Well Preserved

The combination of 9 days in a hotel room and the complications of a 5-hour time difference which makes me feel I should be sleeping when I am working and awake when I am lying in bed tend to lead to higher than normal consumption of television.  As a creature of habit, I tend to find myself looking for anything to do with food and am consistently surprised that he relatively small amount of channels produce consistently interesting content.

Saturday Kitchen Live is a fantastic example.

A 10-minute view of a 2-hour episode wouldn`t show anything outstanding.  Watching an entire episode will reveal something larger than what is on the surface.

The show is hosted by James Martin and revolves around his kitchen with a live studio-audience.  Yesterday`s 200th episode focussed on James and 3 guests (2 were chefs of significance and 1 was more of a celebrity).  Each took turns cooking a dish and sharing stories.  The dishes were`t exactly pedestrian – one prepared a loin of venison while another brought his own tandoori oven and he  casually discussed the benefits of charcoal vs. electric tandoori ovens if you were to go through the expense of buying one for home.  When the local celebrity cooked for the chefs it was refreshing to see a lack of `yumm-os`as they begrudgingly rated his souffle a 6-0f-10.

The panel of chefs partake in a competition that spans the entire series to see how long it takes them to cook a 3-egg omelette.  Your time is recorded on a wall of fame with all of the others who have completed the task to-date.  To be amongst the best you have to complete your challenge in under 20 seconds.

The show periodically cuts to vignettes that form a show-within-a-show.  The small sessions are a reality show which feature chefs cooking in a competition similar to Top Chef.  There is a not-so-subtle focus on local ingredients which includes revealing the percentage of local ingredients in each dish.

As the chefs cook, the scene cuts out to pre-recordings of local wine experts who are tasked with selecting a wine pairing (which is not-so-local) to do with the dish that they select.  The pairings are generally very affordable and defended in such a way that you can legitimately learn how to make your own pairings.

Small cut-aways are also made to reveal the manufacturing of ingredients (such as fish sauce in the latest episode).  These segments resemble cooking shows which reveal `how did they make that`combined with featuring an ingredient viewers may not be familiar with.  The recent episode also featured the cultural significance and nutritional importance of fish sauce in Cambodia.  It`s a bit of a travel show wrapped inside of `how did they make that`inside a studio cooking show.

There is also a call-in segment as well where the audience can interact with the chefs…

I suppose the show is a bit like the Turducken of food shows.

An episode does come across logically and doesn`t feel frenetic.  There are pieces I really love and pieces I could do without but that`s the beauty of the show.  You can see a full episode at the link above (or here).