To me, the shift from the old “America’s Test Kitchen” to the new one is like the switch from black-and-white to color in “The Wizard of Oz”: Same show, but everything feels brighter and more fun.
Fans may have been nervous when the 17th season of the PBS cooking show began this winter, knowing that the star and creator of the show, avuncular grump Christopher Kimball, had left his baby. (Kimball, who was fired, is in the midst of legal drama about the creation of a new show he plans to debut this fall.) How could “America’s Test Kitchen,” which airs on Twin Cities Public Television at 11:30 a.m. each Saturday, survive without its star?
Very well, as it happens: It hasn’t just stayed the course — it’s better.
Through the first 16 seasons, a big part of your response to the show depended on how you felt about Kimball, who proudly declares himself a nerd and said cooking is about science, not artistry or love. I appreciated his calm guidance as he led his staff through the preparation of pestos and paellas, but I was not a fan of his superciliousness or the jokey, stereotypical costumes he wore to introduce, say, a segment about making fajitas (An enormous sombrero? Hilarious!). Also, it always seemed weird that he was the star of a cooking show but the closest he came to actually cooking was draining pasta water for one of the main chefs, Bridget Lancaster and Julia Collin Davison.
Now, Lancaster and Davison share the hosting and main cooking chores and, to return to that “Oz” metaphor, they seem to have thrown off their chains, like the Munchkins after the death of the Wicked Witch of the East.
The recipes are similar: Mostly, they find ways for home cooks to make restaurant classics or adapt ethnic cuisines to what’s available in the average supermarket. The segment about cooking gadgets is still there. The product tastings with Jack Bishop, also chief creative officer of the company, are still there. And we still get an occasional animated segment about the science behind browning meat or setting a panna cotta.
But, without Kimball’s fussy bowties hovering over everything (who wears a bowtie in the kitchen?), the show feels looser and more playful. Freed from the chore of pretending to guffaw at Kimball’s dad jokes, Lancaster and Davison have revealed their own sly senses of humor (chiffon is “the yoga of cakes,” Davison noted on last week’s show, because “it bends”). Crucially, they also have more time to devote to the kitchen tricks that make the show unique.
Those tricks haven’t changed. “ATK” recipes often hinge on brining before cooking, using a wire rack or adding anchovy paste/fish sauce/baking soda/gelatin to a recipe that you would never suspect contains anchovy paste/fish sauce/baking soda/gelatin.
But the cast has changed a little, and that’s the most noticeable difference in the current season: “America’s Test Kitchen” finally discovered that not everyone from the country mentioned in its title is white. Before the 17th season, literally every person on camera — and this includes not just the cast of a dozen or so, but also the people stirring and tenderizing in the background — was white.
This season, though, the show has added chef Elle Simone, who is freewheeling and hilarious, and Tim Chin, whose nervous, off-kilter energy is surprisingly charming.
I’m eager to see if Simone and Chin will shake up the recipes or techniques the show teaches, even as they focus on the cooking tips that are the backbone of the show. I’m sure both will continue with one of the “ATK” hallmarks, which is that the cooks spend a fair amount of time talking about what has gone wrong during attempts to perfect recipes at “America’s Test Kitchen” and where we could go wrong in our own kitchens.
Meanwhile, though, “America’s Test Kitchen” seems to be doing just about everything right.
IF YOU WATCH
- What: “America’s Test Kitchen”
- When: 11:30 a.m. Saturdays
- Where: TPT2
Source: www.twincities.com
