Nigel Slater is proud to be a cook – he clearly states he is no chef.  This appears to be his ultimate branding and is the consistent offering in his TV shows, cookbooks and food novels.  Even the title of his autobiography avoids much pretense and does not sound like the proclamations of a Chef: Toast.

Slater is, however, about real flavors. He is also an avid gardener.  Nigel Slater’s Simple Suppers bridges both of these loves and creates  a mashup of a gardening show (without how-tos), Chef at Home (for Canadian reference), Jamie Oliver’s Cooking at Home, a bit of Lynn Crawford’s Pitchin’ In (another Canadian Reference) and something all his own.

The show demonstrates recipes as general ideas for cooking with flavor and each episode covers a weeks worth of eating.  This small sequence which is an opening of an episode will give a far better idea of the show than simply reading my rehash of it (time for pictures to speak louder than words):

Slater has a genuine school-boy charm and excitement about food and sharing his knowledge and flavors with others.  His excitement is rather engaging and his presentation consistently challenges you to try simple flavor combinations with what you have in your kitchen (or garden).

I found myself actually salivating at the premise of pan frying a small brick of feta cheese until it warmed up (the goal was not to brown it) and then covering it in thyme and fresh hot peppers.  I have never thought of this combination and feel a little desperate to try it – simple but exciting as a lover of spicy flavors and a good tangy feta.

Beyond the food, the quality of the camera work is simply stunning as is the graphic treatment through the show (I couldn’t find the closing credits that I wanted to share here).  It’s remarkable to see that even the graphic design team is credited – there has been a significant investment ensuring the show looks as good as it appears to taste.

…isn`t about local food.  But it really has taught me a massive amount about local food.

The show is sort of a documentary, part reality (in truly the best sense) and part educational.  I haven`t seen the entire thing but I can`t reccomend it highly enough.

Turn Back Time: The High Street is a six episode mini-series takes a few UK families and pits them as shopkeepers on a real street in the UK – though the 6 episode cover how their business would grow, succeed, shrink and struggle from the 1870s to the 1970s. Each episode picks a decade and the show demonstrates how the local shopkeeper and their emphasis on service and relationships got replaced by a search for lower prices and cheaper fare.

One of the most amazing facts that I learned was that shops had controlled prices until 1964.  When the UK decided to allow shop keepers to set their own prices (largely in response to large supermarkets), the small shop keepers started a quick demise.  The documentary sees local shop keepers (with real stores and real customers) experience the struggles and success that their real-life predecessors experienced 50 years ago.  It’s stunning to see people near tears as their local store closes down due to lack of business – even though they had stopped supporting them in exchange for lower prices.

There’s a lot of food in the show too.  The decline of the butcher, rationing during war-time and even the first imports of delicacies from far away.  There is a balanced story telling which shares the excitement of the arrival of new foods (like olive oil and garlic) with the impact on the local food supply, the demise of the butcher and the overall culture of a community which is replaced by commodity.

This fantastical trailer is fun though is nothing like the show (You-Tube has many clips):

The BBC is taking the experiment on tour.  Towns across the UK are being visited by “pop up” stores from across history.  People can interact with “shop keepers” and draw their own conclusions to where we’ve arrived – and where we could be.

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).

Every once in a while you witness something that your brain can`t process.

Bitchin` Kitchen is a web-based cooking show and channel.  You can find them here – including a tonne of their videos.  I`ve watched several – they are not conservative, perhaps not for the entire family but mostly tongue-in-cheek humour and some cooking undertones (that was also tongue-in-cheek – there is actually some serious cooking advice here as well).

Although there is an affiliation with the Food Network I haven`t seen any sign of this show on it – perhaps it`s still on it`s way to our Northern Clime.  Then again, the bios do seem to point me to the fact that these dudes are actually Canadian (they are based out of Montreal) and the more I read, the more I wonder if I`m actually the last person on the Internet to discover them.

I really like that they are doing something different – I also love the branding of the entire thing.  A skull pierced with a fork and knife, pink kitchen and sketch humour that they bring into each episode is a lot of fun and something different.

You can follow them on Twitter here.

The concept is simple.  Download a shopping list and turn on your television and cookalong with Gordon Ramsay for 1-hour.

Here’s a promo that ran in the UK last year – it’s worth the watch (almost a hybrid of a commercial for a cooking show and You Think You Can Dance).  You will have to click the link to see it as the BBC has requested that YouTube restrict people from embedding it (just click the video below and a link will appear to take you there):

Most of the episodes are on YouTube and the  Internet but I’m hooked.  Perhaps all of that work travel I’m doing in Scotland is starting to affect me but I am actually quite excited.

Look for the Food Network and Global (CanWest) to be launching this series shortly (ads are already appearing as we write this).  Thanks to Terry S. for the tip – I’ll be jumping on board and maybe even cooking along.

Chanel 4in the UK has its own YouTube Chanel to feature the best chefs on its network.  Gordon Ramsay, Jamie Oliver, Heston Blumenthal and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall are all there – on demand and free. 

There are really great videos including some very short how to cook pieces by Ramsay like this one:

They have some of their more radical pieces such as clips from Jamie Saves our Bacon and Chicken, Hugh and Tesco Too:

And of course my favorite mad scientist checks in:

The videos are high quality and are quick clips that offer a full story in minutes – the ultimate food network for those with short attention spans!

Ahhhh, the British.  I love them.  I thought they took the cake on weight loss shows when they came out with the bizarre concept called, Fat Teens Can’t Hunt.  I couldn’t make this up if I tried.

Why are Thin People Not Fat?  I thought it was because they are less calories or perhaps were more active.  Maybe they were allergic to poutine (I, most certainly, am not).  The concept is just as it seems – 10 people have 30 days to consume as much as they possibly can to get as fat as they can and see what we learn.  There are limits – it is declared that gaining more than 15% would simply be unethical.

It is eerily chilly as they refer to this as an overeating experiment and create rules such as insisting they restrict their walking to less than 5,000 steps.  I suppose it’s not that far off Supersize Me and there may be some validity here and we learn that this type of thing has been going on quietly for years.  A study conducted in a Vermont State Prison offered an incentive of an early release to those who willingly gained 25% of their body weight in a controlled experiment.  Several were not able to, leading to a theory (that is very, very disputed) that we all have a natural weight that we can exhibit limited control over. 

They also start to claim that obesity could be an infection/virus that can be spread.  It becomes similar to a Michael Moore flick – you hope it’s not true, you feel like they are trying too hard to sell you, you doubt yourself for even considering the possibility but recognize it might just be true.  A single Doctor claiming he has proven this by studying 1,000 obese people is not necessarily a strong pool (i.e. where’s the proof that the thin people don’t have it) – but I clearly have not idea what is a scientific proof.  When he claims that being near fat people could give you the disease for only 3 months and people indeed get obese for other reasons…well my eyebrow started to raise.

Further bad news?  Chocolate is a great way to gain weight – you can eat a giant amount of calories without feeling full.  I think cheese might be related to chocolate for me…

At the heart of the concept is a fascinating study and some possible discouraging news in understanding we might have less control than others over our weight (the Law of Thermodynamics).  Don’t dispair – ultimately this is saying it may be more difficult for some of us to lose weight than others – you can choose that as validation for your state (and mine) or accept that life is not fair and we have certain odds stacked against them. 

The disadvantage of the skinny is that they have a very difficult time eating things they don’t need.  In other words, they could have the most wonderful bite of a lovely thing and get stuck – want more but feel not able to consume.  Like people trying to lose weight, they can force themselves to eat more but the effort is conscious and uncomfortable.

I suppose we all have our own challenges – I really think I’d struggle with keeping weight off and anjoying more when I find a great thing than the inverse.

I am sure Dana will post on the virtues of Cadbury in the UK compared to what we receive in North America.  Good Chocolate is a passion of hers – I love a bit in my chili!

Cadbury has a series of commericals that I’ve seen on my visit to the UK that have to be seen to be believed:

They claim to be part of A Glass and a Half Productions.  Check them out – and the website.  I love it!

******

(from Dana). I had to add to this post. These spots are fantastic, they hold your attention all the way through wondering what the heck they are advertising…and when they finally reveal it, you realize you’ve known all along. Talk about an “ah-ha!” moment, and a great example of the power of having a strong color associated with your brand. Purple has long been associated with royalty and nobility, initially because purple dyes were so expensive that only the ‘upper class’ elites could afford anything of that color, so it’s fitting that a chocolate endorsed by the queen herself (more on that later) has appointed the regal color to it’s brand. I love how they’ve used it in the airport vehicle spot, subtly but consistently throughout…underlighting! haha. The spots are also a great example of having a broad, all encompassing tagline. “A glass and a half of Joy” can apply to any number of things…drumming gorillas, odd eybrow breakdancing tweens and airport vehicle drag racing….but the tagline and the color are the thread holding it all together. 

now i’m craving chocolate, thanx.

THIS series looks like fun, “The Great British Food Fight” is a series of programs where some of Britains best known chef’s “will be celebrating the best of British food and exploring issues around animal welfare in a number of hard-hitting films.” (from the website). 

Obviously I haven’t seen the show, but I read about it on another blog post, the review is funny, go check it out.

I’m sure the food network will pick up some of the shows. Love the spot channel 4 did to promote the show.

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