Selena+Chef vs MarkKim+Chef
If you are a big fan of food shows like me, and not only watch but actually jump into the kitchen and cook their amazing meals, then chances are you’ve binged on the pandemic hit series Selena+Chef.
Here, neophyte chef Selena Gomez, aided by her equally clueless friends and very charming grandparents, turns out incredible dishes, guided in each session by a different chef via Zoom.
The show on HBO Go is entertaining enough, but what got us hooked and cooking through all four seasons was the delicious food.
Memorable highlights for me include Antonia Lofaso’s tasty seafood tostada, which I now teach in my Healthy Cooking classes for adults plus incredibly sticky and tasty Korean beef ribs by Roy Choi. The salmon in miso and mustard created by Marcus Samuelson I now cook regularly at home; same goes for the Nigerian chicken dish with scotch bonnet peppers and curry care of Kwame Onwache.
Other recipes I’ve repeated more than once are Graham Elliot’s burgers with brie and pickled onions plus Jaime Oliver’s Christmas roast chicken sprinkled with the Egyptian nut and seed combo known as dukka. No need to wait for the holidays to try this out, and in lieu of the pomegranate I used raspberry vinegar as an acid. Yummy!
Another chef whose dishes deserve multiple repeats is Matty Matheson, whose spicy Miami ribs dish is balanced by his super-sweet Hello Dolly bars, a saccharine concoction of chocolate chips, graham crackers, and condensed milk! This chef is also one of the producers of the big food show hit The Bear, a series with multiple Emmy nominations, incredible Neapolitan recipes, and a family drama that is heart-wrenching with a dose of humor.
Having enjoyed Selena+Chef immensely, I wondered how the Thai version, MarkKim+Chef, would fare.
Two episodes dropped this week, so my daughter Hannah and I immediately tuned in.
In the first episode an engaged couple, Mark and Kim, embark on cooking classes in preparation for their married life. Chef Pom (Kwantip Devacula) is well-versed in Royal Thai cuisine, which, as she explains it, has many of the same dishes as non-royal food but with much more refinement.
The first dish up was Tom Yang Goon, the spicy shrimp and mushroom soup flavored with kaffir leaves, lemongrass and ginger. Now, I cook this so often that already I have a very old kaffir lime tree in my garden. When I make this soup it tastes just like the restaurant version. Every recipe I have seen for this in Thai cookbooks has essentially been the same. So what is going to make Chef Pom’s special?
To add to my skepticism, the dialogue between chef, the young couple and some of their relatives was stiff and awkward, and any attempts at humor fell flat. I put it down to first-time jitters, unlike Selena’s show where, from the start, everything was natural and relaxed, blunders are never minimized and much of it was really funny.
However, when chef Pom got down to business, then I understood why they chose her to open the series. She brought out all the usual aromatics that go into this soup and—instead of shrimp—the big river prawns we call ulang. These are the blueish creatures with massive heads and long pincers. I’ve seen them occasionally at the Sunday market Sidcor in Eton Centris and am now hoping they’ll have some tomorrow.
To create her stock, which should be creamy (creamy?? Never heard of a creamy Tom Yang), she peeled the river prawns and scraped all the fatty parts from the head. All these went into the pot with the usual culprits. The fatty parts did indeed contribute to a creamy stock that looked so amazing while chef Pom scoffed at those who cheat with evaporated milk.
By the second episode we were hopelessly hooked. Well-known Thai chef Ian Pongtawat Chalermkittichai is a deft and skillful teacher, setting Mark multitasking in the many easy steps needed to produce a spectacular seared scallop with a basil oil and cashew milk sauce, beautifully plated, as well as beef tenderloin and foie gras on mushroom duxelles with red wine sauce. I learned not a few new things from this chef, such as scoring the foie gras to create a more textured caramelization!
It also helped that Mark appears to be not quite a neophyte and the easy banter between the couple, their guests and the chef showed that the show is truly stepping into its chef’s clogs.
I can’t wait for next Friday, when new episodes drop, but in the meantime I’ll be searching GrEAT in Hong Kong’s Pacific Place for ingredients.
If the Emmy awards had a category for food then, this early, I’d say MarkKim+Chef deserves a nod, as does Selena+Chef, The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House, The Bear, Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy… all of them visual feasts.