Review: Indian Food Made Easy
I finally got a little more quality time with the Cooking Channel so I am attempting to review several of the shows I have not seen yet. This time around Indian Food Made Easy.
Last summer I reviewed the other Indian cuisine show on the Cooking Channel, Spice Goddess with Bal Arneson (HERE) and Food Network Star winner Aarti Sequeira’s TV adaptation of her long running web series Aaarti Party (HERE) for the big network. I was impressed with how each weaved Indian flavors in to more Westerns menus.
Anjum Anand does no such thing on Indian Food Made Easy. Her recipes are purely Indian. According to the Cooking Channel web site, “Food writer and chef Anjum Anand is passionate about Indian cooking, and she is on a mission to show exactly how simple it is to cook delicious, healthy Indian food at home.”
Like Spice Goddess this show is another outsourced venture, this time from the BBC. It falls into exactly what you expect from British cooking shows a pleasant, knowledgeable host, a kitschy style, mediocre cinematography, muted colors but all-and-all a good viewing experience (think everything you’ve seen from Jamie Oliver or Nigella Lawson).
I find that I enjoy watching Anjum Anand a little better than Bal Arneson but not quite as much as Aarti Sequeira. Like Arneson she is a very successful cookbook author with four books to her credit, including the partner book to the TV series conspicuously entitled Indian Food Made Easy (available at amazon). I appreciate how Anjum takes the viewer outside of the kitchen and actually instructs them on the various spices used in Indian cuisine by visiting markets and specialty shops. Again this is another common element of a BBC show.
If you are interested in Indian food but have found it intimidating than this is a good show to walk you through masala mine field. Indian Food Made Easy airs Sundays at 1pm ET on the Cooking Channel.
Graham Kerr the Galloping Gardener?
Some 20 years ago, having learned that his high fat, high calorie cooking style was killing his wife Graham Kerr changed his approach. Known to the world as the Galloping Gourmet, Kerr was famous for making classic French cuisine layered in butter, cream and fatty cuts of red meat. Weight Watchers actually declared him public enemy #1, an amazing display of hypocrisy when you consider the toxicity of their diet food.
In 1993, he published Graham Kerr’s Minimax Cookbook and in the blink of an eye invented something brand new – healthy food that also tasted good. Prior to that people were faced with either enjoying their food or enduring it. Kerr refused to believe that low fat, low calorie food had to be low flavor as well. “Minimax” quite simply means minimize the fat and calories and maximize the flavor.
Two decades and two dozen books later, Chef Kerr has created a craze. He is almost single-handedly responsible for the popularity of extra virgin olive oil in this country. And a legion of talented chefs have followed in his footsteps like Nathan Lyon, Jamie Oliver and Susan Irby to further explore the world of healthy, tasty food.
However, Chef Kerr has not ceased his own explorations. With the ever deteriorating food system in this country thanks to factory farming and genetically modified foods the next logical step would being growing his own food. These days the fictional world of Mad Max doesn’t seem as far fetched as it once did. It only makes sense to safeguard oneself against the tribulations of hyper-inflation or the fall of western civilization.
More and more people are starting their own gardens. Count Graham Kerr among the lot. “Why?” you may ask. In Kerr’s own words:
In my long career as a gourmet/nutrition teacher I have cooked just about everything that grows, but I’ve never grown a thing I’ve cooked. So I got to thinking about the earth-to-table process. I decided to go back to the starting line and run the whole race from the beginning.
Kerr’s newest work Growing at the Speed of Life: A Year in the Life of My First Kitchen Garden is an instruction manual to taking what you eat back from a corrupt government and the agribusiness giants that control it. Though it contains a hundred recipes it is not a cookbook.
Growing at the Speed of Life shows you with great detail and illustration exactly what Kerr did to construct a garden that is brilliant in its design. The garden is a model of sustainable, organic efficiency. Kerr describes what he did and eloquently explains why he did it.
Additionally Kerr has compiled an extensive catalog of virtually every edible botanical on the planet. He not only describes its flavor and nutritional value but he also suggests pairings and preparation techniques. This is also where the recipes come in; they demonstrate the variety of flavors available to someone with a proper garden. I’ve never scene such a comprehensive guide to fruits and vegetables.
I have been highly impressed by the attention to detail in this book. Each process is described so that you can understand not only how to do something a certain way but why that way works. It has inspired me to try and start my own garden this spring. If I can grown my own produce between that, the fish in the creek and the squirrels in the trees I should be okay should the Mayan prophecies prove true.
If you haven’t already be sure to check put my exclusive interview with Chef Kerr from last fall HERE.
BH Chef Sasha’s Tahitian Vanilla Cake
So the Private Chefs of Beverly Hills is blowing up. People are eating it up (pun intended). Gal-pal Sasha Perl-Raver is the leading search item in conjunction with the show and in episode three she unveiled a cake that is all the buzz. Sasha recently published the recipe for her much talked about Tahitian Vanilla Cake.
After having suffered hundreds of hours of boring Food Network Cake Challenges I have finally seen a cake that I would actually like to try. Why does this cake sound better to me than those lame Disney cakes or even the masterpieces churned out by the talented gang at Charmed City Cakes? No F’ing fondant! Sure it makes the cake prettier but fondant is devoid of flavor and has an uncomfortable texture. It’s like eating glue and the last time I checked we are not supposed to eat glue. Anyway, here is Sasha’s recipe for Tahitian Vanilla Cake.
An Open Letter to Coca Cola
Dear Coca Cola,
I have an idea and I think you are going to like it.
You see, Coke. Can I call you “Coke?” Good.
You see, Coke, your product, though tasty and refreshing, isn’t exactly healthy. Now that in and of itself is not a problem. After all this is America and if a citizen wants to consume something that is not-healthy that is their right. The problem is that your products go beyond not-healthy; they are toxic.
Sure most of the ingredients in your soft drinks are benign but there is one ingredient that is the primary cause of the rise in cancer, Diabetes and obesity in the country over the past 30 years. You know what ingredient I am talking about, High Fructose Corn Syrup. I think you call him HFCS. It’s a nickname or a handle or something. Maybe it’s his Twitter account. I don’t know.
Now, the US Government knows that HFCS is toxic but they don’t want to come out and say it. You see, there’s a company named Monsanto (you know who I’m talking about) and they not only invented HFCS but they also manufacture the main ingredient in making it, Genetically Modified Corn. So Monsanto doesn’t want the masses knowing their creation is lethal. Therefore they entered into a “business” agreement with the White House.
Now this is not a recent event, they did it back in 1991 and they have maintained a flow of “support” to the Oval Office ever since. In fact, it appears Monsanto has increased that “support” in the last year and a half. We’ve noticed a lot of landscaping being done by the new tenets. These upgrades coincide with Monsanto lobbyists taking on policy making positions within the departments that are supposed to regulate them.
Equate it to our criminal system. It doesn’t matter how much evidence the police (modern science) compiles if the Prosecutor (USDA, FDA) doesn’t indict then the jury never gets to hear that evidence. And just to be on the safe side they (Monsanto) also make sure that the Judge (the President) will throw out the verdict.
I know what you are saying, Coke, calm down. No it is not your fault that our government is corrupt. But here’s the rub, rather than admit that HFCS is a problem they are calling ALL forms of sugar evil and are even threatening to levy a tax on soft drinks so that people can’t afford them anymore.
Here’s my idea: you come out and admit that HFCS is toxic. It doesn’t even have to be an out and out admission just say that recent studies have brought into question the use of High Fructose Corn Syrup. And say that you are going to offer an option. Say you are doing it for the good of the people; we always buy that because we want to believe it is true. The government loves to use that one themselves.
Say that you are now going to offer all of your great Coke products in both the economical HFCS recipe and for the “more discerning” Coke lover a recipe sweetened with all natural cane sugar called Coke Premium. If you phrase it right people will pay the extra five or ten cents you charge per serving.
In fact, it may generate the kind of sales you got when you did the whole “New Coke” thing just to disguise the fact that you changed to HFCS to begin with. People will be rushing the stores to try Coke Premium. Not to mention all of the labs and university science programs that will be buying both products so they can do head-to-head comparisons as to how they effect our health.
I’m telling you, Coke, this is a good idea that takes care of everyone. Monsanto still gets to sell their poison, the government gets to continue taking kick backs from Monsanto, you get to keep selling cheap soft drinks to a lazy consumer that believes water is bland and tea is too much trouble and those of us who enjoy a Coke now and then but not the effects of HFCS can splurge on Coke that tastes like the Coke of old.
I’m telling you, it’s brilliant.
XXX OOO,
Stuart
