Posted on: Wednesday, August 25, 2004
Cooking on camera a different experience
| • | Going meatless |
| • | Ragu recipe keeps 'meaty' flavor without using meat |
By Wanda A. Adams
Advertiser Food Editor
Joy Waters' target viewer for the cable TV show "Tasty and Meatless" is a meat-eater in transition to a more healthful lifestyle.
Which would explain how a meat-lover like me could end up as a guest host of a segment to air later this year.
My mission: to explain how to use a pressure cooker to prepare healthful ingredients — dried beans, slow-cooking fresh vegetables, meatless stocks, grains. The pressure cooker is a great adjunct to modern-day, meatless lifestyles because it saves times and retains nutrients, and you control what's in your food. (Canned beans, for example, routinely contain salt, sugar and chemicals.)
On a warm Friday afternoon, I arrived at the Niu Valley home where the show is shot with several boxes of props and ingredients, a bunch of clothes and makeup, and my best friend for moral support. Though I'm comfortable with public speaking, the thought of a camera was a bit daunting.
Like a good producer, Waters pumped me up with assurances of how well she thought I would do. Then we launched into prep — measuring ingredients into little bowls while walking through the steps for the two dishes I would prepare: a brown rice pilaf and a bean ragu (Bolognese-style stew).
If you've ever wondered what it's like doing a cooking demo in front of the camera, here's a quick impression:
• It's so hot you can feel your makeup sliding off your face. Whew!
• It's nerve-wracking as you try to remember everything you wanted to say and cram it all into a few minutes.
• Like most shows of its type, "Tasty and Meatless" isn't live but is filmed in stops and starts, a process that makes it a lot easier for the inexperienced host, but also is a little disconcerting. Things that come naturally and without thought when you're alone in the kitchen are suddenly being broken down into steps, and some things you do at home don't work for the camera, so they have to be staged.
The dramatic process of cooling down the temperature in the pressure cooker by the quick release method — plunging the entire pot under cold running water — presented a challenge, because the sink isn't normally in the "Tasty & Meatless" camera shot.
I picked a really tough topic in the pressure cooker because they're noisy, hissing and steaming as they cook — not the best thing when you're trying to narrate on TV. Also, the pressure-cooker process is a little complicated to explain at first, and kind of scary for people. Waters wanted to keep the message positive, but I needed to counter the impression that pressure cookers are dangerous (really, they're not!) so we had to negotiate language and timing.
There was a tense period in the middle of my demo when Waters explained that we didn't have time to wait 20 minutes for the beans to cook. Oops! I had brought raw beans, and a fully cooked ragu, but I hadn't thought to bring the intermediate stages. We had to fake it with some canned beans in the pot.
• Finally, it's a lot of fun. Once you get into a rhythm and know you'll be filming just a couple of minutes at a time, with plenty of time for cool-off breaks, thinking through what to say next, tweaking ingredients, you start to relax. About the time the cameras stopped running, I was as comfortable talking in front of the camera as I am sitting at my computer writing.
If you'd like to try my bean ragu recipe (even without a pressure cooker), check out the recipe. "Tasty and Meatless" invites average home cooks to serve as guest hosts if they've got a delicious meatless recipe; go to www.tastyandmeatless.com to nominate yourself or someone else.
