Television Cooking Shows (Vintage)

I can cook, too, you racist!

Nathalie Dupree!

This is DL and no Fannie Cradock!?!??

Julia Child was a genuinely gifted educator. She and James Beard turned America on to French cuisine and taught a couple of clueless generations how to cook decently (including my mother.)

In Canada, a favorite was Wok with Yan.

NOT Justin Wilson

I have watched so many episodes of both Julia Child's "The French Chef" and Jeff Smith's "The Frugal Gourmet".

But I had to pick JC as my number one choice.

I have a 6-DVD collection of TFC and I binge-watch it frequently.

I guarantee!

So that's where phrase comes from...... Vaguely recall hearing it on television when was a child, but never paid much attention to who was saying.

Do remember Justin Wilson popped up on a Good Eats who when Alton Brown was attempting to make roux...

In same French creole accent in clip below he came on set singing "Frère Jacques, Frère Jacques, I smell *roux*!

I prefer Sue Ann Nivens to all others.

Always found David Rosengarten of Taste rather attractive in a way.

Two Fat Ladies....

Everything they made would cause a cardiologist to cringe. Tons of fat, lard, bacon drippings, butter, cream....

I always enjoyed the Frugal Gourmet. The meals he made looked like things I'd really enjoy, unlike Julia Child (not a fan of French Cuisine, sorry.)

I bid you peace.

Remember me? Anyone?

I scheduled my university class schedule around The Frugal Gourmet, to make sure I was in my dorm room every week day to watch him on PBS. I know - MARY!

Good Eats and the Two Hot Tamales come to mind as my earliest favorites.

I do like Julia Child but I remember the first time seeing her and hearing her talk, then I found she clumsily operated her dishes and that had me aghast of her cooking.

So good looking, elegant, and clever ..

Graham Kerr was on top of his game then, no one could touch him, his show was like a breath of fresh air. I mean you could just picture Margo Leadbetter types by the scores watching him on television or even (gasp) in the audience.

Loved that Graham Kerr was always never without a glass of wine or something. That of course couldn't happen today, more is the pity because it lent a certain sophistication to Mr. Kerr's show, him at his ease and all.

R15 here. How could I forget singing Italian chef Pasquale! I grew up watching him in the early 90s (reruns)

I have to confess that, even though I enjoyed watching Jeff Smith cook, I also enjoyed looking at Craig, his assistant on Frugal Gourmet.

Two Fat Ladies is late 90s. Not really vintage. If you’re going to include them, might as well include Ina as well. She’s a huge favorite and, we may tease her, but it’s a very pleasant watch.

Wok with Yan

From the PBS days, I loved watching Julia Child, Martin Yan and that bearded, alcoholic kid-fucking minister. I sometimes watched Galloping Gourmet, but I was a bit too young to appreciate his charms (I was only 7 when GG debuted).

MARY!

Fanny knew how to put on a show.

I used to watch the Galloping Gourmet as a kid on KQED/PBS in San Francisco. I don't remember much about what he prepared, but I was fascinated how he started the program relatively sober and was shitfaced by the end. Not surprised he got religion to get sober.

"The Frugal Gourmet" with the ephebophile Jeff Smith and "Yan Can Cook" with Martin Yan.

I used to love The Frug until it came out that he was a predator. Then it later came out that he was also really nasty and mean on top of the whole coerced sex with minors thing. Couldn't watch him after that. So I chose Julia Child, though I don't intend to make any of her recipes, because she's just fun to watch.

One TV chef I also enjoy who isn't on the list is Mary Berry. Some of her shows are on YouTube, from the '60s to today.

Mary Berry is great. Too bad we don't get to see more of here here in the States.

Nathalie Dupree was great for shit-watching. She was so fucked up on something, pills or booze, and her cooking on camera was terrible.

Sara Moulton deserves some sort of award. Exceedingly competent and pleasant, but not self-promoting. All her shows are terrific, including her early ones on Food TV where she'd cook and take viewers' phone calls.

I remember the "Galloping Gourmet" as a kid.

Loved Julia Child's shows in the '90s with Jacques Pepin.

Love Lidia today.

Also like The Pioneer Woman.

Used to watch the Food Network and PBS for the Eye Candy: Tyler Florence, Ming Tsai, and Curtis Stone.

Two Fat Ladies were AWESOME!

I hated everything they made, but the show was the most entertaining cooking show on TV.

I watched Frugal Gourmet when I was young, so was not picking up on things. I watched when older and realized how condescending Jeff Smith was. Craig was cute & reminded me of Andrew McCarthy, looks-wise.

Yes, I do think JS was a hebephile hiding in plain sight.

I did enjoy the show, at the time, and it made cooking seem do-able for me.

Is that hosted by that Brit kid with the yellow teeth?

[quote]I also enjoyed looking at Craig, his assistant on Frugal Gourmet.

So did Jeff. And touching.

No love for Mary Margaret McMertz?

Keith Floyd is still a favourite of mine. He was entertaining, very knowledgeable, and always had a glass of wine in his hand.

Graham Kerr is still with us at age 87! Became a born again Christian years ago and renounced his Galloping Gourmet days (to a point).

Jeff Smith aka "The Frugal Gourmet" was outed as a pedophile. No thanks.

I enjoyed Nathalie Dupree (Nattily Depraved) and Justin Wilson, who would freak out today's germophobes and your Italian-Am. aunt May Ann Esposito.

R2 - I used to watch Natalie and she was a mess! She'd spill ingredients all over, slop stuff on the counter, all the while shooting silent glances into the camera. I don't know what she was looking at - a clock or a producer giving her signals, but those looks were so disconcerting - it's like she was looking into your eyes. Also, it looked like she probably needed glasses cause she would squint like Mr Magoo.

I guess they didn't pre-plan the timing of the recipe and you could tell when Natalie was running short - she'd fling stuff onto a plate to get the recipe finished. The finished product would look like a child made it. Natalie was good for forgetting to put some ingredient in and then remember at the end and say "do as I say, not as I do".

I never missed Tom Snyder's Tomorrow Show in the 1970s, but one I did miss was when Julia Child cut herself during a demonstration and bled all over the studio floor. Yes, it did really happen, it wasn't made up by Dan Aykroyd.

I like Justin Wilson, the Cajun chef, but his stories were simply too damn long. Way too long. Also, he could not talk and cook at the same time, it seemed.

Tried for her series from Quilt Country, but not available for clips. However, here you'll learn to make baked chicken using bottled salad dressing!

Vastly preferred Jacques over Julia, both from a chef and educator point of view. Their disagreements over white/black pepper were fun though.

R41, Oh I miss her! I loved her quilt segments at the end of each show too. RIP.

I love this thread.

Yeah, Frugal Gourmet was good before we found out he was a pedo. Yan Can Cook was also good. Two Fat Ladies was great on occasion, and i did like Two Hot Tamales as well.

A couple of Canadian cooks have already been mentioned, Wok With Yan and Pasquale's Kitchen but I also remember Bruno Gerussi doing a cooking show with celebrity guests called Celebrity Cooks and there was The Urban Peasant with James Barber.

The thing I remember about the Quilt Country show is that sometimes she'd go to turn on the appliance, which was unplugged, prompting a cry of "Somebody forgot to pay the light bill!"

I recall Nathalie Dupree's segment on funeral foods, which had a heavy implication that this particular memorial service was for an AIDS victim.

I hated Martin Yan - he repeated too much "stir it up, stir it up, stir it up" a thousand times. I understand, it needs to be stirred!

I watched Julia Child's old episodes that would pop up on the local PBS station. One thing that bugged me - she would say not to use black pepper in recipe X "because people may mistake it for fly specks". WTF? Who would look at a plate and their first thought would be that a fly pooped all over it and then fling the plate to the floor? They would assume it's pepper. I guessed she was brainwashed by some drunk French cooking teacher and she felt the need to pass this nonsense on.

[quote] Sara Moulton deserves some sort of award. Exceedingly competent and pleasant, but not self-promoting. All her shows are terrific, including her early ones on Food TV where she'd cook and take viewers' phone calls.

And she did it LIVE! Every evening for an hour she cooked an entire meal LIVE on TV. RESPECT!

I think the love for Julia Child is overdone. My dad did like her shows, how she wasn't so fussy, how she'd make a mistake and fix it.

I prefer the shows with both Julia and Jacques. He was more realistic and in tune to what people were really going through in the kitchen.

Chef Martin Yan has harmed no one, OP. Why the egregious oversight? He cooks, minds his business, been married for years, has two sons. He's pervert free unlike The Pedophile Gourmet. I'm in my feelings but will move on.

I voted for Julia fucking Child! She was realistic in her presentation and actually studied. Nothing was a prop or something she didn't go over a bit. She wasn't a "presenter" or fake, she was an actual chef. Tall as heck. Homely. But, well traveled and educated. She was the real deal. She was a product of her generation who even evolved towards being tolerant towards our community. Cool overall chick!

The Two Fat Ladies I would have hung out with. They were living that life in whatever sorta way babies! Never cared. Scotch swilling. Butter loving. Good old gals. I saw an episode they did where one of them hunted pheasant, prepped it, and all that other hunting stuff which isn't my personal thing actually. The other gal was at a cabin kicking back with her drink and some man. They cook the freshly killed pheasant and serve it to the man. It's humor, you know. They almost made me think Brits can cook.

Two Hot Tamales were really good. I thought they were family for years. They respected Mexican cuisines decently and had mad skills. Rick Bayless and his bulge respect Mexican cuisines decently as well.

I'm just babbling at this point. But this thread is very pleasant and light. Hopefully Chef Martin Tan hasn't an employee who sees this thread through Google alerts.

[quote]Chef Martin Tan

How dare you.

Right, R46, I forgot about James Barber. We used to watch him all the time. I remember him making strawberry and spinach salad one time, and thinking it was so… urban 😜

I remember this show on Food Network "How to Boil Water" where a humorless "comedian" was taught how to cook simple dishes by a professional but boring chef. I always got gay vibes from the comedian and one day he sorry of confirmed it when he casually and sarcastically (and homophobic-ly) said on the show how he spends his nights painting his toe nails because people (who suggested he was gay through fanmail, I guess, it was the late 90s) were idiots or something to that effect. The chef next to him became awkwardly quiet and didn't know what to do after that lol. I could not believe Food Network actually aired that episode, or maybe it was live. Anyhow, soon after that episode, I think the show got cancelled 😂.

I was lucky to once have Jeff Smith, the Frugal Gourmet, cook me dinner -and he definitely pinged my gaydar! Good food though. That said, it was Julia Child who instilled my love of cooking and taught me how to cook. She was a gifted teacher. None of today's TV chefs can hold a candle to her.

One of the Two Hot Tamales is DL fave Ben Feldman's aunt.

The dark-haired Hot Tamale married the ex-husband of the blonde-haired Hot Tamale.

They both appeared to be lesbians.

I like America's Test Kitchen, however I'd love to push Chris Kimball in front of a speeding train. I like the fraus who cook and the bear who makes product suggestions.

Is that classic? ^

Vintage is 70s-80s, no?

Somebody uploaded all of Two Fat Ladies to YouTube a while back. I don’t know why it hasn’t gotten yanked by BBC or whomever for copyright violation, but it’s one of my go-to comfort watches. Obviously the show aired in the 90s and is not as vintage as, say, Fanny Craddock. That said, the fat gals were constantly reminiscing about British history and midcentury post-Blitz esoterica. Most of their recipes are a bit vile to my American palate, but with every episode, you’re guaranteed to get a vaudeville reference or a Diana Dors reference or some gripe about a decades-dead liberal politician or the tyranny of “Brussels”. They each had weird backstories (Clarissa was one of the first female barristers until forfeiting her career to alcoholism, Jennifer grew up in China and Libya and became a quirky London bon vivant), and neither was ever a “chef” or even a professional cook, really. Every episode will send you googling/wikapedia-ing after a ton of WHET topics.

Also some dude blogged a fairly well annotated guide to the show.

R51 et

First of all never heard of Martin Yan. Only made a brief (but not exhaustive" list of cooking shows one could recall shown locally on northeast Public Broadcasting Stations (PBS), and perhaps FoodTV.

Secondly DL does not permit endless entries for polls, so obviously again it never was going to be an extensive nor exhaustive list.

How about you and others enjoy thread in spirit of which it was started and cease finding something else (yet again) to moan about. I swear some of you old queens could ruin a wet dream.

I can highly recommend Clarissa's "A History of English Food"!

R60

Honey the 1990's are thirty years ago now, that's vintage enough IMHO.

No hon. ^

ATK started in 2001. Enough.

Didn't the frugal gourmet run into some "legal problems" later on in life?

Craig from Frugal Gourmet really hit the wall hard.

[quote]the fat gals were constantly reminiscing about British history

GALS?

Cannot recall episode name, but the TFG went to cook for some British military camp. Upon arrival they ask to see CO to be given directions and their assignment. Jennifer Paterson starts chatting him up asking if CO knew her nephew who served in some regiment (the CO did). Larissa was impressed as didn't know Jennifer was from a "regimental Family.

Sorry, make "TFG" Two Fat Ladies.

Carry on..

R61

Since last DL thread on TFL many of YT clips or even entire episodes have been pulled down. But still some remain, which is a good thing.

BBC is better than many others in allowing clips or entire episodes of their programming on YT, DailyMotion or other free services. They must be making money somehow as don't think they do it out of kindness of their hearts. Then again since BBC is funded by ratepayers case could be made public has some rights to that programming IMHO.

This might explain why certain British programs on YT or elsewhere aren't available to those outside UK.

I liked and miss the Canadian chick with "Bitchin' Kitchen." It aired in a nice late-Saturday night block before or after "Two Fat Ladies" on The Food Network years ago. It was a nice time period where they let that overnight hour or so have its own special flavor and programming. Now it, like Create Channel and all the others, have to cater to lowest-common-dumbed-down-denominator and air the same shows or shows' episodes over and over and over again erasing any timeslot individuality or specialness. (My own 'MARY' culinary diatribe version here, I realize and admit it!) Then there was also the "Chuck's Night Off."

And remember the hot Maine fisherman bro who they tried to make a thing for a season or two? Seems he never caught on, or maybe didn't appear to be comfortable continuing with his program.

Ming Tsai is very hot in person.

Remember a cooking show where Graham Kerr said "First, take a leek" and started giggling hysterically.

Julia taught me how to make omelets, meringues, poached chicken and fish, vitello tonnato, coq au vin, beef bourguinon, pate, cheese souffle, quiche, crepes, cassoulet, tarte tatin and other caloric stuff I haven't made in decades.

The Galloping Gourmet should have galloped right up Graham Kerr's pooper.

I don't like cooking shows that make a big deal out of using tons of butter, being "naughty," etc.

I also don't like cooking shows that make a big deal out of being healthy, "sneaking" in vegetables.

Look at what happened with Paula Deen. Made millions with her show, making a big deal about putting more and more butter into everything. Then, turns around and makes money by "sharing" her new diet now that she's openly diabetic. Anthony Bourdain was bitching about it before he died.

Frugal Gourmet guy always made me nervous. Turns out he was the Kevin Spacey type

[quote]First of all never heard of Martin Yan. Only made a brief (but not exhaustive" list of cooking shows one could recall shown locally on northeast Public Broadcasting Stations (PBS), and perhaps FoodTV.

1. Martin Yan was based out of California and his shows were broadcast by many TV stations. He had several series over the course of two or three decades.

[quote]Yan began teaching Chinese cooking for a college extension program and appearing on a Canadian talk show from Calgary in 1978 (on CFAC-TV, now CICT-DT). He has hosted over 1,500 episodes of the PBS cooking show Yan Can Cook since 1982. His shows have been broadcast in over 50 countries.[1] He currently hosts Martin Yan – Quick & Easy. He also hosts Martin Yan's Chinatowns, where he tours Chinatowns around the globe as well as "Martin Yan's Hidden China."

2. There's no such thing as "FoodTV."

How many bafucking times do you bitches - - or is it bitch - - have to bring up Jeff Smith?

Can anybody on here explain Sam the Cooking Guy? TIA!

French Chef, Yan Can Cook, Galloping Gourmet, Justin Wilson, Paul Prudhomme, Pasquale, the Great Chefs of... series, etc. enjoyed them all.

Been on a Cookin’ Cheap binge as of late. Silly show, and both hosts ping quite high. But it’s entertaining and not at all pretentious. It’s essentially the cooking version of Furniture on the Mend (aka Furniture to Go aka The Furniture Guys)—another fun show.

Moulton is great and did work for Julia. Julia channel on Pluto soon! lol I like Justin, he'd that southern grandiddy that knows how to cook, but saves it for events. Frugal did creep me out and now I know why. TFL! Love them all. Berry's shows are on Pluto BBC Cooks. Of course, I think they have 3 episodes. I'll check back in a month.

I've always lusted after Ming.

Yes, Julia, you may not make classic Coq Au Vin but there are many cooking lessons there to take.

The Paul Prudhomme shows are not around that I can find.

Although not classic, Emeril Lagasse had some good shows.

The Two Fat Ladies were a particular favorite. I'm fairly guarded about the food they made, but Jennifer Paterson and Clarissa Dickson Wright were just delightful.

Two Fat Ladies was wonderfully watchable, though many, maybe even most of the things they cooked I would not put in my mouth.

Maybe not vintage enough, but my favorite is always Nigella Lawson. I'm in awe of her ease with the camera and her natural style, and anyone whose pleasure in food borders on the sexual is doing something right. She has a brilliant way of making food and recipes so approachable and seemingly easy (indeed, many of her recipes are quite easy) but she is a natural at explaining anything it seems.

Clarissa Dickson Wright had a rather extraordinary life.

Paula Deen! That accent and the use of butter mmm. Her husband was a weird looking individual though. I can’t imagine those two sleeping together.

Paula Deen was on PBS 40-50 years ago?

Any Canadians remember What's For Dinner? with the gay Ken Kostick and the bitchy Mary Jo Eustace?

Had no idea who Ken Kostick was so Googled his name. Sadly the man passed on in 2011....

No there isn't much in way of videos on YT or elsewhere for Paul Prudhomme.

But did find this...

Had no idea Paul Prudhomme was responsible for Turducken being let lose upon the world.

Are The Galloping Gourmet and Graham Kerr twins?

r97 You might say they are as close as close can be.