The Food Network Ramblings

I only ask this because you mentioned public television. What do you think of "America's Test Kitchen"?

It is apparently "public television's most watched cooking show."

I think a normal episode features one main dish. Then they will do a comparison test of six kinds of electric can openers or cookbook racks or cast iron skillets (picking the best, and the best value). They also often compare several types of a basic ingredient (what is the best white bread, best canned tomato, best soy sause, etc).

You have to register (free) on their site to see the content though.

http://www.americastestkitchen.com/episodelist.asp

Equipment Ratings
http://www.americastestkitchen.com/testinglist.asp


Best Ingredients
http://www.americastestkitchen.com/tastinglist.asp

Big fan. I haven't seen it in a while though.

I'm not a big fan of the standard "rambling host in kitchen" cooking shows, though I too like the Food Network. I think the absolute best program on it, at least in terms of being useful to an amateur chef, is Alton Brown's "Good Eats." You simply can't beat that program in terms of useful cooking info, even if the recipes themselves are quite tame; the point is obviously, instead, to really learn something about the "hardware and software." As a result, you need no longer follow recipes precisely, since you'll have the knowledge needed to improvise or invent. I can't stand Emeril. Oh, you used garlic, that's mind-blowing, wow.

Lidia is definitely a wealth of knowledge, and a joy to watch. I mentioned your Giada comment to my girl (who worked restaurants), and she laughed and agreed. We're fans of Barefoot Contessa (though her voice puts me to sleep), too, but don't get us started on Rachel Ray

Even though he's not on Food Network, I'm a huge Bourdain fan. Ming Tsai, too.

I love Alton -- his is one of the only shows on Food that I still really like. (And even he seems to be revisiting topics already touched on in early eps.) Overall, Food Net's hit quite a slump. Poor Paula Deen apparently ran out of Southern recipes and now must spend her days making sushi and pad thai. Wha? Sandra Lee, meanwhile, is decorating her "tablescapes" with statues of Ganesh, though she doesn't appear to have any clue about Ganesh and calls the statue a "cute elephant figurine" or somesuch. Nice use of religious iconography, Sandra. The worst has to be the Next Food Network Star. Why can't they find decent talent? They need to add in a little Jeff Smith-style reassuring expertise. Only without the touching of small children. Allegedly.

True. And I'd guess it's natural for a new host to want to overegg the pudding. With Alton, I suspect he was excited about what he was teaching and, at the same time, nervous about the size of his potential audience. The early Good Eats cover a lot of ground. Hard to convey that same zeal when focused on a much narrower topic. The way she matches her mixer to her clothes in each episode ... I guess what I'd like is more programs on the mechanics of cooking, with less emphasis on personalities and vicarious lifestyle thrills. Sandra Lee and Barefoot Contessa are good examples of this. I like Ina Garten well enough, but her show is really about how nice it is to have a house in the Hamptons and fly to France on the weekends. I'd prefer more nuts-'n'-bolts cooking information, a la "America's Test Kitchen" or a televised cooking school like "La Varenne Pratique." But maybe I'm not representative of Food's target demographic. I wouldn't mind the focus on personalities so much if only Food could find hosts with better ones. I gave up on "The Next Food Network Star" because so many of the contestants were just totally out of their league. It was like "Top Design" on Bravo, which welcomes contestants with little understanding of design and even less taste. Why should I watch these people fumble about? To me, "TNFNS" only highlights how much trouble Food is having coming up with the next Food Network star. In fairness, I guess it's extremely difficult to pull off a cooking show. But I don't understand how Food managed to find so many decent hosts, yet now seems incapable of adding to the stable. But it's the butter that makes the olive oil taste good!

Also, I'm a bit ticked that when Food Network began producing "Iron Chef America," they stopped showing the original. If the new one were as good as the old, I wouldn't mind - but they just don't have the same kind of spontaneous fun, absurd exaggeration and warm camaraderie that the Japanese original did. But the most unwatchable thing on FoodNetwork has got to be Rachel Ray. Her voice is so grating - like a chain-smoking parrot. Though I can't stand the "useless sugar-art monstrosity competition" shows that are so constantly shown now, either. And while I don't watch it too much since I'm not big on "how they make it" types-of-shows, it was fun to see Marc Summers on TV again in "Unwrapped," as I was a big Double Dare fan when I was a boy. I'm not sure if it's on FoodNetwork or Travel, but there's also a show about a man that looks like a giant pink pear who goes around calling exotic foods "weird" or gross as he scarfs them down, having awkward conversations with foreigners who seem to be more than a little uncomfortable with his effeminate mannerisms, saying nothing of interest or value, all while making puns so horrendously unfunny that I can't imagine why none of the savage tribes he's taken advantage of haven't sewn his lips shut. It's like Bourdain's mirror image doppleganger - the same, but all wrong and backwards.

I can't stand Giada. Her mouth more closely resembles a great white shark rather than a person and her personality is so fake its painful. At least Rachel Ray is a real person - kitschy and a little dumb, but she's real. Giada is more of a manufactured person who tries her best to appear perfect but fails miserably. Everything she says is completely inauthentic.

I just picked up "Cooking at home with ATK." Pretty impressive. I didn't realize it was run by Cook's Illustrated. I am thinking about getting this magazine after reading this book. Anybody here have it? Is it worth the $27/yr for 6?