TV Dinners

I'm old enough to remember when frozen dinners were new. Swanson TV dinners came in aluminum foil pans, with the different meal elements in their own sections. A full dinner right out of the freezer, into the oven, and onto your tv tray so you could eat with your eyes glued to the evening news. Nowadays there are hundreds of meals in the freezer section of your supermarket for breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert, snacks, parties, you name it.

That's not the kind of television dinner I'm musing about tonight. I just took a batch of scones out of the oven. With every breath I smell warm cinnamon. I love scones and am pretty pleased that I've learned to make them from scratch. I tried several recipes, without great success. The results were more like cinnamon-raisin biscuits.

Then, a few years ago while on a Jet Blue flight, I saw a show with Mark Bittman visiting Tartine's, a San Francisco bakery. The head pastry chef took him step by step through the process of making their scones. Immediately I saw all that I'd done wrong all those previous times. As soon as I returned home, I Googled the recipe and have been able to make scrumptious scones ever since.

I love watching shows on the Food Network. The competition shows are my favorite. I'm fascinated by trained chefs who can take seemingly random ingredients and create fabulous dishes. While I'm not ready to conjure up a clafoutis, and I don't think I could whip out five beautifully designed dishes in an hour a la the Iron Chefs, I've picked up a few pointers. I'm yet to try to replicate a full meal from any television show.

Some of the best pointers come from Good Eats with Alton Brown. I learned more about filet mignon from him in one hour than in a lifetime of eating that meat.

There are dishes that I've read about in books that I've tried to make at home, most notably some things that Robert B. Parker wrote up in his Spenser series. I have a favorite pasta meal that I can throw together with very little effort thanks to Spenser.

What about you? Do you enjoy watching cooking shows? Which show or chef is your favorite? Have you ever looked at what they make on tv and tried to cook it yourself at home? (Recipe sharing is encouraged!)