COOK MAGAZINE - March 2019

In dit nummer

As a lifelong foodie, I’ve always been addicted to cooking shows. Before there was cable TV, I looked forward to Saturday mornings because of cartoons and “Cooking It Up With Nora”. On Saturday evenings, there was “Wok with Yan”. When cable TV was still in its infancy, we got a bit more cooking shows on food- and lifestyle-themed channels. “Biba’s Italian Kitchen”, “The Urban Peasant”, Jacques Pépin and Julia Child episodes, and a bit of Keith Floyd. It was a dream come true for me, and from that I developed the habit of eating meals while watching cooking shows. To this day, I still eat meals while watching cooking programs.
The format of cooking shows have changed since the mid-80s. As a child, I remember learning how to cook from these shows as neither of my parents cooked. The recipes and procedures stuck to my mind so much so that on a family vacation abroad, I cooked Beef with Broccoli and Oyster Sauce on my own, complete with cornstarch slurry and everything. I was 12 years old then, so imagine my parents’ shock when they realized I could cook a proper meal, without a written recipe.
Since then, cooking shows are less about demonstrating how to cook and more of where to go and what to eat. Even on YouTube, you’ll find vloggers posting their food finds and epic meals. While I enjoy these “food trip” shows more, I realize that cooking shows are slowly giving way to eating shows. Is it because people are less interested with cooking now? It may be down to the availability of recipes online. While we had to buy/borrow books and watch cooking shows to learn, now, all we need to do is search on our phones. With services like Netflix and the whole new approach they have with cooking and cooking show formats, we have even more at our fingertips. Current Netflix favorites are “Ugly Delicious” and “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat”. Even local shows like “Local Legends”, “Chasing Flavors” and “FoodPrints” are making food and travel more enticing.