essential Pepin

I have a list of celebrities I would like to meet before I die.  Some on the list I have already met and some I will probably, for logistical reasons (or restraining orders) never have the opportunity.  You can keep your actors, your Presidents and Prime Ministers, your Snookis and even your Dalai Lama.  My list consists of scientists, human rights workers, very few musicians, a couple of artists, a writer or two and five chefs.  At the very top of that list is Jacques Pepin who is without a doubt my favourite "Celebrity Chef".   

The very first cooking show I ever watched was the Galloping Gourmet, followed by Julia Child and then Jacques Pepin.  Of the three, the one who had the most lasting impact was Chef Pepin and I continue to judge all food shows against that standard.  Chef Pepin is unmatched in knife skills, except maybe for  Hiroyuki Sakai (watch him peel an apple with a chef's knife).  During his shows he patiently demonstrates how to get the most yield from every ingredient, how to make simple food look more glamorous and how to control heat and time to coax the best out of every dish.  When asked what are the most important tools in the kitchen, the ones he just couldn't live without, he said "my hands".  When you watch his shows you notice how often the cameras are focused on those hands.  

At the core of Jacques Pepin's teaching is the importance of technique and practice, practice, practice.  To be a great chef means learning the techniques that are required to make food great.  Anyone, and I do mean anyone, can follow a recipe and turn out food that is good (even my father makes a great minestrone soup).  But, to be a good cook, commercially or even in the home, requires knowledge of the ingredients and techniques that go into a recipe.  Getting home and having to make dinner on a deadline with no planning is a daunting task and opening a fridge door to check what is available is enough to send some people to a sanatorium.  But, this is the heart of what it is to be a cook: making a meal out of what you have at hand without the recipe.  This is food culture and has been practiced for generations, since those first humans left the trees and headed out on the savannah to see what there was to eat.  Jacques Pepin has been on a life long mission to teach North Americans those techniques to survival in a kitchen, which is why I always look forward to his shows on PBS.

The New York Times has an article on Jacques Pepin that is well worth the read and, as a bonus, there are video demonstrations to illustrate my point about his talents.  Go check it out.