Monday, January 14, 2008

Food Safari on SBS

Having a great time with this show. And I am totally going to win that trip to Vietnam.
It hasn't quite yet pushed Iron Chef out of my top SBS viewing position, but it's close. The only thing that bugs me is Maeve O'Meara: she's very nice and I'm sure she's a lovely person and I'm sure it's not deliberate, but seems like whenever she tries a dish, there's a pause, and then her eyes go wide and there's a wild nodding of the head, and she says "Mmm!! That IS good!" as if she was expecting the dish to be really gross, and then the person cooking the dish says thanks Maeve, and she says "No really!! That is lovely!!"
Patronising.
And she also has an annoying habit of stating the obvious. Like if the cook adds lemon juice, she'll say "And that's to add a bit more acidity??" Like she has to tell us that adding salt makes it saltier. Whatever.
But I think what I really like about the show is that it seems really authentic: that the recipes are real in-use recipes that real people who know what they are talking about cook at home. Seems like getting a Pakistani recipe off the website, one that came from a Pakistani home cook, would be more legitimate than a bastardised recipe published in the latest Women's Weekly cookbook, or some recipe database or something. I like that. Could be that the show just makes it seem like recipes aren't from a test kitchen, but I still believe that the dishes are proper living pathways to new, unsanitised, culinary worlds. And that's how we want it, right?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I thought I was the only one bugged by the nice-y looking Maeve O'Meara hehe. Hope you win the Vietnam trip.

Anonymous said...

ohh I know what you mean about stating the obvious or when she repeats what they have just told her and they go yes.