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Gary350
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TV Cooking Shows.

How many of you watch TV cooking shows. Winter is a good time to watch these I need something to do besides, computer & other TV.

At the moment I am watching, The Great American Baking Show. British people have a lot of amazing pastries that I would probably never take the time to make but it gives me ideas and it is fun to watch. Tonight they are making chocolate cake. I learned too much sugar kills the chocolate flavor. You want lingering chocolate flavor in your mouth not sugar flavor.

Cook Country is good, Milk Street is good, Martha Stewart is good, Rachael Ray is good, and German food is good. The french guy is good sometimes. The Cajun guy is good sometimes too. I never like the Italian woman she cooks lots of pasta I don't eat much pasta.

I like The Taste of India on YouTube, I am trying to learn how to cook better India food. I also watch, Mexican & Chinese cooking. Nice thing about YouTube after watching a few food cooking video lots of random other food cooking videos come up then I get to see how to cook lots of things I would never think of. I like to watch bread making videos too.

Herbs & Spices are the hardest thing for me to get to make some of these foods. Last night I made Martha Stewart's meatloaf she must have gotten her recipe from my Grandmother. It has been many years since I made Grandmothers meat loaf it brings back lots of good memories. A 1 lb meat loaf has 1/2 C shredded carrots, 1/2 cup peas, 1 T Italian seasoning, 1 T Dijon mustard, 1/2 cup cracker crumbs, 1 large onion, 2 cloves garlic, 1/4 cup catsup, 2 T dark brown sugar, 1 egg, mix well then 1/2 cup catsup on top the meat loaf before baking then bake 375 for 45 min.

I saw this chocolate cake on Milk Street, mine did not turn out as beautiful as their cake but it sure does taste good.
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Last edited by Gary350 on Fri Dec 13, 2019 2:43 pm, edited 3 times in total.

imafan26
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Most of the shows are more about games than cooking. I do watch youtube video's I like Hot Thai Kitchen/Pai's Kitchen, Grandpa Kitchen, Julia Child (The episode where the chicken slipped and landed on the floor was priceless. )

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applestar
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Long time ago, my favorite cooking show was Frugal Gourmet with Jeff Smith. DH and I used to watch Two Fat Ladies together, and the Japanese Iron Chef.

I haven’t been watching them lately though. My problem with watching realistic cooking shows is I want to make what they are making. And when they start using esoteric ingredients (rare, super high quality) or fancy equipment, there is only so much I can do and then I get depressed about it ... we’ll not that bad but the cooking process and results don’t give me as much pleasure.

Something else I enjoy but stop watching for same reasons are Japanese anime about cooking and chefs. “Shokugeki” and “Oishinbo” are two of my current favorites.

pepperhead212
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Gary,

If you are interested in Indian cooking shows, check out
Healthful Indian Cooking, with Alemelu, on youtube. This is a great show that used to be on PBS here, and all of the shows are on youtube. Another great show is Entrée To Asia, which is on youtube.
These shows are of SE Asia, and are some of the best food shows I've seen.
https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLw ... 7qic-z4v7J

https://m.youtube.com/results?search_qu ... th+alamelu

I watch some of the shows on tv, but most are re-runs from way back. Rick Bayless is a favorite, and some of Yan's shows have been really good (this season he's concentrating on Szechwan cuisine, which is a favorite of mine). Milk Street is good, too, and some of ATK and Cooks Country are good sometimes, and I like their testings on foods and tools.

Fortunately, though you may have trouble finding spices and other ingredients locally, anything can be found online now! Indian cooking, especially, requires a lot of unique spices. I am lucky to have some Indian grocers around here, but I have ordered a number of things on ebay, directly from India! A couple of the things I couldn't even find in the large, Indian supermarket, but also a few items that were MUCH fresher, than anything that I got locally, despite the rapid turnover at the local stores. And the prices were even cheaper!

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digitS'
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I just baked a big batch of cookies. Yes, watching the cooking shows inspire me but much of what I'm doing is simply being entertain.

The British baking show makes me a little nervous. Competition! I identify with those winners and losers and don't really see myself using the recipes. You do good work, Gary. Me? I'm likely to be eliminated in the first round!

The Mexican Table is entertaining. Anytime that the chefs go off visiting, I'm enjoying it. Some teevee chefs don't seem to me to be all that good of cooks. Sometimes, I'm afraid they dumb-down their recipes, too much. But, look at me! I want to have ideas of what I can do -- mostly with garden produce -- and it better not look too difficult or I ain't gonna try it!

Simplicity. When we aren't very skilled, don't have a huge pantry to draw from, mostly want to please immediate family - keep it simple. It can be very good.

This pumpkin cookie recipe was about as complex as I want to go. 14 ingredients! It's from the Food Network: link. I don't watch their shows but choose their online recipes fairly often. I knew that I had to jazz it up because, I was using a Jack o'lantern pumpkin and flavor would suffer if'n I didn't.

I will continue to use the remaining 2 extra pumpkins that weren't required for scaring trick-or-treaters. Three went downstairs and, hopefully, can be used over about the next 12 weeks. I have found that these ordinary Jack o'lantern pumpkins keep as well as the winter squash that I can have on my basement shelves and, dog-on-it, they grow and mature better in my garden. The squash had a tough 2019 with the weather. There are still 4 down there - but we like winter squash! Still, I'll turn some of the pumpkin into my Pumpkin Bread that I bake every year. Once again, there is some complexity to the flavors and will be okay, even if my last Buttercup would have been a better choice.

Now, if I just had some garden fresh tomatoes and basil for a quiche.

Steve

gumbo2176
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Living in New Orleans has the local PBS station showing Paul Prudhomme, Kevin Belton, John Folse and the occasional old show with Justin Wilson.

On HGTV there's several that I can watch like "Yan Can Cook" dealing with mostly Asian style stuff, Nick Stellino or Mary Ann Esposito who are cooking Italian dishes for the most part, Cook Country with a blend of many different cuisines, Steven Raichen (sp?) who is always grilling or smoking something every episode, Jacques Pepin cooking many French and American style food and many others dealing with Mexican, Indian, French cuisine

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Gary350
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Last night I accidentally found a TV show on PBS channel about Nigerian food it turned out to be very educational. African slaves were brought to this country at ports along the coast in several places. Huston TX & New Orleans were big slave trading ports. Slave owners allowed slaves to grow their own garden & cook their own food it saved the owners $$$ not to be feeding slaves. Slave food became very popular among the whiteys over the years. Black eye peas were originally cattle food but slaves learned to cook them better than burble hull peas. I have always thought Louisiana Creole food came from the French people but that is not true it came from the slaves. There are several different types of Creole food it depends on what region of Africa the salves came from. Family recipes are all slightly different TV show said, we know what part of Africa slaves came from by how they cook. The TV show was about eating at the top 10 Nigerian food restaurants in Huston TX and learning how they cook. WOW their food looks so good it makes me want to spend several weeks in Huston so we can eat in every one of the 29 Nigerian restaurants. I did Google search Nashville TN has 3 Nigerian restaurants 1 is on south side of town about 30 minute drive for us. This TV show will probably be on again several times in the next few weeks on PBS channel I can't remember if the program name was, American Experience or Independent Lens, look for it on your TV guide if your interested. I see on Antenna TV Guide Independent Lens is on again tomorrow in Nashville 3 pm and American experience is on again at 12 am. OH I just now learned if I click American Experience a list comes up that shows, several different programs come on over & over day after day for a week. Where every you live you should be able find this TV show some time during the day or night this week. I tried to make notes watching the cooking show but there was no recipes just a list of how some foods are cooked so that will be trial & error cooking for me. Then I did YouTube search for Nigerian cooking and found several so later today or tonight I will we watching some of the Nigerian cooking videos.

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The British Baking show is popular at my house. :)

I prefer reading recipes online from sites that seem authentic.

So I avoid sites like AllRecipes that tend to focus on "easy" but not necessarily authentic.

Right now I'm on an Asian cooking kick and have been making recipes from two sites, one that's called TheWoksofLife.com and another called KoreanBapsang.com.

The first site is by an Asian American family that put the site toegether. The other one is by a Korean grandma who is sharing her family recipes. I've learned so much the past couple months!



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