This week was different. I actually recorded Tuesday’s episode as the gorgeous Reem was appearing, “competing” against Tim from the Urban Food Market.  The producers must have been beside themselves with joy to have found two such articulate participants who seemed really natural on TV.  Oh, and who had some mean kitchen skillz, too.  For those who are unfamiliar with the set-up, contestants (who have some sort of pre-existing relationship) arrive with a grab bag of ingredients and are matched with a chef who develops a series of dishes based around the bags.  There’s a ridiculously short time limit and then dishes are described and tasted, but not by the audience, which is responsible for deciding the “winner”.

It’s an old-fashioned kind of show: very good-natured and chatty, with a “nobody goes home empty-handed” approach to rewarding the contestants.  The host, Peter Everett, is almost frighteningly upbeat and clearly gets most of his job satisfaction from trying to interview people at the worst possible times.  His schtick is to wring maximum double-entendre from any utterance and to play the himbo host.  His elaborate what’s-this-new-fangled-thing enunciations of terms such as “blog”, “blogger” and “twitter” when chatting to Reem were gold.  The show manages to attract some of the big-name chefs in the country and it is a good chance to see them in action in a less structured, controlled way than seen in other shows.

Reem has a link to the episode on her blog.

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Ready Steady Cook is on at 2.00pm, Monday-Friday, on Ten.

1. Since 1994 in the UK, to be precise, and for nearly five years here.

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The original and the best. Discerning judges John Torode and Gregg Wallace are back to put more undiscovered amateur chefs through a series of increasingly difficult tasks in this iconic show. Don’t miss the ultimate culinary competition. Twelve contestants, picked from thousands of hopeful amateurs, will face 3 high pressure tests to see who has the passion, the skill and the creativity to make it to the quarter finals.

One of the many things I love about the real Masterchef (by which I mean the UK show, which has a title and not much else in common with our breezier, sleazier version) is that the synopsis is almost the same for each episode.  Each episode has the blurb above; the quarter-finals – held after four “heats” – have their own generic blurb.  That’s because the show is about cooking. And food. Not personalities, journeys and back-stories.  Sure, we are introduced briefly to contestants to hear about where they developed their love for food and where they would like this to take them, but with six contestants per heat [the scheduling has changed this season, with two heats shown in an hour-long episode] this is not about making a connection with a particular “character”.

I’ve written about Masterchef before, over on Reality Ravings, so I won’t bang on too much about it here, except to note a couple of very pleasing changes.  The first quarter-final elimination is no longer a “name the ingredient” test, but a 15 minute skill test, which seems much fairer.  The initial skills test was a highlight of the most recent Professionals – I only wish Monica had been brought in for this section. The other change, which I think was also pioneered in Professionals, is that Gregg and John have been a lot more flexible with eliminations and finals places.  Some heats have a number of strong cooks to choose between, whilst others are a case of identifying the least-bad.  Rather than grade on the curve, the judges have – on two occasions – put two cooks through to the quarter finals.  In a recent episode, rather than cull three from the first test, they could only identify two Masterchef level cooks, so culled the other four.  I’ve always had confidence that the contestants can cook – these changes just strengthen that perception.

The real Masterchef is the perfect balance of food TV and competitive TV. I’d love a local version…

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Masterchef is on Lifestyle Food.  First-run episodes are (I think – the guide is ridiculously difficult to navigate) on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays at 7.30. They are repeated throughout the week and in “marathons” each weekend.

Note: the Lifestyle Food website has links through to the BBC site for recipes – be wary of spoilers, since the show has finished over there!

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2. The problem with Celebrity Masterchef (UK)…
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Heston designs a feast inspired by Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

There is really nothing I can usefully say about Heston’s Feasts – if you watched it (as almost all of my corner of the twitterverse did last night), you would understand this.  If you didn’t, make sure you tune in for the remainder of the series.  It really is the most amazing television.

It is by no means a show aimed at giving the home cook ideas on spicing up weeknight dinners, in fact Heston even jokes “don’t try this at home” at one point. You wouldn’t, unless of course you have a kitchen centrifuge and some willing firefighters. It is, however, inspirational in the way that watching anybody who is creative, driven and completely passionate – I know that word has been devalued by overuse, but it is spot-on for Heston – is inspirational.  Not Imma-quit-my-job-and-become-a-chef, but a recognition that enthusiasm and knowledge and curiosity are immensely appealing.

Seriously, watch. This. Show.

Heston’s Feasts is on SBS, Wednesdays at 8.30pm.  Next week he is taking on fairy tales.

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The Pitch: Raymond Blanc is back in the compelling third series which gives one couple a chance to open and run their own restaurant.

As the blurb says, The Restaurant is a successful show which is now in its third season. BBC Knowledge was showing the second season recently and I only stumbled upon it for the final episode, which had me hooked despite the fact that I’d missed all the preceding episodes and thus had absolutely no emotional investment in the outcome. This is the mark of a strong show in my view: it doesn’t rely on the viewer having established a “relationship” with the contestants, or having developed an understanding of the various personalities involved; it succeeds on the basis of a strong, well-executed concept.

A full recap, after the jump.

(You can skip straight to the the low down here.)

In this season-opener, we start by learning what M Blanc values in an inner-city brasserie. It must be run with precision, have clear branding, a smart location, and serve consistently fine food. This one is in Bristol, and has nine couples – chosen from “thousands” of applicants’ – loitering outside with intent. Half of the first couple is a chef who is itching to work with Blanc. Another couple is in it for a change of career; specifically, to escape having to work for someone else. This particular ambition is a reality show cliche and it always puzzles me. Why do people think self-employment is such a prize? And does it matter what they do, or is just “not working for the man” the ambition? I guess 1. it’s reality TV, not “realism” TV and 2. we’ll find out. Couples are made up of marrieds, BFFs, and even “army comrades”, amongst others.

There is a lot of scene setting in this episode, but a dearth of clear identification of contestants. Bristol looks very appealing in the late afternoon sunlight and is described by our narrator as a “commercial battleground” – “to run a restaurant in a place like this is the toughest job of all”. Of all! I hope the un-named couple who are itching to be self-employed are paying attention. Sarah Willingham – “an expert in big-brand High Street eating” (will have to Google lest I go through this series thinking of her as Ronald McDonald) – and “top London restaurateur” David Moore are introduced to us as Blanc’s investors – in the previous season I believe they were the eyes and ears (like the Trump offsiders).

The competitors enter the brasserie and are greeted by Blanc, who does his best to dissuade them from going any further, pointing out that the industry is suffering, and that customers are more and more demanding. He tells them that the foundation of his success is his strong, defined creative vision and sets them their first challenge: to cook a dish that represents their vision. To do this, they are divided into three groups, with three couples in each group. Our couples probably know each other even less well than we know them at this stage, and must negotiate for the dish they would like to present: entree, main or dessert. Naturally, everybody is after the main.

Once they’ve chosen their dishes the teams go shopping. Daisy and Nadine – the self-employment obsessives – are after some goat to capture the true taste of Nigeria. The local butcher has no goat, or tripe, so they go for mutton. Mmmm. Mutton! I love mutton – anybody know where I can get my hands on it in Melbourne? Daisy (or is it Nadine?) wants to put Nigerian food on the map, so it looks as though they might be able to fulfil the “clear vision” aspect of Blanc’s brief. She works for the London Underground, making announcements. Cockfosters! Nadine (or Daisy? it really would help early on if there were captions in these early stages) works as a midwife for the NHS, so she might have something to say to our narrator about hospitality being the “toughest job of all”. Their vision for the restaurant is modern; “not too Africanised”.

Shaun and Janet are a married couple and they are looking for what I would call gravlax, but what teh interwebz tells me is also known as “gravad lax” (and many other things). In a supermarket. Where they are calling out “do you have gravad lax?” and then pronouncing it in a number of different ways to bemused teenage shelf-stackers. They were teenagers themselves, once. Sweethearts, meeting when she was 13 and he was 17. She must be Swedish, given that there is Abba playing in the background and they are really committed to that “gravad lax” pronunciation. Oh, actually the Scandinavian connection is from when she lived there in the 1980s for an unspecified period. We leave their backstory behind as they settle on some packaged Scottish smoked salmon, which Janet notes “it’s not gravad lax”. Presumably it will do. I am going to watch this episode again so that I can drink whenever they say “gravad lax”. The narrator, in a disapproving tone, notes that the absence of gravad lax means that they will be putting “salmon from a packet” in front of Raymond Blanc.

We are given brief glimpses of some of the other couples – two women, a man who looks a bit like Tony Abbott (okay, he has enormous ears) and two blond men who look as though they’ve escaped from Westlife, or Bros, or Boyzone. Who knows what their creative vision might be? One of the women seems to be contemplating a pineapple, which causes the other to observe “but you don’t like pineapple”. “Well, I won’t be eating it!” is a response that would probably cause M Blanc to blanch.

The teams are all backstage in a bland office, running through the dish that they will be “pitching” to Blanc, Willingham and Moore. As watching people memorising menu descriptions is boring, the action shifts to Blanc’s kitchen where lunch is being prepped. The narrator helpfully explains how a restaurant works (orders come in and diners are served food, apparently).

Team one

The first team is allowed into a second kitchen and is given an hour to cook. An hour to cook MUTTON? This could be interesting. Joe and Sarah are using butternut in their vegetarian starter, Daisy and Nadine’s mutton dish will be the main, and Rebecca and Stephen are making a… chocolate fondant. Creative vision? Blanc will be the judge of that.

Rebecca and Steve’s clip shows them walking hand in hand down a busy street, wearing pink tops. The narrator tells us that they are married and have been together for 12 years. It was his car with the stereo that seems to have been the main attraction. Steve is the cook of the partnership, dreaming of a restaurant whilst running a hospital kitchen. Rebecca is an estate agent, so Steve hopes she can “sell good food as well as she can sell a bad house”. I hope none of her former clients are watching this. Back in the kitchen we learn that the chocolate fondant is Blanc’s signature dish. He is on hand to praise their courage.

Willingham and Moore are now on board to check out the kitchen skills. The narrator reminds us of their pedigrees: she runs restaurant chains; he has Michelin stars. As time ticks on, Steve checks his fondant. As the narrator reminds us that it should be molten in the middle, Steve looks worried: “it’s still slightly soft in the middle” he reports to Rebecca, who also looks concerned. I’m not sure that they know how fondants work.

As time is up, we finally get to Joe and Sarah’s story. Sarah is a food stylist who cooks in a cafe and envisages a French-English restaurant by water. She plans on having quite a wide vegetarian choice. Joe’s contribution seems to be twee names: Blancity Blanc, Mama Joe’s. Fortunately he abandons them as soon as he verbalises them. They are unable to sum up their vision for the clip, which doesn’t bode that well.

Tasting

Field mushroom with butternut squash, pesto and goats’ cheese
Joe stumbles as he tries to “pitch” the dish.

• Blanc: “Beautifully layered… really nice”
• Willingham: she would be happy if served it at a dinner party but admits to being totally confused by the concept of the restaurant. She gives Joe a chance to explain it more thoroughly and he does a better job this time, talking about growing his own vegies. She runs out of patience, though, when Joe gets tongue-tied over the “what is the name of your restaurant” question.

Nigerian Mutton Stew
Nadine presents the dish and briefly talks about putting Nigerian food on the map.

• Blanc: “Very, very chewy. The flavours are good, lots of spice, but you boiled your lamb. You murdered it.”
• Moore: likes the taste and concept but is concerned about the visual appeal.

Chocolate Fondant
Rebecca introduces it as the “ultimate chocolate pudding”, which raises a Blanc eyebrow.

• Blanc: “overcooked”
• Moore: “The dish looks to me like a restaurant dish”

Team two

Back in the bland room, Natalie and Sandy are practicing their pitch. They are mother and daughter and are selling their dish as reflective of multicultural Britain. Their vision is to have an Indian restaurant with a colonial theme, which might not satisfy Blanc’s “creative” requirement. It will be made clear that it is not a “curry ‘ouse”. Sandy (the mother) has Mauritian, English, French and Goanese heritage and her nickname (Missy Baba, I think) is being used for the restaurant – their concept seems very well-developed and they demonstrate a high level of insight, talking about their weaknesses as well.

Back in the kitchen, we learn that Natalie and Sandy will be presenting the “Missy Baba” concept in a fruit salad with a fresh coconut mousse. I think Natalie was the one holding a pineapple earlier. In order to make a start on their dish, they need to crack open their coconut and I am not the only one holding my breath and looking aghast as they decide to use a sharp knife and a rolling pin – Willingham looks as though she’s never seen anything like it before either. The coconut is finally cracked, but then Natalie goes at a tin of evaporated milk with the sharp knife. Who ARE these people? Blanc steps in to save the day… with a can opener.

Chris and Nathan aim to bring “top class food to mid-priced eating”. They’re from South London and Chris grew up with frozen food. His exposure to good food came with his training as a chef, but now “he is stuck cooking for a weight-loss boot camp in Wales” which is quite possibly the saddest job description I can imagine. No wonder he’s all “help me, Raymond Blanc, you’re my only hope”.

For today’s challenge, they are working on a main course of pork Wellington, which is a far cry from nuts and seeds but is, apparently, a “tried and true” recipe. The narrator seems concerned that it’s a lot to do in an hour and Blanc is conferring with Chris over timings, so clearly this could be an issue. Chris reassures Blanc that it can be done in 20 minutes. “And how long do we have?” “15 minutes.”

“English peas are in season, so friends Frances and Lucy, are marking their fresh and local concept with scallops on a pea puree.” That sounds nice, if not particularly original – in the 2009 UK Masterchef everyone was doing scallops on pea puree. It does seem a bit odd, though, that the first we see of them cooking is a shot of one of them emptying a packet of frozen peas into a pan. Moore is also curious, but our Frances (or Lucy – we haven’t been properly introduced) tells him that the frozen peas are merely a backup in case the fresh peas don’t work. He still looks unconvinced.

There’s a problem with Missy Baba’s coconut mousse, which is separating and they don’t seem to have a clue as to how to save it. Blanc steps in with advice, which they seem a bit skeptical about, but they decide to follow it. Having averted that disaster, he now heads over to the pea puree station to find out why the contestants have been simmering fresh peas for fifteen minutes. Frances/Lucy tells him that she’s never used fresh peas before, but guesses that they’d take longer. He raises an expressive eyebrow and walks away.

With five minutes to go, the Wellington is a complete mess, so Chris is going with a pork dish sans pastry. “Every single person is having a petit catastrophe” whispers Willingham, with unnecessary French. Blanc agrees: “We have the pork Wellington which turned out to be Waterloo”. I’ll be the editors are miffed that they’ve used up their Abba allocation for the episode.

Tasting

Scallops with pea and mint puree, bacon, and a rocket salad

• Moore: thinks the dish looks rustic and simple, which is a compliment
• Blanc: “what a shame, and what a struggle you had with your peas!” He ticks them off for talking “freshness” but cooking peas for 25 minutes.
• Willingham: questions whether sourcing locally is feasible.

Roast pork with parsnip mash and a rhubarb puree.

Nathan explains that they are called “Rags to Riches” and goes over the good-food-at-a-reasonable-price concept.

• Moore: (surprised) “Tastes good! Tastes really good! And it looks like a restaurant plate.”
• Blanc: is worried that it was meant to be their signature dish and it was stripped back to basics.

Coconut mousse and tropical fruit

• Sandy gives a very rehearsed speech, but Blanc wants to tell her about their concern over their kitchen safety.
• Blanc: “Based on the quality of this dish and what I’ve seen today, I’m going to ask you to leave now”.

Wow.

Chris and Nathan look shocked and even Willingham looks gutted. The contestants in team three, who haven’t even been up to cook yet, all look shattered when Natalie and Sandy tell them what has happened. I did notice that the Lucy/Frances team smiled at the announcement – I think they realised they’d dodged a bullet.

Team three

Blanc comes into the kitchen to tell our contestants that they have an hour, and Boyzone is grinning through his Bieber-like mane. As Blanc finishes his spiel, he points at Boyzone. “That’s twice you have winked at me. Can you tell me why you are winking at me?” It’s amazing how different it would be coming from Ramsay; Blanc just seems genuinely bemused. Apparently Boyzone is just nervous. This gets even more confusing when we get the team clip: they are friends called JJ and James. If they weren’t indistinguishable from one another before…

JJ is an “award winning cocktail maker” and he runs a bar in central London with James, whose accent betrays him as an Orstraylian. JJ would love to have a little country pub “up north somewhere” to (and I may have misheard this) “enjoy the empire”. I have no idea what he’s talking about. They are going to make a pear and strawberry crumble.

We are reminded that Janet and Shaun were unable to source Gravadlax at the local Tesco, and the furrowed brow of the approaching Blanc suggests that perhaps packaged smoked salmon might not be the substitute they needed. He investigates the plastic packaging with amused curiosity, but says nothing.

Main course is by Barney and Badger, our army comrades. Barney is an army chef and Badger is “ex-logistics”. Badger establishes himself as more bouncer than maitre d’hotel, interviewing that he’ll “deal with (customers) in a business-type fashion but if there’s any messing about though or I’m not happy with the behaviour they’ll be asked to leave the premises”. So… their concept is what, exactly? Well, we don’t know, yet, and it’s pretty clear that they are only a “they” for the purposes of this exercise – Badger “recruited” Barney and they have only known each other for eight weeks. Still, Barney’s a confident chap – confident that he doesn’t really have any weaknesses.

They are making a sirloin steak with a “rich jus”. The narrator mischievously points out that they are using supermarket stock, but I think packaged smoked salmon might trump that. Barney realises that the stock is too salty and Blanc queries the need to use a packaged product. Barney does seem to know his way around, explaining that he couldn’t make a proper beef stock in an hour, which might satisfy Blanc. At any rate, he’s bound to be more impressed by anything Barney turns out than what Janet and Shaun are putting up – grated salad is all she’s actually preparing to go with the piles of salmon.

JJ and James are working on their crumble and the narrator helpfully reiterates their restaurant concept: picnic food indoors. He also reminds us that JJ is more comfortable mixing drinks and he certainly looks nervous. Not to Moore’s eyes, though: “Very, very cocky” is his comment to Blanc.

Janet and Shaun have finished plating up their packaged antipasto and Janet is making sure Shaun is on top of the menu. “Carrot in what?” “Mustard” “Think! Think! Lime…” “Oh, lime vinaigrette”. This isn’t going to go well for them, but I’m not sure that Sandy and Natalie haven’t made their pathway a little easier.

Barney is worried about his jus, with good cause if Moore’s expression on tasting is anything to go by. He’s on the verge of panicking, but he’s upfront with Blanc, telling him that it’s too salty, what he’s done to try to bring it back, and that he’s out of ideas. No hints are forthcoming so he add more sugar.

Tasting

Salmon and a salad

• Moore: He’s not impressed by look of the plate.
• Blanc: Reminds them that they had a chance to impress and they brought him the worst smoked salmon he’d ever had.
• Shaun explains that they know they can do more, and Willingham points out that the judges don’t know that.

Steak with creamed potatoes and horseradish with a beef stock.

• Blanc: “I found the sauce so, so salty and so sweet at the same time. And acid.”
• Barney explains himself with, I think, some success although the judges are poker faced.

Devonshire cider pear and strawberry tart-sorry-crumble

• Blanc: “That’s not a crumble! That’s a dough!” He’s concerned that diners will get indigestion.
• Willingham: Wants to know how the dish fits in with their concept and James goes through the picnic thing which confuses everybody.

Judging

Even though one pair has already been ousted, there could be another to go. Willingham sees some potential amongst the competitors, but doesn’t specify where that lies. Blanc, surprisingly, likes Steve of the dry fondant. Or… maybe I misheard? I played it back a couple of times and it really seemed as though he said that Steve was a “favourite”. Moore likes team Daisy and Nadine. Behind the scenes Janet is upset, but it’s not all bad news – Moore thinks they pitched it badly, that they should have sold it as “smorgasbord” and it would have been better. Joe and Sarah are quietly confident, but Blanc didn’t feel the love and Willingham practically declares them clueless.

Whose ideas have failed to convince Blanc? Joe and Sarah’s vision is declared the worst and they depart, leaving packaged smoked salmon to fight another day.

The Low Down

The Restaurant is different to Masterchef and it can’t usefully be compared to My Kitchen/Restaurant Rules, either. If the set-up is to be believed, Blanc is “auditioning” partners; he will be putting his reputation and money on the line and is very businesslike in his approach to the contenders. When Joe was talking about his vegie patch, Blanc reminded him of the scale of production he’d need to sustain a restaurant kitchen. Joe’s response – “well, fingers crossed!” – was met with a gentle, but solemn, rebuke: “that is the wrong thing to do when you start a restaurant, fingers crossed”.Similarly, the frozen peas used by Frances and Lucy would quite possibly have been overlooked in the other shows, but Moore is right onto it.

This is a really entertaining and engaging show and I’d really recommend you check it out.

The Restaurant is on BBC Knowledge at 7.30pm on Thursdays.

Note: the number of teams who were filmed driving around in top-down convertibles was interesting. And there are still people denying climate change. Pfft.

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Winter Warmers: Julie Goodwin has inspired Australia by rejuvenating the appeal of cooking no fuss family meals. In Julie’s new show, prepare for sumptuous meals that are easy to cook, delicious to eat and designed to impress.

“Oh, really?” was my first reaction to this TV guide fluff. “Inspired Australia”? Well, I guess she may have inspired Masterchef‘s Kate to think she had a shot at fame despite having a comically limited repertoire.

Glad are proud sponsors. Of course they are. This means we will probably get double the inspiration: program-Julie and commercial-break-Julie.

Opening credits, and it seems that Julie’s been taking giggle lessons from Poh. I’m not sure who has been giving her the inappropriate touching lessons.

Julie welcomes us to her kitchen to the strains of Guy Sebastian, which is worrying. I’m already fearful that the cooking won’t be enough to keep me awake. Soft-rock isn’t going to help any.  What will she be rejuvenating into sumptuousness today?  Find out, after the jump.

We’re kicking off with lamb shanks in a slow cooker. Snore. That’s not to say that I don’t adore lamb shanks, but I doubt there’s anybody who actually needs to be shown how to cook them, particularly when the person demonstrating is using a slow cooker. Next up: how to suck eggs. But before that, here’s a handy tip: if you ask your butcher to French them, you’ll get them knobless.  Oh, I wish Reza Mahammad had said that!

There’s chopping, flouring, browning and patronising chyrons, giving us obvious facts like “slow cookers are great for winter cooking”. Who’d'a thunk?  There’s no obvious product placement, though - Julie’s clearly not sponsored by Campbell’s, since her “beef stock” had been decanted into a pyrex jug. Oh, of course, she could have made the stock herself (bwahahahaha!).

We go to an ad break, but don’t fret! As predicted, we get more Julie in the Glad ad.

Back from ads and Julie is adding a Moroccan couscous dish to her lamb shanks, but… it’s one she prepared earlier. I call shenanigans. If she’s going to “teach” us how to cook shanks with couscous, I’d expect her to demonstrate the couscous for those sucked in to playing along at home.

I hope there’s a new Logie category for most drawn out tasting scene in a cooking show.  The least Nine could have done was to add a backing track to try to add some drama to the shot of Julie trying to get some couscous and lamb on the fork and then linger over the mastication.  Apparently the shanks with couscous are delicious.

For the crispy pork belly dish, we get a few bars of that awful “hey soul sister, ain’t that Mister Mister on the radio” song. Julie tells us that this dish has about four ingredients and is the simplest thing ever. I decide to make better use of my time by checking my emails. I mean, really. I thought cooking shows were to demonstrate techniques, not tell you that oven temperatures vary but that roasting something for a couple of hours will probably do.

Next up? Sexism! Gyton Grantley exclaiming “I’ve never done two things at once before! I’m a bloke!”. I hope this isn’t subtle preparation for a Tony Abbott government in two weeks time.

Julie is now going to make a soup with some lovely fresh ingredients. One of them is a dried risoni. Go figure. Gyton is helping out with this and is asking questions. His first question – do you use thigh chicken or breast chicken? – has Julie using that rather contorted construction in her lengthy response. There’s chopping, “growing boys” anecdotes, and I see some more decanted, unbranded (home made?) stock in my future.

Oh, god, now there’s Gabriella Cilmi to link to the fondant recipe. Another fondant? You know what? I’m really struggling to see this one through. I’ve seen more fondants cooked than I’ve had hot dinners, and that’s not even much of an exaggeration.

We get the “men are hopeless at multi-tasking” comment, while Julie goes off to start a fire. There’s some hurried visuals and narration, and then our lovely winter dessert is served, with seasonal strawberries. No, really.

Goodbye Julie and Gyton. What a missed opportunity. Aaron and Gyton would have been much better – he might have instructed TV Carl Williams to beat those eggs to a pulp.

You can watch Home Cooked! with Julie Goodwin* on Nine at 5.30pm on Saturdays. Recipes are online at NineMSN.  Or you could just read a cookbook. Or, you know, use common sense.

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* Seriously. That’s the title. I wish I was kidding, but it’s even in the URL: channelnine.ninemsn.com.au/homecookedwithjuliegoodwin/  I’ll bet they were disappointed that they couldn’t include the exclamation mark.

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In the meantime, I’ve added a new box to the left sidebar, which I hope will prompt me to update at least that regularly, as I’ve titled it “This week I’ve been”.  Once the week is over, it’ll be archived on my new page, This Week.

Actually, now that I think about it, it’s a bit of a cop-out. Oh, well!

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Things will change. Hopefully, for the better.

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Global Kitchen: Michael explores the globe and finds that formerly exotic flavours of the world can become everyday mainstream.

Chef at Home is soothing background food TV.  Michael Smith is a pleasant host, presenting a range of simple dishes for everyday cooking.  I’ve never been prompted to pick up a pencil to note anything down; much of what he cooks is already in my repertoire, although sometimes it prompts me to think of cooking something I haven’t had for a while.

Before today, I’ve never thought to blog it before, either.  It’s probably a little unfair that I was prompted to do so by today’s episode, since it was the off-note that had me reaching for the notebook.  Today’s focus was on Indian dishes and I really only started to take note when aloo gobi was mentioned.  I love aloo gobi and was interested in Michael’s approach – clearly he was presenting Indian food to an audience who might be intimidated by it, and he did a good job of showing that it was easy and unintimidating.  He made a simple palak paneer to go with it, having made his own paneer (for some reason he didn’t go into any details of how to do this, despite saying how easy it was) and all seemed pretty peachy.  After this, there was some sort of turnover thing from an unspecified part of Asia and I started to lose interest until I heard him comment that “dishes from Asia go really well with Indian food” in a kind of who’da thunk it way.  I’m not sure what part of the world he thinks India is, nor what – exactly – he means by the generic “Asian flavours” he went on to talk about.  Look, it didn’t turn me off deciding to put a version of aloo gobi on the menu for tonight (looking forward to it!) or dredging up my paneer recipe, but it did make me question his overall credibility on Asian food.

Am I being pedantic? Probably, but there’s enough food programming to rule out the ones that don’t hit the mark.  I won’t turn it off when it comes on (hello, Good Chef/Bad Chef), but I doubt I’ll be paying it even the scant attention I was before today.

It was never on my regular viewing schedule anyway, largely because Foxtel follows quite a bizarre screening schedule for it.  It is on six times a week, but this week’s episode was on today, and will be repeated twice tomorrow; there are two new episodes on Tuesday with repeats on Wednesday, and… well, I can’t figure out the pattern.  Check the Lifestyle Food Chef at Home page or the Foxtel Guide for further details.

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1. Food TV – Good Chef, Bad Chef
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3. Food TV – Family Food Fight

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Families put their reputations to the test, relationships on the line and decades-old recipes in the firing line, when they come up against each other in a head-to-head cook off.

The blurb captures the essence of this show fairly well, if with a pinch of predictable hyperbole. If you’ve seen the original British Masterchef and are dumbstruck by its transformation into our local version, then perhaps you can imagine this as a British My Kitchen Rules, with the added stipulation that the pairs must be from a single family. It’s low-key competitive cooking, with most of the drama being in the promotional para above. Paul Merrett and Amanda Lamb are the judges and their job is to choose between the pairs competing each episode. Each pair has an hour to prepare their three course menu; the winning pair is sent on the next round.

In the episode I watched, two sisters from Surrey, with a “traditional English food” background competed against a mother and daughter, who talked about their Iranian-Armenian heritage. The three course menus each side put up were fairly dull and the most-commented upon aspect of the competitors seemed to be how calm they were. The result was close to a tie – the judges were underwhelmed by both teams and, for a while, it seemed that they were reluctant to see either team again.

Will I watch Family Food Fight again? With Lifestyle Food as my background viewing, I wouldn’t turn it off or switch over, like I would for Good Chef/Bad Chef, but I’m not linking it and wouldn’t be distraught if I never saw it again. The concept is a bit ho-hum and needs something to lift it. Whilst it is good to see a food show where the emphasis is not on manufactured tension or interpersonal drama, this only works if the food is interesting which – at least in this episode – it wasn’t.

Family Food Fight is on Lifestyle Food on Mondays at 8.30pm.

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1. Food TV – The Big Food Fight
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Poh moves out of her kitchen and heads off overseas – to Malaysia, the country where she was born. She is on a three-week trip starting in Kuala Lumpur to find out more about her heritage and traditional Malaysian dishes.

Poh wasn’t one of my favourite contestants in the first season of Masterchef. Her inclusion in the competition came after the judges rejected her first dish and told her to go home and cook something “from the heart” (or similarly cliché location). Her second dish got her through and the show did its darndest to eliminate that early mis-step from viewers’ minds by constructing a “Poh cooks from her heritage” narrative. When she was brought back as a “second chancer”, grudge-holding viewers (which could well be a set of, say, one) seethed at “third chancers”. Of course, when the final came down to Julie versus Poh, I would have preferred to see Poh through, as at least she’d consistently shown competence and creativity in the kitchen.

Coming second did not damage Poh’s food-related ambitions; the ABC recognised her potential and signed her up for a series to fill the old Cook and the Chef spot. I tuned into the first couple of episodes and, whilst she seemed very natural on TV, the giggling and fawning over guest chefs grated. Was that Poh? Perhaps it was just me, because after a few weeks I tuned back in and have become a regular viewer.

Why does Poh’s Kitchen work for me where Delish failed? After all, Julia Jenkins got into the competition without second or third chances and showed her skill early on by “beating the chef”. The format of “Poh’s Kitchen” is really well suited to addressing the reservations I have about the credentials of hosts. Rather than set Poh up as an expert in all things, she teams up with a different chef each week and takes on the role as the viewer’s proxy, asking questions, prompting for further details on produce or technique. She, in turn, cooks Malaysian dishes and calls in family members to demonstrate traditional dishes that she wants to learn. She is an enthusiastic student and teacher, deferring to the expertise of others but able to make connections between processes she uses in her food and what the experts are doing in their dishes.

The most recent episode was a slight departure from the kitchen-based regular episodes, as Poh was back in Malaysia (see blurb, above). As a big fan of KL, it was great to see the city scenes, and I did want to jump through the screen to eat on Jalan Alor – although I would have gone for bak kut teh, frog porridge or beef ball noodles, not durian. At her Grandmother’s house in KL, she made Pohpia under the supervision of one of her aunts, identifying unusual ingredients (such as the yam bean), describing their properties (water chestnutty) and suggesting alternatives. A visit to the Batu Caves was followed by an excellent roti canai demonstration, and then it was off to check out some nasi lemak (with an excellent tip for fluffy rice: use three different rice types to maximise the chances of getting “fresh” rice). Finally chef Ismail Ahmad cooked up a couple of Malay dishes – snail curry and young jackfruit curry. I’m not sure whether Poh just has a production team who are able to scout the most personable guests around (in the case of Ismail Ahmad, he was a real character – addressing the viewer through the screen), but I suspect her personality and the obvious delight she shows in the creations of her guests does a lot to put them at ease.

Nobody is more surprised than I am that I’ve become a Poh fan, but I was pleased to see that the show has been renewed for a second season. We need more Poh!

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Poh’s Kitchen is on ABC1 on Wednesdays at 6.30pm. It is repeated on Saturdays at 11.00am and on ABC2 at 6.00am on Thursdays. Recipes are available on the show’s homepage, and full episodes are available on iView.

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