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Review: Simply Ming

One of the best cooking shows on TV these days is Simply Ming.  Ming Tsai is well-known in the Boston area as the owner of Blue Ginger in Wellesley. MA.  He has since reached a nationwide audience with his PBS show, which has been airing for several years now.

The premise of the show, as well as the cuisine at Blue Ginger, is a combination of “East Meets West”.  His parents, who frequently appear on the show, ran a Chinese restaurant in Ohio.  Ming went on later to study culinary arts in France.  He learned how to combine traditional Asian ingredients with those of Western countries, with excellent results.

The first few seasons of the show were based on “master recipes”.  Ming would start out the show by making some kind of marinade, sauce, salsa, etc, and then go on to use that in a series of dishes, all of which are quick and easy to make.  The book shown here has all of the recipes from the first season.

Later seasons dropped the “master recipe” thing, and just concentrated on using certain combinations of ingredients, one Eastern and one Western.  For example, a recent program had him using lemongrass and extra virgin olive oil as the ingredients.  He doesn’t make a master sauce, he just uses the ingredients in each dish.

The recipes are still easy and require very little fuss.  A downside for some people may be the inability to get some of the Asian ingredients.  For instance, I’ve never seen lemongrass at a regular supermarket.  But if you live someplace where there’s a Chinatown, or just an Asian market, you should be able to find all of this stuff.

I’ve made quite a few recipes, with excellent results.  It’s an easy way to learn to cook Asian foods, while using some more familiar ingredients, as well.

Check your local listings to see if/when the show airs in your area.  And check out the Simply Ming website for recipes and more!

Women of the Olive Garden?

So I’m listening to Paul Perry on WROR. and every day, he tells some *news of the weird* stories.

Apparently, Playboy magazine is doing a nationwide search for a pictorial of female servers from Olive Garden restaurants. Perry also added that although Olive Garden has nothing to do with this whole thing, they also will not be forbidding their servers to apply to be considered for this.

I don’t know…it might be a bit unnerving to open up the magazine and see a picture of the woman who serves our lunch/dinner, wearing nothing but thigh high boots and a smile. But I’m sure many guys will get off on it.

In reality…I have never set foot in an Olive Garden restaurant. The only one I know of is not far from the PawSox ballpark, and the place always looks crowded. The food can’t be that great, that people are willing to wait upwards of an hour to be seated in order to eat it. So, maybe they do have some hot waitresses. I don’t know, and I doubt I will be finding out any time soon.

Whatever floats your boat, I suppose…

Oh, and to confirm the fact that Paul Perry was NOT making any of this up, I found a news story online.  Clicky to read it.

What’s your life’s purpose?

A very big sensation in the book world these days is A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose, by Eckhart Tolle. Unless you are living under a rock someplace, you know that it’s one of the latest selections by Oprah’s Book Club.

It’s such a big deal, that they started an online course for it over on Oprah.com. This started several weeks ago. I had read about this on a few other blogs, and I thought about buying the book and signing up. But, alas, I never did get around to it.

I guess what kept me away was the fact that it sounds like it might be too religious for my blood. I had never heard of the author, but when I looked up the book, I saw that he was a “spiritual leader”. Not that this is bad…some spiritual stuff doesn’t bother me. But if it were too preachy, religion-wise, that would most certainly turn me off.

But it is wildly popular, thanks to Oprah…so check it out if you haven’t already, and see if it’s for you!

What’s gnu?

Okay, so I’ve been sick and watching more TV lately…been seeing those promos for “All Gnu” episodes of TV shows on CBS. Thank goodness then writers’ strike is over!

We broke down and bought a digital converter box for one of our TVs. Yea, I did request those $40 coupons that the government is giving out, but now I am almost 100% positive that we’ll NEVER get them. They were mailed out a month ago, they should have been here weeks ago. No doubt the Evil Post Office lost them. But we were getting sick of the bad over-the-air reception here, and knew that the problems would pretty much be solved if we could go digital now. Also, the appeal of extra channels, for free, was too much to resist. So we ponied up $60.00 and bought one.

VERY nice! Perfectly clear picture on all channels, even ones that got really crappy reception before, and I LOVE the extra PBS channels! My new favorite channel is Create. They have cooking shows, garden shows, as well as home decorating, craft and travel shows. Who needs expensive cable when you have something like this? And they don’t show infomercials overnight, as even most cable channels do. Just regular shows, all the time!

We’re just not ready yet to pony up for a new HDTV and all that. There’s nothing wrong with our analog TVs, and we’d like to be able to use them for the duration, while we shop around and figure out where to find the best deal on these new TVs. Perhaps one of those directbuy places might be a possibility. But not until after we move, hardly worth joining something like that just to buy one thing. When we move, we’ll need a lot more stuff.
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While I was REALLY sick, a couple of weeks ago, my new mini-stepper machine was delivered.  I was so out of it when the UPS guys showed up with it, he just brought it in, and there it sat in the box, in the middle of my living room, for almost two weeks.  I wasn’t even up to opening and assembling the thing, never mind, trying to work out on it.  I was feeling so horrible at the time, that I thought that I’d NEVER be able to work out, EVER.

I finally got around to putting it together today.  It was pretty easy, no tools are required except for the Allen wrenches that came with the thing.  It’s not a bad little machine for the money.  You can set the tension in the steps to make your workout easier or harder.  And it takes up very little floor space, so it’s good for people with small apartments.

Now, I just have to keep up with working out on it every day…that’s always the hard part!

Powder Milk Biscuits…

“…Buy them ready-made in the big blue box with the picture of the biscuit on the front, or in the brown bag with the dark stains that indicate freshness” ~ Garrison Keillor, “A Prairie Home Companion”
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No, it’s not a real product, it’s a fake commercial on “A Prairie Home Companion” radio show. We listen to it every Saturday night, it’s on right now as I type this. We’re hoping to get to see a live performance of it sometime this summer.

But I was teasing Mike, telling him that I’m making a chicken pot pie tonight. Instead of a flaky pastry crust, I said, I’d be making up a topping of Powder Milk Biscuits.

Actually, I’m making buttermilk biscuits for the pot pie topping. The pot pie recipe is one from Jacques Pepin, from the final series he did with the late, great Julia Child…“Julia & Jacques - Cooking At Home”. It’s made with leftovers from a recipe for poached chicken and veggies, which we had last night. We have enough leftovers from this meal to make both the pot pie and the soup that are in the book and on the TV show episode.  There is absolutely NO waste!

Our local PBS affiliate no longer shows reruns of this great show, but that’s okay…I have both the book and the entire series on DVD.
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I had a nice day watching the PBS cooking shows that are currently running. One of the best shows is “America’s Test Kitchen”. It’s from the editors of “Cook’s Illustrated” magazine. I like it because it’s a show that you can actually learn from.

One thing they do is product testing of kitchen equipment. Since neither the show nor the magazine accept paid advertising, they can be objective about what they like and don’t like. I have often taken their advice on what to buy, and I’ve not bee steered wrong yet.

Good kitchen stuff can be pricey. But if you shop around carefully, you can find what you want at a bargain price. One site I like is Buy.com…they have a lot of kitchen stuff there. Chances are, once you check their prices, you’ll find that you’ll find the best buy there on whatever you happen to be looking for. Don’t forget to factor in the cost of shipping…at Buy.com, many items qualify for their FREE shipping deal. Go and check ‘em out!