are all tv chefs totally obnoxious twats?

(gordon elliot, that drunken brit who's name i'm blanking on, bobby flay, julia fucking child...aiiigh.)

and for those who live in chicago...what's up with yr hot dogs? tomatoes? hello!

The fact that in real life she's a vicious witch makes her not evil but flawed, though not compellingly flawed. I can't watch her show for long because I keep reading her personal tics -- like the hesitant, coy smile -- as just a front for some ego-driven rage. It's a defect that a world better than ours would never allow. I want her to be a really nice person in real life SO MUCH, knowing quite well that this wish of mine is as ridiculous as wanting to hug Bob Dole because he's always such a miserable feller, ah, but there we are.

Young Michael! Think about what you are saying!

when young, whole family watched his prog: at the ned of cooking something v.fast and many many "quick swigs", he wd pull a lithe young fing out of the audience to share it with him, as credits rolled.

it was all very playboy mansion

at the ned of cooking something v.fast

I like this idea.

also kill alison gofton.

I like this typo because this is indeed something she would do.

"Now, in order to make your skills, go out into the garden and select some newly grown coriander for the second course. Then grab the mic and hit 'em hard."

Kept under consideration.

I am trying to think of a tv chef I do like (as opposed to being fascinated by/feeling sorry for), and it's really hard. Which is odd, considering how much food network I watch. Nigella Lawson seems okay, but I can't really watch her show because it seems like it's always about to morph into Cinemax soft porn at any given moment. The way she licks those spoons, yikes...

I'm just laughing at the idea of Delia Smith being described as an obnoxious twat.

As for Nigella, she's fantastic, as noted on other threads. Jamie Oliver, he may be annoying but he does do good food, and personally, I'd whore myself like that if it got me shedloads of money for doing sometyhing I love, which he obviously does, you can doubt his integrity but not his enthusiasm.

(i still hate them all but i miss tv.)

Maid skills?

B-b-but we are left with a QUESTION: what on earth is chervil? Yes yes a herb (or "urb" if you are one of our colonials) but of what SORT? Lixi thinks a bit like fennel. I have no idea.

it is unnecessary usually

There's this guy who hosts a show on the Food Channel who sorta looks like Thomas Dolby's (1984 era) older brother. His tips and suggestions are actually delivered pretty well, but his framing attempts at humor should be taken out and shot.

Also, the new series is called Oliver's Twist? ARGH. I love how Jamie has this totally spiff kitchen that looks out on some utterly ugly buildings.

Raymond Blanc, however, is wonderful. And I'm not just saying that because I used to work for him.

Alton Brown. His show's pretty informative, but his dweeby-fruity thing irritates me. I bet middle-age housewives love him.

Also destroy: Rachael Ray, the 30 Minute Meals gal. WHY DO TV CHEFS HAVE TO BE SO PERKY?

Destroy: Rhodes the punky peen - is there a more fastidious man alive? I bet his bathroom is spotless - Whole Shanks of Armitage with a Domestos coulis and a rumour of Cif Lemon with Toilet Duck al'Orange Flash to follow. Total arsecleft.

There's a British chef, named Nigela or something. I only caught her program once or twice. Damn, can she cook...and she's damn sexxy too...

Rachel Ray is fantastic! And Graham Kerr was the "Mack Daddy" of cooking shows! Damn, you people don't know a good chef when you see one.

But what has happened to Gary Rhodes' accent, he's gone fake-posh, and even more annoying, I don't like him, he's a preachy tv chef, and I really can't detect much enthusiasm in his style. Unlike say Jamie, or Rick Stein (dead ringer for Daf Moore that he is)

-Pour a mixture of ordinary corn cooking oil, gelatin, and champagne over some relatively nice fruit. Then he added a half-cup of sugar over the mess and put the whole works in the fridge to solidify.

-Amusingly, he held up a bottle of Italian spumante and claims that it's "identical to champagne, except that since it doesn't come from Champagne it can't be called champagne".

-For another dish (raw oysters), his dipping sauce is a chopped shallot dumped in a bowl with red wine vinegar (no sauteing, just cold), a half-cup of sugar, and a chopped up red pepper.

-Oliver then claims the oysters will be wonderful since they "smell like the ocean". (where I come from, if *any* food smells like the ocean it means it's not fresh and about to go bad).

-The oysters are then dumped into a bowl with a couple of halved lemons on top and then placed in the same refrigerator with the cooking oil/gelatin monstrosity from above. (Congratulations, now your entire dinner will smell like the bottom of a boat.

-Then for a fish marinade, he took a whole jar of capers, mixed it with an entire can of anchovies, and then dumped in some olive oil with a little bit of rosemary. Nothing to balance the extreme amount of salt in there, but the alleged marinade wasn't used as a marinade at all - he dumped some fish in there and removed it immediately without soaking (even though he still refers to it as a marinade)

The holy trinity is Jacques Pepin, Julia Child, and David Rosengarten. You learn more from them in a half-hour than you do from and entire season of any of those other losers.

I couldn't take Emeril seriously after Tony Bourdain called him an Ewok. Bourdain's show is terrific too.

David Rosengarten! Yes! I was hoping someone would namecheck him. Is he still on?

owns all their asses BAM!

http://tfp.killbots.com/scans/038s.gif

Nigella's show is worthless except as jerk fodder. She has a terrifying sweet tooth and makes nothing but a big bunch of stuff I can't possibly imagine ever ORDERING let alone cooking for myself at home. That and the fact that her director of photography has still not learned how to focus the lens on anything.

Jamie Oliver's new show is fucking great and so was The Naked Chef. That, ladies and gentlemen, is HOW TO FUCKING COOK. If it has more than six steps forget it. The number of things I can now do with little more than a frying pan thanks to that man - HOORAY BOHO. Plus CHICKS DIG IT.

Mario Batali is also fucking BRILLIANT and even though I don't have a hope of cooking most of the things he does I'll still watch him just to see his utterly confounding SKILL with knives and the sheer quickness of his mind as he talks his way through every dish in two languages with something like fifty Trivial Pursuit gamebreakers in every episode.

Justin Wilson is the other great TV chef of all time, in fact he might as well be the king, he just didn't last long enough to see the Food Network turn his stock in trade into a multinational industry. All TV chefs owe this man their eternal gratitude for proving that you could sit there and cook on TV and not be horribly boring. I will never forget this man.

Rosengarten often annoyed me because he seemed so devoted to "rescuing" working-class food: "Sure, you COULD buy those horrible God knows what's in em hot dogs from the grocery store, but with a simple sausage maker like the one in your cabinet and forty dollars worth of wild duck and juniper, you can make your own!"

But he gets props for a) addressing the lean pork problem whenever it came up, and b) co-writing the Dean & Deluca cookbook, which is a pretty good complement to an all-around cookbook like the Joy of Cooking, etc.

Like Millar said, Justin Wilson ownz.

I don't think that's true... I think he had a lot of love for low-culture foods, but at the time the Food Network still had a pretty highbrow edge (as opposed to the very populist, everything-goes nature of the network now) and Rosengarten was just offering up ways to put a gourmet twist on something simple.

'Mmm.... if I love *this* pork *this* much....that means I might also love *your* pork.....'

Yeah, it depended on the episode. Maybe it was the editing/producer -- so many times, if the show wasn't about pork loin or duck or what have you, it seemed like he was bending over backwards to say "No, it's okay, French fries CAN be good! As long as you follow my twelve-point plan..."

More cookable/edible food than most TV chefs, which is good, and a lack of skits, which is better.

**dribbles on keyboard, opens some crisps instead**

**sigh**

Have been eating quite a lot of her recipes lately for reasons that are quite circumspect. I am going to be expected to learn how to COOK. Sigh.

HAHAHAHA! I DEMAND that you and Chris refrain from the inevitable argument over Oliver until you are both at the FAP and very drunk. THEN THERE WILL BE GLORY.

Matos must have missed this thread revival, I'm thinking....

Anyway, a bit later one of his crew comes over to the family behind us and says "look could you not look at Jamie through binoculars as it's making him too shy". I look over to the huts where he's filming, and now he's got three large umbrellas surrounding him. berk.

Thanks for taking the time with us this week.

Obviously your show is in the teaching catagory and that seems to be a disappearing genre on prime time Food Network. The "best of" shows and the like seem to be carrying the day. Emeril still draws a big prime time crowd, you are on there a couple of times a week, and I am assuming the ratings for Iron Chef are ok, but the rest of the stuff looks pretty much like it is composed of a host doing voiceovers with stock video taped interviews of people and stock scenes from sites (festivals, factories, restaurants).

I recently heard Sara Moulton speak in New Orleans and she said, without equivocation, that this is absolutely the new direction of the network as that is where the money seems to be. No more (or very little) cooking shows in prime time. OK. Fine. It looks like she was right.

My question is: What kind of programming would you put on prime time if you were in charge (aside from more of you-can't blame you there, but that's not part of the question)? Teaching shows? 4 hours of Emeril? Old Julia reruns? What would you like to watch if you were doing the programming to entertain yourself?

--------------------
Brooks Hamaker, aka "Mayhaw Man"
Forum Host, Louisiana
bhamaker@egullet.com

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Wow, good question...but I have to ask: are you a Food Network exec in disguise? Doesn't really matter now that I think about it.

I would put old cooking shows on in late night...Julia, Kerr, all the old classics that are really cool. I'd turn late night into a food version of TV land but not before my one hour talk show in the 11:30 slot. That's right Dave, I'm comin' after your worn out butt!

I'd produce more documentaries and specials and I'd make Tony Bourdain actually cook something on television, by force if necessary. I'd give a cooking show to a lunch room lady from mid-America. I'd produce more Iron Chefs but I'd find a female Iron Chef first.

I'd find someone to do a realistic, but within reason Mexican food show. I'd bring back Bill Bogg's Corner Table and David Rosengarten...though I'd make the later shave. I'd do away with stock photography and Voice Overs would be restricted to 8% of a show's total run time.

That's all just for starters. Oh, and I'd never, ever put a show in front of a focus group....ever.

A

It's been awhile since I've enjoyed watching anything on Food Network.

I thought he was very very rude when he climbed on the worktop by the way.

And Tony Bourdain has cooked stuff on UKfood tv, and he didn't seem all that to be honest, which was a shame

Are you sure you don't mean toolish, or even foolish?

eh? Emeril was on live every day while we were over....unless of course they were re-runs

He was on "The Sopranos" a couple times playing a reporter.

I've been actually thinking of ordering the Good Eats DVD set.

Also heavily Tivo'd: Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares on BBC America. Love love love that show. It's not just about cooking -- in fact, it's only a little about cooking. It's about running a restaurant, and more importantly a business. He goes into failing restaurants, identifies why they're failing, and tries to whip everyone, always including the owner, into shape.

It's great for two reasons: 1) Ramsay is infinitely more watchable than on his American show, Hell's Kitchen. He's a hard-ass, but a rapier-sharp and actually very kind-hearted guy. Hell's Kitchen is edited (and arguably conceived) so that it's about him being a monster. Not fair at all, but I suppose he did agree to it.

And 2) It's the most true and insightful show about business, reality or otherwise, that I've ever seen. Anyone, employee or boss, can watch this show and sink into their seat recognizing their own business-killing failings. Insouciance from employees. Failure of managers to take control. Bad management, bad organization, failure of quality control. Restaurant kitchens are little microcosms -- little pressure-cookers, in fact -- of business as a whole. Brilliant, brilliant show.

There is one, and I love her.

that interview happened before she came along. i wonder how much alton's clout had to do with the decision to hire her.

I worry what this says about the American work ethic.

Did you see the show?

but Jamie's Kitchen, in which Oliver is tossed around by a bunch of unmotivated kids with a fortune on the lin = TOTALLY RIVETING

Ming's white porcelain knives are dreamy.

All regional cuisine is humble peasant food perfected. This is particularly true of French food. You think they ate snails because snails look so tasty?

Early Floyd was great. Floyd On Fish and Floyd On America were repeated on Saturday morning and they were the Piper At The Gates of Dawn to his later Division Bells. They were travellogues as well as cookery shows. By giving you a taste of the culture you get more of a flavour for the cooking. The one where he went to Memphis was great, really touching. Visited the MLK musuem and had a go at soul food.

he has to get off his high horse, full stop.

They did balance this out by making you hate the people who he is yelling at A LOT more than you could ever hate him.

I didn't think I could hate her more, but I can. And then the next day I saw her idiotic grin on the cover of her own magazine and I realized that my potential for hate is truly boundless.

How can anybody who uses the word "spoonula" without a hint of irony get her own TV show and magazine? OPRAH YOU HAVE A LOT TO ANSWER FOR.

ew. (this may just be my hatred of tilapia showing.)

Do you tell people when they have a piece of toilet paper stuck to their shoe? How about if they have lipstick on their teeth? Rachael finds out just how much it takes for someone to say something to her.

And then she says "spoonula" and it's like a molten ball of hot hate in the pit of my stomach and I get that feeling of despair that I get when terrible people become undeservedly successful at something.

And GOD! $40 a Day! The tipping! Or lack thereof. COME THE FUCK ON, LADY! Also: 30 Minute Meals... if someone else preps all your vegetables and does your dishes, amirite?

She's so punchable irritating. If she's on and I'm waiting for Good Eats or something, I hit the mute button and try to concentrate on the food on the stove, or the tight sweaters.

http://i3log.com/uploads/rachael-ray-picture_ray.JPG

http://kevin.thestorys.org/images/journal_images/rachel4-thumb.jpg

when twee gets creepy

are all aces.

AGH

Jeff Smith's (frugal gourmet) books are pretty damn great, especially the one about immigrant cousine, which has a lot of interesting history of people and their foods. However, the man is fucking obsessed with garlic, though, and is a chimo, both of which make him suspicious. It makes all those Elmo episodes seem creepy in retrospect, too.

PBS cooking shows are the best, fuck a food network.

Does Jamie Oliver have any current tv exposure in the UK, or is he busy with his restaurant?

http://www.meninaprons.net/images/giada/giada03.gif

oh shit, xpost

you're a weird dude.

anyway, sorry abt the potty mouth.

no no, the damage has been done and we've gone there.

so let's start with the "fucking food"

http://www.fcps.k12.va.us/fs/food/images/cucumber.jpg

http://www.dawnfoods.com/ideas/Angel%20Food%20Cake.jpg

http://www.vegiworks.com/butternut.jpg

http://www.pretzels-inc.com/images/cheese%20balls.gif

I haven't eaten there, but Ming Tsai has gone online: http://www.simplyming.org/

His podcasts are pretty great...

And yes, most of the hosts are obnoxious twats. Lidia and Jacques on PBS are pretty great, even if Lidia seems like she's going to lose her shit and just start yelling at times. Martin Yan, who along with the Frugal Gourmet was a huge influence on my love of cooking, is still alright, kind of corny, but he makes good shit. Alton Brown is great as well, and non-live Emeril and Mario Batali, though kind of a dick, really knows his shit.

Fuck a bunch of Daisy Martinez though - maybe because I'm not a big fan of latin/carribean food, or maybe because she's fucking annoying as hell. I was never a fan of Tyler Florence, but I saw him pimping Applebee's on a commercial today so he's totally dead to me now. Rachael Ray I've only watched for like five minutes - the food was lazy and she annoyed the hell out of me. Bobby Flay can fucking choke on his honey and ancho chilis.

But what happened to Jamie Oliver? I was kind of impartial about the guy, but last time I had the Food Network he was all over the place, now he's been purged from the channel, like he never existed and some sort of 1984 rewriting of history covered it up.

Nigel Slater is my boy. I love the massive undercurrent of "If I wasn't abused as a child I couldn't cook this well" that runs throughout his shows.

you and him both

You're determined to reach 3,000 this month, huh?

in it to win it

I've never watched a Slater show. I like his writing a lot. He writes about food like I do when I write recipes out for friends (doing this is how I ever got to read him; a friend I wrote a recipe for said I reminded him of Slater), basically "put some more butter in, it's fucking great".

I like Hugh Curly-Whittington and Gordon Ramsay. Jamie Oliver's grown on me over the years; he's still a fat-tongued cunt with no eyes, though.

I hate hate hate Rachael Ray but I think this idiotic

Does Dunkin’ Donuts really think its customers could mistake Rachael Ray for a terrorist sympathizer? The Canton-based company has abruptly canceled an ad in which the domestic diva wears a scarf that looks like a keffiyeh, a traditional headdress worn by Arab men.

Some observers, including ultra-conservative Fox News commentator Michelle Malkin, were so incensed by the ad that there was even talk of a Dunkin’ Donuts boycott.

‘‘The keffiyeh, for the clueless, is the traditional scarf of Arab men that has come to symbolize murderous Palestinian jihad,’’ Malkin yowls in her syndicated column.

‘‘Popularized by Yasser Arafat and a regular adornment of Muslim terrorists appearing in beheading and hostage-taking videos, the apparel has been mainstreamed by both ignorant and not-so-ignorant fashion designers, celebrities, and left-wing icons.’’

The company at first pooh-poohed the complaints, claiming the black-and-white wrap was not a keffiyeh. But the right-wing drumbeat on the blogosphere continued and by yesterday, Dunkin’ Donuts decided it’d be easier just to yank the ad.

Said the suits in a statement: ‘‘In a recent online ad, Rachael Ray is wearing a black-and-white silk scarf with a paisley design. It was selected by her stylist for the advertising shoot. Absolutely no symbolism was intended. However, given the possibility of misperception, we are no longer using the commercial.’’

(In case you’re wondering, the stylist who selected the offending scarf was not Gretta Enterprises boss Gretchen Monahan, who appears on Ray’s TV show as a style consultant.)

For her part, Malkin was pleased with Dunkin’s response: ‘‘It’s refreshing to see an American company show sensitivity to the concerns of Americans opposed to Islamic jihad and its apologists."

The picture that goes with the story though? Uh...

http://cache.boston.com/bonzai-fba/Third_Party_Photo/2008/05/27/1211929942_3205.jpg

all kinds of people are wearing these thing.

sometimes i'm really sick of this country

Fuck me guys, that's up there with our government trying to ban drawings.

This is FUCKING stupid.

Jesus, her face is the most offensive thing in that picture, not her scarf.

RIP vampire weekend

Some people have too much time on their hands.

Is that a Mormon temple in the background?

If those scarves are a problem there's an awful lot of 70s rock bands that are gonna need their album covers burning.

I've always like the keffiyeh, esp. after reading Joe Sacco's Palestine. They seem like a nice thing.

Stupidity abounds. It only seems to be increasing, but...

at least maybe hipsters will stop wearing them now?

There's a hipster keffiyeh movement?

oh dear

ohhhhh yeah
http://threadtrend.files.wordpress.com/2008/02/schmeg1.jpg

Arcade Keffiyeh

palestinian states lose

PEOPLE

Dig this hipster:

http://www.zemzem.org/images/sacco1.jpg

PLO Soundsystem

Antony Worrall Thompson 'sorry' for Tesco shoplifting but not for anything else.

According the Guardian story on this, he'd nicked stuff on 5 different occassions over the last few weeks - guess they must have check back on the cctv? Had been using the self-service checkout and hadn't scanned some of his stuff in.

Much as I'd love to sneer at the little Tory twat, I can't 'cuz that story's just sad :(

wonder if it was due to late life boredom. the only times i ever shoplifted was on really cheap items just to see if I could do it without being caught.

Not looking forward to the Ready Steady Crook headlines tomorrow then? xp

... so that's what the Ready Steady Crook headline in today's Sun was about then?

Oh well, there you go, I predicted it 18 hours after they went to print. Psychic or what?

They're quick off the mark

STATEMENT FROM ANTONY WORRALL THOMPSON

I am so sorry for all my recent stupid and irresponsible actions; I am of course devastated for my family and friends, whom I’ve let down and will seek the treatment that is clearly needed. I am not the first, and I certainly won’t be the last person to do something without rhyme or reason - what went through my head, only time will tell.

Of course, I must also apologise sincerely to Tesco, with whom I’m had a long and genuine working relationship, and to all the staff at the Henley branch, many of whom I’ve got to know over the years.

Once again, I am so sorry and hopefully in the future I can make amends.

Antony Worrall Thompson January 2012

Luckily for him he can seek 'treatment' without all that silly getting sent to prison or paying fines. I do actually feel sorry for him, clearly something's not right with the chap, but I wonder if he was inclined to take this enlightened view of petty crime before his recent difficulties?

that's some pretty tasty /addictive cheese then or some such?

amazing bit of this story; FOUR per cent of ALL Tesco cheese gets shoplifted! FOUR!! that must mean that pretty much every time you're in there someone else is on the rob. now i know why the store security bods are so damn twitchy.

still haven't ready anywhere what KIND of cheese and wine it was

i feel that information is crucial to my forming any kind of judgment or opinion here

If it's Mini Babybel they should bring back hanging.

I wonder if he was inclined to take this enlightened view of petty crime

The overrriding idea in such twats's heads runs something like this: although what I did is obviously wrong, I know I am not a criminal, so whatever it was I did, it doesn't qualify as a crime except in the most technical and trivial sense. It still makes perfect sense for us to hate criminals, but clearly that's not me, right?

Let's not be too harsh here. I mean he probably did pay up for the crackers, right?

insider fact: he's married to the daughter of the owner of the londis about 2 mins from my parents house in the north dublin suburb i grew up in.

shopkeeper father in law will be feverishly stocktaking now i'd say.

also i said this on facebook but is anyone in public life more gnome-like?

It's true. You' d have thought the security guard would have spotted what was going on when the fishing rod came in through the top window.

my brother says no one more gnome like since robin cook passed

To be fair I would much rather be trapped in a room with AWT than anyone else on this page...

http://www.ybf.org.uk/speakers-panel/

I've met a number of British TV chefs and I have to say the least twattish in person happens to be Gordon Ramsay. He always says "Hello everyone" when he comes in the room and shakes hands with a sincere "Hello, I'm Gordon", which is more than I can say for others in his profession.

nigel slater replied to a mail i sent him before, v promptly and he was incredibly polite and nice. though only barely a tv chef compared to some of the others.

I've met a number of British TV chefs and I have to say the least twattish in person happens to be Gordon Ramsay. He always says "Hello everyone" when he comes in the room and shakes hands with a sincere "Hello, I'm Gordon", which is more than I can say for others in his profession.

i can see that. he's probably terrified of how he comes across to people.

i'm amazed more celebs don't shoplift tbh, there's no downside, if you get caught you get a telling off, meaningless fine and some free publicity and none of yr fans are gonna abandon you over it. AWT shd man the fuck up imo and work out what other fun crimes carry a zero penalty if y're famous

Yeah, that worked for Wynona Ryder.

she shoplifted in a country that executes children with learning disabilities, different risk level.

OK, so UK only...

wdn't suggest anybody try it in Dubai

That's why it's called Do Buy iirc

the lesson AWT should learn from this is that if you're going to steal from Tesco you have to work out techniques such that you'll be able to weasel out of it if caught.

like saying sorry and booking some sessions with a psychotherapist

"just making a programme on the flaws in the cheese and wine supply chain"

Last night, in a rambling interview, the chef admitted on one occasion he stole bread and two pack of discounted coleslaw.

On another occasion, he paid £180 for three crates of champagne and then stole £4 of goods ...

Worrall Thompson mulled over everything that could have pushed him to steal. He spoke of the stress of moving house, the death of two close friends, giving up smoking, anaemia, long working hours, his inability to relax, his age and dementia.

Over Christmas, he said, he had personally flambeed every Christmas pudding at his restaurant, which had left him exhausted.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2084067/Antony-Worrall-Thompson-sorry-shoplifting-cheese-wine-Tesco.html

(He) described the moment he was approached by security guards. He said: ‘It was like a dream or a nightmare.

‘I went back to the office with them and I’d taken a newspaper, three onions and a sandwich that time.'

I'm imagining what Tesco Value Champagne would look like.

a newspaper, three onions and a sandwich

Worst Ready Steady Cook basket ever.

... hey I'm sure those guys could whip up something with that, with Ainsley's good-natured prompting

like saying sorry and booking some sessions with a psychotherapist

.. well if it works for homeless people and single mothers on council estates and benefits scroungers

Ainsley would say "What are you like?"

(aoap)

apparently years ago Stuart Hall (hammy eccentric radio football match reporter) was nicked for shoplifting sausages and cheese and when people saw him in the street they would shout SASUAGES!! at him, to which he would reply "you forgot the CHEESE!" in his Stuart Hall voice

What did people shout at Richard Madeley?
(apart from the usual "You C***!" that is)

years ago Stuart Hall (hammy eccentric radio football match reporter) was nicked for shoplifting sausages and cheese

What was his defence because nobody would buy the "I'm so depressed" routine from Stuart Hall would they?

apparently, the police said in their statement that the joker was played too late.

http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/down-with-chef-worship-1795061446

Chef's Table is the absolute worst.

it's a good idea but just really really boring

dan barber is a really interesting dude with tons of cool ideas and his episode was boring as fuck

This professional chef going off at a Donal Skehan video is great.

https://www.facebook.com/philip.thompson.14289/posts/10210021597085020

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/08/dining/rachael-ray-cooking.html

Still, there are surprises to discover at the compound she has carved out of the woods near Lake George. She has a zip line, and carts her 84-year-old mother around in a covered all-terrain vehicle that Guy Fieri gave her as a thank-you gift. Her favorite love poem was written by Charles Bukowski. His words, along with a Weezer set list and a painting by her friend Jacques Pépin, hang on her walls.

just watched a VHS rip of an early 90's program on Marco Pierre White. What a fucking pretentious tory arsehole, what a bullshit merchant. His recipe ideas are just difficult unpalatable shit that ancient Austrian nobility would have probably considered rather past it in the 18th century. Why was this cunt a celebrity superchef? I don't feel like eating again after watching this shite.

Jacques Pepin an exception imo. Seemed like a humble guy. Watching him debone an entire chicken in thirty seconds is just awe inspiring.

I agree with Pierre White's low heat/no rush approach to cooking scrambled eggs tbf on him. "Only a fool would try and rush scrambled eggs" is correct "just work it slowly - if you are rushing it - it is because your pan is too hot". Yes, in full agreement there.

low as you can go, keep stirring, take them off as soon as there's no pure liquid, piece of piss tbh

that became gordon ramsay's big thing. the scrambled eggs. he stole it from marco.

i posted this on the streaming t.v. thread but nobody cared. i thought this story was so strange and embarrassing at the end. for the nyt and the writer. anyway, everyone fell in love with this chef. such a sweetie and a cutie:

this should probably go on a NYT thread but this weird thing at the end of this profile of Anh Sung-jae who became a star chef in Korea and then a star on t.v. with Culinary Class Wars on Netflix...is just weird. and cringy. and its sad because it was pretty interesting before that. but now the weird reporter thing is all i can think about.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/21/business/culinary-class-wars-netflix-anh-sung-jae.html

My apologies did not sway him. After explaining that I still planned to proceed with an article and wanted to check a few details, he said: “Write whatever you want, I am not interested. Do not message anymore.”

I understood. I let things drag on when he wasn’t as big of a deal, and I was coming back now that he was the star of a hit show.

i bolded that last bit after the link on the other thread. those are the reporter's words.

it's easy to fuck up scrambled eggs, tho it's not really fucking up cos chacun a son goat, but it must be one of the easiest cooking jobs that gets mythologised the most

i am totally guilty of the doing the rushing/high heat thing. i end up cleaning a lot of hard to clean pans.

I saw a video of MPW and GR both doing scrambled eggs. MPW did it properly and without any unnecessary adornments, well yeah he did add a bit of smoked salmon and fresh parsley, lol. GR was going high heat, getting in a flap about not timing his toast correctly. Adding some creme fraiche and fried tomatoes to the dish just isn't how I like scrambled eggs. His seemed so bad for someone with 3 michelin stars.

Also I don't agree with the common orthodoxy that roast potatoes have to be boiled to point of destruction before getting roasted. I never boil them for more than 5 minutes. These ppl can stick their michelin stars where the sun doesn't smile. My roast potatoes are better than theirs!

roasties are another one where ok people have different tastes but they're a piece of piss

yeah parboil is definitely important but you can take them out more or less as soon as the water's boiling

depending on the potato sizes I go 3-5 minutes from rolling boil. The 3 star michelin approved experts boil them for 35 minutes. This is one of them things you learned.. incidents, where I refuse to believe I'm doing it wrong.

i'm being more assertive than i would be if i wasn't christmas drinking but you're only boiling them to get a bit of rough fat-soaking surface and i wouldn't even do 35 minutes for mash ffs

one of them I watched on youtube even said "you will lose about 15-20% of the mass of these potatoes after the ball, they need to be falling apart".

after the boil

great english tradition of boiling vegetables into submission

these guys are crazy. And in the comments section I got this reply: Well I’m sure you know better than a Michelin star chef.

I don't even bother with parboiling, cut into a variety of sizes so some are smaller and crispier and some are larger and creamer, season the hell out of them + toss in oil and roast for ~40 minutes.

I parboil, then add seasoning and a flour dusting to give them an extra iota or so of crispiness and a hundred turns with pepper grinder. I start off cooking high in the oven, turn them 3 times, then go low heat till they are finished.

Hasselback slices are nice if you can't be bothered to parboil but i definitely think a little boiling is the best way to go

Marco P White boils them for 5 mins and then blanches them in cold water. I started off slagging him off on this thread, based on this disgusting haute cuisine shit I saw him doing in the 90's. But the guy seems really good at the basics.

could do a thread on performance chefs who don't fuck about tbh, MPW is usually ok i think; the cunt who shall not be named is my model of "bad at his job on top of being an obnoxious presence"

Oh christ that unspeakable arsehole is the worst chef I have ever seen. He's basically built an empire on being an untalented clueless fucking hack who hired good PR in the 90's

I just purchased my first mandolin slicer recently. Was just dying to make some dauphinoise as an excuse to use it. I tried to be a hero and use it without the guard and took a small bit of my little finger off and it bled profusely for a bloody hour!

lol sorry for your digits, mandolins are evil

MPW shallow fries his roast potatoes in clarified butter that has had a veg stock cube added to it. Would try that. Never going to boil a potato for 35 minutes - that is a genuine veg crime.

i totally just put olive oil on potatoes and sprinkle salt and pepper and put them in the oven. i make potato wedges/slices the same way. i never really need french fries/chips anymore. unless i go out and get really good ones at a restaurant.

omg i totally got maria to make me amazing shepherd's pie and told her this had to be a go-to dinner from now on. i knew she would make one way better than me. i just knew it. took over 20 years but it was worth the wait.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Gfqr8JgXkAAIqdL?format=jpg&name=900x900

just wanted to post this very disturbing and sad image of what a UK Michelin star chef's potatoes look like before going into the oven.

Those are some nice pats of home made butter

Hot Rocks

this is from the official youtube account of a SW London restaurant on Haymarket with glowing praise in the Michelin guide, like you'd think it was a pisstake.

i also skip parboiling and i'm happy about it. i just do olive oil, salt and pepper, roast the shit out of them for an hour haha along with some peppers. then lots of ketchup. michelin called and i told him to michelick my nuts.

bofa these michelin nuts in your mouth!

two stars

parboiling roast spuds and tossing them in a colander so they get fluffy before roasting seemed to become a thing this century, that's when I first noticed it anyway. we never boiled them when I was a kid and that's how I prefer them, I guess they're just different equally valid styles though.

yeah but there is a distinction between light parboiling and then boiling them for 35 fucking minutes

yes we're not making roast mash here.

This talk of scrambled eggs reminded me of the time Thomas Keller of sometime world's finest restaurant The French Laundry appeared on the BBC show Saturday Kitchen. Hosted by serial butterphile James Martin at the time. For those who've never watched it they had a challenge where they had to make a three egg omelette as quickly as possible to climb up the chef leaderboard. Needless to say Keller didn't play by the rules.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ba2LrXs5b3Y

light parboiling for a few mins after boiling reached. today we did goose fat getting hot in the oven first. bashing up the spuds then into the tray of fat. nigella chucks hers in semolina first. i don't add anything else but they were damn good today with the goose fat and a nice long time in the oven.

my mum always did the parboil beforehand and the scuffing them in the pot bit. both were part of how i was taught. i think that scuffing step has become more commonly mentioned, especially in american food media.

prob lots of ways for them to be fine if you roast them without parboil/scuff but they won't be roast potatoes in the anglo-irish sunday roast sense imo. gotta have those craggy crispy bits. i think about 5-10 mins after they start boiling is grand but i don't really measure it.

i never use flour or semolina but more just cos again wasn't what i grew up with.

I steam my roasties rather than parboil, which also works quite well?

personally, I think when you go beyond 5 minutes of rolling boil - that's the point you're already becoming the Putin or Pol Pot of parboiling potatoes!

pol potato

i stand with yukon gold

can't this board go 5 minutes without executing the bourgeoisie?

i mean that's good

I read that as "executing the bourguignon" and got all confused.

Well, the French revolution was subject to misinterpretation at first...