Cooking shows on PBS
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9 years agolast modified: 9 years ago
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Do you watch cooking shows on tv?
Comments (38)If Indiana is right in the heart of the Midwest, then I must be living on the west coast. Better start learning the language. "Gag me with a spoon"? And why go crazy because someone uses more salt that you want? Don't you think you could, let's see. hmmm, maybe use less?? Recipes are guidelines, not hard and fast rules. Recipes will often vary, even when followed to the letter depending on a number of variables. I seldom follow a recipe to the letter since I might not happen to have the free range grapes, cage free milk or organic Vanilla Wafers that Marco Pierre White's recipe might call for. I often will add spice I like and tone down or eliminate what I don't like. Amish/Mennonite, etc cooking has a lot of crossover with what some people term "Midwest" cooking. If you consider Indiana "midwest" then I exempt this from consideration. However the midwest of the United States are generally or at least were, big farming areas and Amish/Mennonite, etc were also big farmers. Meat, potatoes, bread, coffee, milk, dessert was your typical farm fare. The midwest didn't use much in the way of rice however certain areas, including the upper midwest would have wild rice available and that could be included in the later menus. Native Americans of course used wild rice much more heavily than many others until others found out how great it is. Actually you'll find a lot of crossover in German, even Russian and certain other ethnic types of foods when they're living in a colder climate and doing a lot of hard work, but then again considering the number of Scandinavians. Germans, etc who populated the area, it shouldn't be a surprise. But the food changed to adapt to what's around. You won't go to Norway, Sweden, Germany, Russia, etc and find the same things. Just as "cajun" or "creole" won't be found in France, and probably not much in the French areas of Canada. As Annie said, hearty meals were needed for the heavy workload on a typical farm. You'd rise early and work late and burn a lot of calories. Actually what many people term "comfort foods" is quite common among both the A/M/etc and midwest farmers. You won't find finger sandwiches, consumme or sushi on these menus. You will find hearty soup, stew, roast, meatloaf, pasta and much much more. You'll also find a lot of pies, cakes, cookies and rolls. You'll find great breads, rolls, etc. Around here, mac & cheese is essentially baby food. A blue box and a package of Corn King hotdogs fed many a toddler by a new mother. Never could stomach mac & cheese. No meat, why bother. Watching Cookin' Cheap is different. Two gay guys doing their "cooking" and then dressing in drag to show a gadget of some sort. A pickle slicer, nut cracker or whatever. The "Cook Sisters". Initially it was to show people you could cook cheap. They'd figure out the cost of something and figure per portion. Although if they had a leftover from something before, they didn't include it in the price and would come out with 58¢ per person "meals". One thought he knew how to cook and the other admitted he knew nothing but would try anything. They both fancied themselves far better standup comedians that I would. Watch it sometime, it's, well, different. I wouldn't say it's funny very often, but entertaining usually. Actually hotdish for the food, (and go ahead and debate "food" if you're a Miracle Whip snob) and "hot dish" describes the ladies cooking or the temperature of the plate. Scalloped potatoes and ham is a type of hotdish. Marilyn's Party Potatoes, sometimes called "funeral potatoes" is a hotdish, etc. People stick out their tongues and stick their noses in the air over foods. Yes, some will be a can of cream soup with a can of something and a package of onion soup mix. But then again, people buy "blue box", TV dinners and produce from Walmart for cryin out loud! LOL Contrary to what a couple of you believe, not one of the terms hotdishes, A/M/etc or midwest cooking mean all from a can or a pouch. It can and often is made from scratch. The shortcuts are more publicized since it's a timesaver and many people who hit the net want to save time. I would defy most anyone to have tasted and claim they didn't like the scalloped potatoes and ham that was served at my aunt's funeral, or for that matter the roast beef and mashed potatoes served at my cousin's funeral or any of my mother's holiday meals, all made from scratch. I'll take that any day over foo-foo food! Or for that matter the Tex-Mex you get at Taco Bell, or the seafood from Long John Silver, or should I continue... Back to topic, a couple other shows I enjoyed watching included the Galloping drunk, er, Gourmet though never really learned much from his shows. When Andrew Zimmern was a local cook he was interesting to see on the local channels before he decided to concentrate on bugs and exotic roadkill....See MoreSara Moulton has a new PBS show
Comments (43)SM, We're all here to live and learn! LOL Michael Chiarello is a doll. I met him at Wm Sonoma years and years ago in NY when he was demonstrating a recipe with his flavored oils. It was a small store of theirs and empty so I had a long chat. BTW, I use the recipe from that day and his book a lot. It's Pastina Risotto with Roasted Peppers & Broccoli. I'll post if anyone is interested. I loved Julia, warts and all...she still kills me when I see her old shows Ina I find simply annoying because she is so monotone and her speech pattern seems patronizing. Besides, I'm sure that she is out to kill her husband by cholestrol poisoning. Legal, right? I watch anyway...sort of a fascination with the calm. Felt the same way about the old Martha Stewart; respect for talent notwithstanding. Glad I didn't see either of them bath. LOL The there was the Galloping Gourmet! I loved him....See MoreOT Did you ever get cooking lessons?
Comments (21)It will be difficult to find a cooking class for dim sum. I also don't think it is really necessary. The prep and cooking for most dim sum is simple. The wrapping, pleating, etc takes practice and there is no substitute. I suggest you pick one dim sum dish, look up a recipe in a dim sum cookbook, online, or video, and just try it. Again and again. I am less familiar with East Indian curries but have made various curry dishes. Cooking classes might be more available for this cuisine. But making curries is quite easy, there isn't difficult technique required. Pick up a good cookbook - the Julie Sahni cookbook is one. The ingredients may take some looking, depending on where you live. I'll give you an example. Suppose you want to make xiao long bao (soup dumplings). - Take 1 lb ground pork and 2 lb pork bones/feet, add 1/2 tbsp each of ginger, garlic, scallion, and some salt, pepper. Simmer this in water for several hours to make a broth. You only need a couple cups of broth, but it has to be fairly concentrated and very flavorful. So you might start with 2 qt of water and slow boil, uncovered, until it reduces to 2-3 cups. Discard all the solids, keep the broth. Stir in a couple packets of unflavored gelatin powder. Refrigerate overnight. - The next day, make a simple dough from flour and a little water, knead it, roll it into a cylinder about 1" diameter, cut off 1/2" sections, flatten and roll those into round disks (skin) about 3" diameter and about 1/8" thin. You'll want about 20 of these skins, cover the stack with a cloth. - Remove the jelled broth from the refrigerator, spoon about 1 tbsp of the broth onto the center of a skin. Include some of the fat cap. Paint the edge of the skin with beaten egg. Gather the edges of the skin together at the top, folded/pleated, then pinch and twist to seal. Keep your finished dumplings on a plate or tray, under a towel, as you work. Keep the first ones in the refrigerator if it is taking you a long time to make the rest, as you don't want the jelled broth to melt. - Set your steamer over a pot of boiling water. Lay some lettuce leaves on the steamer to prevent the dumplings from sticking. Steam the dumplings, without overcrowding the steamer, for about 10 min. Carefully remove to a dish and eat right away. It isn't hard to make these. Here are the xiao long bao that my son made, on his first try. It is hard to make these perfectly or very fast, but we don't need to. Remember there are many variations and refinements. Don't get hung up on finding the definitive recipe. Also note that dim sum restaurants use considerable salt, lard, MSG, etc as shortcuts to flavor and juicy texture. To make equally tasty but healthy versions, we have to really concentrate our broth, use gelatin to replace lard, etc. Some like pork/shrimp filling in their xiao long bao, others like just soup. For filling, you'll combine 1/4 lb ground pork, 1/4 lb chopped shrimp, ginger, garlic, scallions, sesame oil, salt, pepper, a little soy sauce and black vinegar/Worchestershire sauce, and mix that with the broth before refrigerating it. Test a dumpling to determine steaming time necessary to cook the filling. Just try it. It'll be fun. The first results will be edible, if not pretty, and they will get better with practice....See Morereally bad cooking shows??
Comments (73)I find a lot of great recipes on random blogs. You can tell pretty quickly the ones who can cook, so have a blog, and the ones who want a blog so try to cook. They might not have the kind of test kitchen homogenization that makes for foolproof results, but with underlying sameness, but for someone who knows how to cook and how to interpret and adapt for one's own kitchen, they're great! I find more great recipes in blogs than on cooking shows, for sure, and it's easier to find what one wants than in books. Never made a PW one, though, from either blog or show. I saw a part of a good bad cooking show on PBS today. It was part of the NHK world block, and I was using it to keep track of fifteen minutes before I had to leave the house. The Japanese woman who was cooking had pretty good English but not a lot of vocabulary. "Ingredients" was used, unmodified, to mean seasonings and flavorings specifically, as well as ingredients in general, and things like that. If one was watching rather than just listening it was intelligible. The host seemed to speak Japanese at least somewhat but spoke American with a Western accent and filled in some descriptions. She was demonstrating very simple food for very beginning cooks. The one I came in on looked like a vegetable stew, then there was a "Japanese omelette" (i.e., fritatta). Her recipes had the same quantity of seasonings/flavorings for each item so people wouldn't be scared off of cooking! That was the bad. Even if it was okay for what she was making, I shudder to think of people trying to do that with other recipes just by guess. OTOH, she was good about showing the basics, like how much salt was on her finger for a "pinch", and explaining why she worried the fritatta in the pan to loosen it. Neither dish looked particularly good, but they really were simple enough for a clueless in the kitchen viewer to make, and other than potentially being high in salt, they looked like things people should want to eat (veggies and eggs) rather than boxes of this and that, or colorless sludge. So it was good and bad, and for what it was aiming for, probably pretty good....See More- 9 years agolast modified: 9 years ago
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