Thoughts on Televsion

So many people are snobs when it comes to watching television. "Oh, I never watch T.V." "It's such a waste of time." "There's never anything good on." Nonsense.

First of all, some of the best writing is on television. Gilmore Girls under Amy Sheridan-Palladino and West Wing under Aaron Sorkin were two of the best shows ever done on television. Crisp, rapid dialog along with great acting and directing made them both "must watch T.V." I've been a fan of the Law & Order franchise since it began and I do tend to watch every episode of each of them. I'll sometimes watch CSI with Len, but I rarely watch CSI: Miami and never CSI: New York.

This season's been a bit of a disappointment, but the third episode of New Amsterdam was as good as the first, with an interesting twist at the very end. I'm looking forward to next Monday. I thought that Canterbury Law has possibility (I like Juliana Margulies and Aidan Quinn), but I'm not sure I'll commit. Next week also marks the return of Big Bang Theory, a show which leaves me in stitches every time I watch it. The other two comedies I watch faithfully are Aliens in America and 30 Rock.

Now even I am a snob when it comes to "reality T.V." First of all, many of those shows are clearly written--maybe not the dialog (which would be a big improvement) but the storylines and structure clearly are. The scum-sucking weasels who are pocketing the big bucks rather than pay their writers decent wages, pension, and health should die horrible deaths and have a special place in hell reserved for them. None the less, I've mentioned before our devotion to The Amazing Race and Beauty and the Geek.

Beauty and the Geek returned last night, but the game has changed again. I'm not sure I like what they've done with it, because I really thought the pairing of the beauties with the geeks went quite well. I will say that last night's turn, where the beauties had to decide which of the geeks to send to the elimination room, worked amazingly well. The beauties decided that the guys to send were the ones who might not need the improvement skills as much as the ones they didn't pick. That was a pretty smart move on their part. I do wonder if there's some plan afoot to change things during the season though, because in the past the show eliminated a pair of contestants each week and this way they only eliminate one a week. That could add up to a 17 week season the way things appear to be structured.

I've taken a bit more of an interest in American Idol this season. I'm not sure why. Maybe I was waiting for the singers to get a chance at Lennon-McCartney tunes or maybe because it looks like they did get rid of the really marginal talents before the top 12 got down to work last night. There are more important things to me than watching the show (I slept through three of the singers on Lennon-McCartney night), but I am curious about how it works out. Although Simon Cowell doesn't need a writer, Randy and, especially, Paula could use one. Can anyone actually understand what either one of them is talking about? Last night, when asked why the songs have lasted, Randy threw in the word "copyright," but in a way that had nothing to do with what copyright means at all or what the question was. Paula couldn't express that the "risks" she was suggesting people take should have "pay-off" or "reward." She needs help with simple sentence structure. What a ditz.

I feel sorry for the girl from Oregon who sold her rodeo horse to go to the audition. She did a dreadfully rushed, country & westernized version of "Eight Days a Week" that really missed the mark. My favorite cutie with the dreds didn't do a particularly good job either. And the 16 year old favorite really fell down. Chikezie was the big surprise. I haven't been particularly impressed but he did a great job with "She's a Woman." Unlike my husband, I'm not taken with either the rocker-biker-nurse or the Irish bar maid. At least we're down to two nights a week for Idol, rather than three, from here on out.

Now for something I doubt I've mentioned before: food shows tend to be the default when nothing specific is on television (and televisions are always on in my house: my husband doesn't like quiet like I do.) Talk about reality! We get BBC America, which hooked me on Gordon Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares (and, yes, I'll probably watch Hell's Kitchen this year, which I haven't in the past) and now we're enthralled by Last Restaurant Standing.

Cooking shows are not a new thing for us to watch. We used to lay in bed on Saturday mornings watching cooking shows on PBS like the Frugal Gourmet and Yan Can Cook back before there was a Food Network. Now, my husband records every episode of Rachael Ray and buys all of her books. It's improved his kitchen repertoire beyond belief. He does resent that it takes him about 90 minutes to make one of her 30 Minute Meals, but he's resigned to it. The knife skills class I sent him and my son to last year hasn't improved his speed, just his technique.

We were watching some show one Saturday night on the topic of camenbert cheese, looked at each other, hit the record button and ran out to Trader Joe's and Whole Foods to secure a lovely arrangement of cheese, fruit, bread and crackers for dinner. We came back home and ate while we watched the rest of the show. Talk about the power of suggestion.

We started watching Iron Chef back when it was only available on the Japanese language television channel out here. Its migration to the Food Network was inspired. We really enjoy the American version (much better once they got rid of William Shatner) and I can't wait to try Michael Symon's restaurant the next time I am in Cleveland. I've been begging for dinner out at Mario Batali's Mozza since it opened last year. (Batali's partner in this venture, Nancy Silverton, is my own personal baking goddess. I worked my way through her bread book, beginning with making a sour dough starter from my home-grown grapes and doing all of the extended proofing required for her recipes. I don't have the time for this anymore, unfortunately.)

Although I don't get to watch many shows, I find Alton Brown's Good Eats fascinating. I bought my son both of his books, since Michael is into many things science. I've been trying to catch Jamie Oliver's new series which features food from his cottage garden, but I forget to schedule the recording. There's no Italian cooking show I really like right now. Giada doesn't do it for me. She's no Marcella Hazan, whose books are my Italian cooking bibles. I find Bobby Flay annoying. Ditto Paula Dean (but I enjoyed her sons' eating on the road show.) Emeril is always entertaining, but I know that I've got a two-day tolerance for the heaviness of New Orleans cooking.

I hear Top Chef is back with a new season tonight.

Back in the Kitchen

On Thursday morning, I watched the woman driving the car in front of me blow-dry her hair all the way from where I pull out of our cul-de-sac to the college campus. Multitasking at its finest. At least she wasn't on the freeway, where I've seen even worse.

In my effort to keep my kitchen somewhat tidy before I have to go into a panic the day before Thanksgiving, I've been going through the containers which were in the back yard for most of the past six months and sorting the contents to get rid of the duplicates (if Len can't find something, he never asks; he just goes out and buys another one) and the stuff that doesn't work.

I've got more sets of measuring cups and spoons than I can count. Many are plastic and have developed stains and tackiness that are best dealt with by throwing them in the trash. I just bought a good, heavyweight set of metal measuring cups which have no place for crud to build up and I'd like to find a replacement for my Tupperwear dry-measure cups which have the in-between sizes. Maybe if I go to the Rose Bowl Flea Market on Sunday I can score it. I reconfigured a couple of sets of measuring spoons and have the rest set to go away. I've gotten rid of all of the stained and melted plastic spoons which seem to be replacing good old wooden spoons. When I wasn't looking, Len went out and bought a number of plastic cutting boards and every time I try to get rid of the one shaped like a Scottish Terrier, he retrieves it. I've still got one more paper bag to go through and I just hope that my cleaning lady doesn't think she's doing me a favor by going through it and hiding stuff all over my kitchen for me. I need to have a yard sale or have my son move out to a place I can outfit for him.

Sometime in the last year, I felt the need to replace the Fry Daddy we had. The non-stick had partially peeled away and it seemed like a bad idea to use it any more. So I went off to Bed, Bath, and Beyond with a 20% off coupon (which I collect like crazy) and found a nice little number from Cuisinart. It got taken out of its box for the first time last night and it will now go into a much smaller space.

As part of the pre-Thanksgiving prep, I'm trying to get rid of stuff in the fridge and freezer, so last night's dinner was frozen fish and French fries. I have to say frozen French fries taste a whole lot better when they are fried than when they are cooked in the oven. The new deep-fryer did a great job on them.

Maybe I'll use the fryer for some of the traditional Italian Christmas sweets that I usually don't make like chichi cookies that have a sweet chick-pea filling and look like fried ravioli or the cone-shaped tower of fried dough with honey syrup and sprinkles called struffoli. The Christmas after my father died, I sat in the kitchen and watched my mother make all of the traditional Italian sweets and made notes in the margins of the recipes I had written out so the actual ingredients and amounts matched what she was doing and not what was written down. I've had a lot more success with the family recipes in the years since then than I did before.

The pre-holiday attack on the kitchen was also precipitated by a search for a special cupcake sheet that was given to me last year. It has many of the shapes of the Nordic Bundt cake molds reduced to cupcake or petits fours size. I searched literally high and low and began to panic that somehow it had gone missing when stored outside during the reconstruction (which is still not finished.) After two weeks of looking, I found it when I sat down on the floor to open my cookie sheet storage boxes once again, and there it was tucked high on top of one I could not see except by sitting on the floor. I was greatly relieved to find it.

I saw some really large baking sheets and a 24 hole cupcake sheet at Smart and Final the other night. I would never be able to use them in my wall oven, but the new oven could easily accommodate the big sheets and I could make a whole lot more cookies in less time that way. If I can figure out where to store them, I might just indulge myself. Parchment and heavy-duty shiny pans are much better for baking than dark, non-stick pans are.

Out of the Kitchen and into the Back Yard

My husband's birthday was last week, so I tried to come up with something different to celebrate. I had sent Len and my son off to a cooking lesson--actually, a knife-skills lesson--earlier this year and they both had a great time. Since Len enjoys cooking but isn't the most adventurous eater and would probably not sign up for a class on his own, it seemed like a good idea to hire someone to come to the house and lead a cooking lesson. To keep things manageable, I was only able to invite eight other people, so I hope our left-out friends aren't too offended.

I asked Tory Davis if she'd be willing to do the cooking lesson at my house. We met Tory at a party a few months back and I've been enjoying her food blog since then (it's linked in the list on the right side of the page.) Tory writes for Bon Appetite, teaches cooking classes, and works as a kitchen coach. She's wearing the red and pink apron in the pictures.

The theme we went with was "You Can Grill That?" since all men like to cook outdoors. She put together a great menu, which included grilling pizza, salad, fish tostadas, and dessert. In the third photo, you can see the pizzas being grilled on one side. After they were turned over, the chopped topping, consisting of tomatoes, basil, feta cheese, kalamata olives, oil, and a few other things, is laid over the top and the grill is closed just long enough to melt the cheese. It doesn't take very long to make pizza this way.

Two kinds of pizza dough were provided, courtesy of my friend Karen who is a recovering attorney planning to open a bakery. She brought the freshly rising dough on flat sheets from her house in South Cathay and it smelled wonderful. After we made the pizzas with the topping Tory directed us in preparing, Karen experimented with some other toppings, including oil with herbs and different kinds of cheeses from the appetizer platter Tory set out. That's Karen at the grill in the cap with Tory and Kathy the doctor's wife (in red) and our friend Darla in the background in the middle photograph.

I think all ten of us were amazed that the dough didn't just drip onto the burners, but it didn't. If I ever have an opportunity to do some Indian cooking (Len has a bad reaction to the spices in it, so it's not likely), this is clearly the way to make naan.

The party was a huge success. The guest list consisted of the friends who come over to watch the Amazing Race and other friends who are foodies and love to cook. I invited everyone to bring their own aprons, knives and cutting boards, and most of the guests did. Tory provided for those who didn't.

I didn't tell Len what was going on before hand, only that I had something planned for Saturday night. I sent him to the back of the house until everyone arrived, then I brought him out, everyone yelled happy birthday and we explained what was going on: that everyone would participate in making dinner. He said "cool," and was particularly thrilled when I presented him with a toque and bistro apron to wear. He loves hats and costumes. He's working on chopping skills with our friends Michael the lawyer and Michael the doctor/movie producer in the picture where Tory is in the background in the first photograph.

We had a very pleasant evening to do this outside and each course proceeded at a leisurely pace. Except that I had gotten up early to make sure that all of the outdoor furniture was cleaned up, the lawn was clear of dog debris, and we had all of the paper and plastic ware we needed to eat on, I didn't have to do any of the prep. Tory did the shopping and brought just about everything necessary to pull this off. She even cleaned up afterwards and didn't complain about the half-finished state of the kitchen. (The unfinished shelves provided handy temporary storage for items that needed to be close-by but not yet needed. Karen was thrilled to have a place for the dough to safely sit while rising.)

I hated to limit the number of friends I could invite, but the size of the group worked well together, and I didn't get in each others ways. The feedback from everyone has been just great. Everyone liked the concept and the execution. I'd be more than willing to do another evening like this at the house if everyone who wanted to do it paid for themselves--that is, once my kitchen is finished. It's like going to a cooking lesson at Sur La Table or Williams Sonoma without the parking hassles.