Sunday Scrapbook – edition 1

Today Outside the Boxhas decided to bring you something new, a weekly feature of all the best clippings I find while travelling through cyberspace collecting information for this blog.

I hope you take the time to read the clips, and if you enjoy them, please follow the links to the original site, and read the whole article.

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Glenn Close profile From The Times Online:

Playing nasty has served Glenn Close nicely over the years and as the underhand lawyer Patty Hewes in Damages she’s never been more cut-throat. Close won a Golden Globe and an Emmy for the first series of the New York legal thriller on top of the critical acclaim and passionate devotees that the show attracted. Damages, which applies a glossy sheen to its world of skulduggery, violence and sex, returns for a second season on BBC One this month. Nobody knew that a quality television show could be so wildly addictive or suspenseful.

Damages serves up a complex, multilayered narrative, blending present, past and future plotlines to highlight the lies and deceit that engulf its characters. The first series ended in typically ambiguous fashion with Hewes emerging as both hero and villain. She won her class-action lawsuit against the corrupt insider-trading billionaire Arthur Frobisher (Ted Danson), shot at the end of the first series by a disgruntled employee, but she ordered the attempted murder of her protégée Ellen Parsons (Rose Byrne). In revenge Parsons has become an FBI informant, determined to bring down her boss.

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Caitlin Moran (arguably the best TV critic in Britain) discusses Jaime Oliver, Generation Kill and more, from The Times.

What is Channel 4’s “Great British Food Fight?” There are posters for it all over town – Hugh and Jamie and Gordon and Heston, looking like a culinary Mount Rushmore. Mount Mash-more, maybe. It’s all been very gung-ho and brie-brio.

But to what end? I mean, to what literal end? Because here we are, almost in February 2009, and, in a manner very reminiscent of the invasion of Iraq, Channel 4 seems to have instigated this “Great British Food Fight” – but with little thought of an eventual exit plan. So far we’ve had the battery chicken campaign, Gordon Ramsay’s Cookalong, Jamie Cooks Christmas, Heston v Little Chef, and now, this week, Jamie and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall have popped out a one-off apiece. It’s going on a bit. This Food Fight is turning into the Hundred Years War. Hasn’t someone won yet? Bake love, not war. War! Huh! What is it good for? Absolutely stuffing.

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Great British Food Fight Pics and Docs

During the month of January, the fine people at Channel 4 hosted a series of food related programmes in a series they called The Great British Food Fight. The shows featured Jamie Oliver trying to save the British pork industry, Hugh Fearnley- Whittingstall taking on Tesco’s chicken farming policy, Heston Blumenthal applying his unique form of food science to Little Chef’s menu, and Gordon Ramsay trying to save some local eateries.

The series was not only entertaining but each show also presented viewers with it’s unique message. Jamie taught us that the British pork industry is in trouble because we here in England have higher standards of animal welfare than our European cousins. Hugh showed us that some chickens are essentially tortured before becoming our dinner. Gordon taught some local eateries how keeping it in the community is not only good for business, but also for local economy. And Heston… well he taught us that with a little imagination and food science Little Chef may remain the roadside icon we have grown to love during our treks down the British motorway.

My particular favourite was the Heston Blumenthal programme, Big Chef Takes on Little Chef. I featured the show in an earlier entry, and it was my review of this programme that led to a very nice woman, Cecile from Channel 4 getting in touch with me and sharing some promotional material from the Food Fight season. Promotional material that I will share with you all now (see my mum taught me well).

The material includes photos (which I have arranged in a handy slideshow), and some interviews and programme information which can be found by clicking the links below:

Great British Food Fight promotional pics.

Great British Food Fight promotional documents.

Please respect the copyright of this material which remains the property of Channel 4

Also the shows featured in The Great British Food Fight can still be viewed on line using Channel 4’s Catch-up feature on their website. Just click the links below to watch your favourites:

• Big Chef Takes on Little Chef
  
• Jamie Saves our Bacon
• Ramsay’s Great British Nightmare
• Chickens Hugh and Tesco too
  

Food, Food, Glorious Food…

Another slow week in the television schedules as the broadcasters save most of their goods for broadcast over the holiday period. This week though the TV networks in the UK have decided to all lend a helping hand to all of you who face the daunting task of cooking a Christmas feast for your families.

All of the usual cooking suspects can be found; Rick Stein, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, The Hairy Bikers, Jaime Oliver, Gordon Ramsay, and my dream woman, the food-porn pioneer herself Nigella Lawson. Sadly though, Delia Smith and that kooky cook/scientist Heston Blumenthal are missing, but you can’t get everything you want for Christmas can you?

So if you are looking for some festive food instruction, or just want to drool over Nigella for a bit then check my handy Christmas Viewing Guide Below:

Outside the Box’s Festive Food Guide

• Monday to Friday (15-19 December) BBC2 @ 20:30 Nigella’s Christmas Kitchen – watch as the sex goddess of food Nigella Lawson teaches and titillates you with all sorts of food related goodness.
• Wednesday (17 December) BBC2 @ 20:00 Rick Stein’s Food Heroes Christmas Special – there is something fishy about Rick Stein and his obsession with all things from the sea, but if you are planning on ditching the turkey for some haddock or cod or shark, then Rick is your man.
• Wednesday (17 December) Channel 4 @ 20.00 Christmas at River Cottage- Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall invites you to his haven for good living the River Cottage, and cooks up some good wholesome grub for your festive feast.
• Wednesday (17 December) Channel 4 @ 21:00 Willie’s Perfect Chocolate Christmas– Willie Harcourt-Cooze isn’t really a chef, unless you count dipping things in weird kinds chocolate concoctions, and he spends half his show trying to sell his own line of chocolate, but if you like that kind of thing, then watch.
• Thursday(18 December) Channel 4 @ 21:00 Jamie Cooks Christmas – the moped riding pusher of pucca tucker, part-time healthy eating campaigner and her addict from Essex teaches you to cook some Christmas grub for you and yours.

More Xmas Cooking experiences:

• Kill it, Cook it, Eat it – Christmas Special- TV presenter Julia Bradbury presents a special episode of this BBC3 show available only on iPlayer.
• The Hairy Bikers Cookbook - a special Christmas episode of the bikers cooking show which aired last week but it is still available on the iPlayer.
• Gordon Ramsay Cookalong – Ramsay finished his run of this not so great show with a Christmas dinner, which you can still watch on the Channel4 Catch-up service.

New to Channel4 : Jamie’s Ministry of Food

So the floppy haired chef Jamie Oliver is back, and he is on another mission with a new show Jamie’s Ministry of Food. This time it is to get the people of Rotherham to start cooking, and save themselves from an existence of eating nothing but fast food, and therefore saving themselves from an early death. His partner in this mission is none other then the famous Julie Critchlow. Some of you might remember Julie as the woman who Jamie called a ’scrubber’ on Top Gear for passing burgers through the school gates to her kids back when Jamie’s School Dinners campaign was in full force.

Jamie and his enemy at work.

His reasoning behind teaming up with his arch nemesis, Ms Chritchlow, is  that if he can get that old scrubber on his side, then maybe he can change the ways of some of the people of Rotherham. Ms Critchlow is sceptical, as am I, but after watching episode one of this new series I hope he does succeed. Literally the first episode brought a tear to my eye at the disgraceful way that the eight chosen to take part in the is series eat, and the things that they feed their children. Perhaps I live a sheltered middle-class life, but I honestly never thought there were people who ate kebabs five nights a week, and couldn’t even turn on a cooker, let alone cook anything.

So lets hope Jamies cooking pyramid works (he teaches eight people, who teach two each, who teach two each, etc etc) because frankly I was shocked by the culinary horrors I witnessed on the TV.

My TV Food Family

Shhh don’t tell anyone but I have a secret obsession with celebrity chef’s and their cooking shows… secretly I imagine they are my family.

There is my Dad, Gordon Ramsey. He is loud and shouts a lot, but at the end of the day he loves us all, even if he does kill all our pets to make a Sunday roast.

Then there is my druggie brother Jamie Oliver. He talks like a geezer and is secretly addicted to herbs (of the cooking variety) but really he is just a cooking geek. He spends his days fluttering about in foreign lands, cooking things along the way. When he is not travelling the world he just stays home cooking, or hangs out in his ‘garden’ with his weird veggie wizard friend Brian. Like most brothers though, Jamie is a good bloke… a diamond geezer one might say.

My other chef brother is Heston Blumenthal. He is a geek, always doing experiments with food, trying this and that, just to get his chili con carne perfected, or putting in six months of research to make a tasty burger. Hell one time he even made toast flavoured water… pretty weird eh? Heston is good fun though, and well he does make one hell of a tasty burger… even if it does take him six months to do so!

That brings me to my celebrity chef wife, Nigella Lawson. What can I say about this women, except she makes food sexy! Nigella is like a gastronomic porn queen, all that finger licking and eating pastries in her nightie is just too sexy for a cooking show, but yet the world still considers her telly adventures just that.

This brings me full circle to my celebrity chef Mum, Delia Smith. She is sometimes a bit boring to watch, but she makes good old fashioned food, and unlike the rest of my family she actually shows you how to prepare it, and tonight she has a new show on BBC2 at 8:30pm to show us not only how to cook some grub, but also cheat while doing it!

Tonight Momma Delia has a whole show dedicated to the potato, which doesn’t sound too exciting but still I can’t wait!