The Star Online: Entertainment: TV & Radio

Posted: 01 Aug 2011 07:42 PM PDT

This week, we're here to tell you how television can help you satiate your cravings for all sorts of food, glorious food. Well, sort of ...

TIME'S up! Utensils down, hands up. If you've been anywhere near my house lately, you would probably have heard this phrase from reality cooking show Top Chef every hour upon the hour. I'm just mad about the show, you see, and for the last month or so I've been watching nothing but back-to-back episodes of it – right from Season One.

Along with Project Runway and perhaps Masterchef Australia (I think the Australian version is far superior to the American one), Top Chef is one of the few reality shows that is more about substance than style.

I've always been a fan of cooking shows, right from the days of Wok With Yan in the early 1980s. Anyone remember Florence Tan and her cooking show? Well, those shows, just like Nigella Lawson's Nigella Bites or Ina Garten's Barefoot Contessa, are instructional – they demonstrate recipes to audiences. You watch and you learn. Whether you pick up any skills or not is another matter.

But Top Chef is not that sort of a cooking show. There are no recipes divulged and you are not taught how to cook. In fact, most of what is cooked on the show, we can't recreate at home. Well, at least I can't – sous-vide a duck breast? Use liquid nitrogen to make a cookie? Serve steak in the form of culinary foam? Whaaat?

There is also nothing beautiful about Top Chef (though fans of its host Padma Lakshmi may disagree vehemently – you know who you are!). Most cooking shows on TV are set in beautiful kitchens equipped with even more beautiful gadgets (I'm not a fan of Rachael Ray but I love her vintage orange fridge!). The presenters are good looking or at least nicely made-up and stylishly attired and the food preparation and presentation is perfect. Always. Nothing ever goes wrong. Nothing is ever out of place.

In Top Chef, the kitchens are industrial (I think they're still beautiful), the chefs are almost always sweaty and in a frenzy and they only wear their chef's whites. Pots and pans and sometimes glass bottles fall all over the place and dishes sometimes turn out disastrously. The show is stripped down.

Now, I'm not completely naive. I am aware that like all reality shows there is some level of manipulation to ensure that the show is entertaining, whether in casting the contestants or editing the footage. But on this show, audience manipulation is minimal. The focus is always on the cooking, not the drama. Sure there have been some really wacky contestants on the show (remember Marcel?), but however eccentric they may be, they're brilliant at what they do.

This is quite unlike that other reality cooking show I used to enjoy: Hell's Kitchen. You want to see drama? Watch Gordan Ramsay. The latest season of Hell's Kitchen that just concluded on Star World was unbearable – no cooking (well, hardly any), just a lot of swearing. Bleep. Bleep Bleep. Slam the door shut. Bleep some more. I stopped watching mid-way and I doubt if I'll ever tune into a Ramsay show ever. (How's that for drama?)

One reason I watch Top Chef is to be inspired. These chefs kick a$$. They are amazing. They're given a seemingly ridiculous challenge – creating an amuse-bouche (a bite-sized hors d'œuvre) using ingredients from a vending machine – and they come up with some truly mind-blowing dishes. They conceptualise, shop and cook up a six-course meal in a matter of hours. Who are these machines? What goes on in their mind? Can I be their friend?

My favourite contestant of all time is Richard Blais who was the runner-up in the fourth season of the show. He also returns in Season Eight (Top Chef: All Stars). Blais is an amazing chef who combines modern techniques (liquid nitrogen, liquid nitrogen and liquid nitrogen) to reinvent classic, time-honoured dishes without losing the integrity of the original.

Blais was undoubtedly one of the strongest contestants the show ever had and he was also one of the nicest. I could never recreate anything Blais ever made on Top Chef – heck, I can't even pronounce half of what he cooked – but I am amazed at his passion and tenacity and embarrassed that I often am too lazy to even fry an egg for dinner. - S. INDRAMALAR

I'M not much of a cook, anyone who knows me will tell you. I like to bake, I find dishwashing therapeutic and every now and again I stick my head into the fridge to see if there's anything interesting in there. But that's as far as my association with the kitchen extends. When it comes to TV cooking however, it's a completely different story. I'm a bit of a couch potato you might have guessed by now. But I seem to be doubly so when it comes to cook shows.

I can't tell you how much I love just vegging-out while Chef Michael Smith concocts all sorts of delicious meals from the stuff in his larder. I wish my larder were that neat and tidy. I wish I knew some of the names of the spices that have been lying in there for way too long (and have things growing on them ... eww). But I digress. Smith, in his Chef At Home series, always makes things look so darn simple, especially since he's only usually cooking for his wife and son. I'll watch Jamie Oliver too, but find Oliver's accent and off-kilter style a little annoying sometimes. And if I weren't a borderline diabetic, then Lawson would get more of my attention, too.

One of my favourite cook shows is Secret Meat Business, which features Australian chef and author Adrian Richardson. I suspect I watch it so I can brush up on my Aussie accent. Well, I also love meat. Richardson is the type of bloke who makes his own sausages (using equipment you can get from a hardware shop!). He apparently knows everything one needs to know about all sorts of meat – how to choose it, cut it, cook it and yes, eat it, too.

Anna Olson is another favourite simply because her kitchen just looks so inviting! Her recipes, however, are a little difficult to follow. (Any recipe for which I have to use more than three utensils immediately gets filed under "just savour what you see, don't bother attempting ... ever!")

The most exciting cook show for me though has to be Junior Masterchef (the Australian version) hands down. How absolutely fantastic that those little ones were able to cook up all those delectable offerings. Imagine having to choose your own ingredients! That would have been a difficult enough task for me, let alone making something out of them. I love that the hosts – Gary Mehigan, Anna Gare, George Calombaris and Matt Preston – have some culinary knowledge and that they play guides as much as judges.

I've actually learnt some very useful recipes (schnitzel, chicken winglet and oysters ... yeee-um) from Junior Masterchef and it helps that all the recipes and procedures are available on the Internet and can be pulled up anytime you need them.

On the odd occasion I also enjoy tuning into Restaurant Makeover, just to see how new tiles, tables, and a new menu can turn things around for places ready to go out of business.

I often wonder what the crew would do if they came to my place. Knock down the 10-year-old cupboards? Order new sink fittings? What about a brand new fridge? Bar counter with matching swivel stools? I must admit I wouldn't mind having a handyman like Igor around to get my kitchen looking ship-shape ... maybe that way I'd spend more time in it. Oh well, one can dream. - ANN MARIE CHANDY

Ann Marie and Indra leave you with a quote from Julia Child, one of TV's most entertaining cooks to date: 'One of the important requirements for learning how to cook is that you also learn how to eat.'

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Kredit: www.thestar.com.my

Isnin, 1 Ogos 2011