Archive for the 'Cooking on TV' Category

Quick note! Based on my writing articles on television shows including now reviewing tv shows such as this cooking show roundup here I’ve decided to do a second new blog!

While you’ll still find new recipes with photos as well as articles on cooking right here at cooking @ home, you can find new television show reviews as well as the latest news on your favorite cooking show host, tv cook, and celebrity chef. We’re covering their shows, their cookbooks, their travels, their new restaurants and even any cookware or spice or sauce they come out with. So whether it’s Gordon Ramsay or Rachael Ray, Guy Fieri or Wolfgang Puck, you’ll find all your favorite celeb chefs at the brand new TV Chefs Blog.

Today I look at the latest new food and cooking shows of this winter season. Give a nod to some of the best shows that have been on a while, and look forward to the first signs of Spring. Seems Punxsutawney Phil came out of his burrow, saw his shadow made by a creme brulee torch, and predicted two of our top favorite shows will be returning in just a few weeks.

Oh and with this article, I start the first ever reviews complete a star rating system. That said, let’s begin with the latest crop of new programs. Are they feast or famine?

Read the rest of this entry »

©2008 Harry Kenney

Wolfgang is Back!

… with his show simply called Wolfgang Puck. Now I have to admit I missed the first few of the new shows already. Because, quite candidly, not watching too much Fine Living (FL) channel, I see only a few of their commercials. In short I had no idea it existed until several days into it’s run.

Ok, wait, this isn’t a knock on the FL channel as I do watch several of their shows, it’s just fewer shows than the Food Network (FN) as FL does a variety of programming, most of which I’m not as interested in. That said, their take on food and beverage, the shows they’ve come up with often show even more innovation than FN does. Let me save this for later below and get back to “Wolfy”.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Food Network (FN) is a strange animal. I liken it to my cat. My cat does what she wants. She’s sweet one moment, a disaster the next. She shows surprising brilliance usually as well as amazing acrobatic skills. At other times she takes her favorite little ball and purposely sticks it under the sofa and pushes it so far in so she can no longer get to it any more, to her own detriment. She’ll also make a jump from the floor up to the window, a move she’s done thousands of times, and every once in a while inexplicably misshoot it and fall to the ground dazed. Silly cat!

She’s often entertaining, my cat, and overall I do adore her. But quite often she gets in wild and weird moods, running around the house super fast and going no where, scratching things she shouldn’t. and behaving in ways just plain annoying and which make me wonder just what is going through that furry little mind of hers.

Read the rest of this entry »

Time to go around the “dial” — remember when televisions had dials? or am I dating myself again” — and look at what’s happening and what’s worth watching in television food land.

The Next Iron Chef Finale

First to mention, as it’s a limited series and about to end tomorrow in fact is The Next Iron Chef. In two previous articles I’ve mentioned some of the “bad” or annoying that’s happened on the show. The behind the scenes and little known blunders created by the production team that put the competing chefs through hell as well as how later the judges seemed to think they were on another show where the idea was to change the essence of who each chef is. And while those were indeed valid revelations and criticisms, I probably wouldn’t have written about them unless on some level I cared. And indeed I do.

Read the rest of this entry »

Now that we’re at the half way point of the mini — repeat, very mini — series known as the six episodes of The Next Iron Chef (NIC) … cheers and jeers. As you can expect, the cheers go to the chefs, the jeers to the judges.

First my picks. It’s so much my own fault I didn’t say this prior to episode one when their were eight contenders, or even last week; saying it now, big deal, two out of four you’ll say. Anyhow, I do say now (and this hasn’t changed since the start, really) I think it’s going to be Besh or Symon. Again, thought so before it started, but only I know I’m telling you the truth here.

Read the rest of this entry »

… or “The Continued Unreality of Reality Television”

Reality television and behind the scenes manipulation by a program’s production staff has become a more common thing as time goes on. British television audiences in particular have been hit hard by this, in degrees from simple “staging” such as Nigella Lawson’s kitchen not being in her own house, all the way up to the “Blue Peter” double-whammy scandals.

Here in the US, the worse that we know of in recent times would be the “Man vs Wild” major fakes from adding smoke machines to a not-so-active volcano summit to the host actually sleeping in motels overnight — instead of in the wild. And that brings us to the latest manipulation. Although not a fake and not a fix in any sense — and therefore seeming at first glance to be a “lesser sin” — these particular production manipulations instead actually influenced and most likely altered the results of an on-air competition, as well as discredited a highly-held institution, and worse of all sent one contestant to the hospital.

Read the rest of this entry »

I feel like I wasted half a year in many respects. It all came down to Dale, Casey and Hung. In order, likeable guy, likeable gal, and the number one most disliked person ever to be in a reality series. The Top Chef jury went for Hung.

Obviously Hung would never win a popularity contest. He would also never win “Mr. Congeniality”. This surprises no one. He wasn’t judged on that. Nor was anyone else. It was cooking.

Read the rest of this entry »

… Well, just because you did, that does not mean you should.

Hey, we all love our television cooks. We really do. I’m addicted for sure watching the various cooking shows out there. There’s never been so much info out there. So many different personalities, cooking styles, cooking shows. It’s definitely a golden age. (Who ever thought there would be a summer cooking movie? And yet there are two out!)

But there is a problem or two. First, we tend to forget they’re human and can make mistakes too — though they rarely ever show it. So we think everything they’re doing is perfect. Especially since they can edit and cut and mix and toss away mistakes and reshoot. Children of television as we are, we are all well aware of the production process, however just as we make the mistake of thinking the cooks are perfect (and not regular people), we also figure since the show got all the way onto the air that it’s perfect and caught everything too.

Read the rest of this entry »

I love and I hate this show sometimes. I’m talking about the current season of “Top Chef” shown on Bravo. Make that shown and shown and reshown and shown again so much on Bravo that it’s beginning to appear the have only one show in their lineup. Enough with reruns of the reruns all week

From what I’m seeing, the judging is all over the place lately. This week, with Tre, I hate to admit it, but they were 100% correct. Did Tre have a bad night, yes. How bad? Three items bad. What about last week? I recall the over-smoked potatoes and something else wrong. That’s two weeks in a row, not one.

Read the rest of this entry »