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.

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...