Picasa/Keith Eby

A new cooking competition show concept is in the works, we've discovered, though the name of it, and even the network it will be on, is still classified information. We admit to being intrigued, and if you're a chef, you may be, too, since like Chef Hunter, this show wins you a job.

But a restaurant job is not the aim here. Instead, the chef who comes out on top will win at least a one-year gig as a personal chef to a "major A-list celebrity." The name of that celebrity is, of course, still under wraps.

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Screenshot of the Law & Order & Food Tumblr

Law & Order & Food

Last month, we introduced you to The Chewing, in which New York magazine hilariously spliced together scenes of the The Killing's characters chewing on gum, chewing on chips, chewing on burgers -- well, you get the idea. To this growing list of Internet compilations dedicated to television characters in various states of mastication, we add the Law & Order & Food Tumblr, which brings us relevant screenshots of the show's detectives and prosecutors doing what they do best: Eating on the job.

The author of the Tumblr reaches back into Law & Order's rich 20-season history to dig up the many, many instances of characters eating while investigating cases ripped blatantly from the headlines. Thus, if you found comfort in the show's tidy gravel-to-gavel formula -- 30 minutes of police procedural followed by 30 minutes of courtroom (melo)drama -- and kept up with the cast changes, you'll recognize the characters here, fueling up by chowing down on all sorts of classic New York street food as they detect and convict. Just like in real life.

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Via Travel Channel

Anthony Bourdain relaxing on a Baja beach

The Baja California episode of No Reservations begins with a soundtrack of gunshots and sirens peppering news reports of violence in Tijuana. But against this noise we see Anthony Bourdain strolling into town looking unafraid. He knows what you're thinking: "Wait, isn't Tijuana dangerous?"

The short answer, we learn, is there is no short answer. Yes, it's been a hotbed for drug-related violence in recent years, which has caused Americans largely to stop going. So what does one find just over the border these days? A city that's stopped caring, apparently, about catering to our vices and is now in the midst of a renaissance, especially when it comes to the culinary scene.

Bourdain also reminds us in this episode that Tijuana is merely stop one on your Baja excursion, if you're wise, and that a journey further south will land you in wine country that "feels like Tuscany."

In other words, our SoCal backyard is blooming again, and watching this show will make you want to frolic in it.

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BBC America

Jamie Oliver on Meals in Minutes

We've pissed off Jamie Oliver again.

But this time, it not what we're allowing our children to be served in the school cafeteria, as was the case on Food Revolution. It's what we're serving them at home. It's what we're cooking. It's the fact that clearly we can't be trusted to navigate a market or wield a knife without his oversight. As such, the British chef has stepped off the reality TV train and back into the land of cooking shows to give us some no-holds-barred guidance via Meals in Minutes, which premiered last week on BBC America.

Strange but true: up until mid-April, this show was called 30-Minute Meals. Really? We thought that had been covered. Good think Rachael Ray isn't the litigious type. Or, wait...

Per a press release, here is Oliver's tough love approach to cooking:

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BBC

Una Stubbs as Mrs. Hudson

If, like us, you're a fan of Stephen Moffat's godhead 21st-century updating of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock on PBS Masterpiece Mystery! there's no need to introduce you to Holmes' and Watson's landlady, Mrs. Hudson, but we will anyway.

What we know from the first season of Steven Moffatt's addictive three-part series is that a) Mrs. Hudson rents to Sherlock (Benedict Cumberbatch) at a reduced rate as a show of gratitude for his ensuring the Florida execution of her husband, and b) Mrs. Hudson is a bit of a feather-dusting busybody, often popping into the tech-savvy crime solvers' flat at 221b Baker Street (she lives in 221a) at crucial moments to throw in her two cents or maybe wail loudly about a gory body part that Sherlock was storing in the refrigerator for research purposes.

But judging from last night's film-quality first installment of season 2, Scandal in Belgravia, it's clear that she's grown from a slightly barmy plot device into a clucking mother figure, someone who is there to take care of two adult male detectives who are as peerless at investigating wrongdoing as they are domestically challenged. That this juryrigged family feels so realistic is partly due to the series' fine writing. But credit must also be given to Una Stubbs, the great veteran British actress with the tinkly voice and the batty charm, who took an underwritten, tangential widow character and made her seem like someone who Sherlock and Watson could ultimately lean on. (To grasp how well Stubbs knows her way around a scene-stealing, oddball zinger, one need only turn to the slew of Twitter accounts and a blog on Tumblr spawned in her honor.)

If you'd like to know more about Stubbs' relationship with co-stars Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, the kind of ridiculous props she's regularly confronted with on Sherlock and what sorts of desserts she liked to bake (when she was still baking), turn the page.

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Food Network/Alan Poulin

Guy Fieri, happy again

The Associated Press reports that celebrity chef Guy Fieri can finally start driving his stolen $200,000 bumblebee yellow 2008 Gallardo Spyder convertible to all those diners and dives again. Max Michael Wade, 17, of San Rafael, was charged yesterday with an assortment of crimes: two counts of attempted murder, shooting at an occupied vehicle, commercial burglary, receiving stolen property and vehicle theft -- of Fieri's Lamborghini, which was recovered more than a year after it was stolen.

Wade, who turns 18 this summer and was charged as an adult, was arrested after sheriff's investigators tracked down the teenager's rented storage container. Inside of which, according to the Marin Independent Journal, they found quite the anarchist's grocery list. What was inside?

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Via marthastewart.com

Martha Stewart, who in recent years has been seen most often on the Hallmark Channel, is making the move to public television, with Martha Stewart's Cooking School premiering on PBS this fall.

As the title suggests, this show will be largely instructional. Martha isn't the gimmicky type. She doesn't promise the quick-and-easy version of everything, nor does she rely on quirky themes. This is school, kids, so pay attention. As the press release states:

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R.E.~/Flickr

Coffee beans at Single Origin Coffee Bar

Because the tough-guy-braves-[insert literal or metaphorical monster here]-to reveal-the-inner-workings-of [insert subject matter here] reality show formula continues to be popular, we'll be getting at least one more, courtesy of the Travel Channel. The network just announced that it will develop a series tentatively titled Coffee Hunter, which "spotlights businessman and adventurer Todd Carmichael as he travels the globe, often in dangerous locations, hunting for the highest-grade coffee in the world."

Carmichael is the "first American to solo trek across Antarctica from coast to the South Pole," and currently is an owner of premium coffee company La Colombe Torrefaction in Philadelphia. Working with Leonardo DiCaprio, he also created a special blend of coffee, the proceeds of which benefit the actor's charitable foundation; that particular coffee made a decent showing in our recent celebrity coffee showdown, especially if you have a penchant for diner coffee.

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If you've been watching The Killing -- you know, that impossibly dark and rain-sodden police procedural on AMC that airs before Mad Men -- you'll know that there has been a price to pay for following the show into its second season. We've had to put up with the WTF moment of the first season's absurd cliffhanger. We've had to put up with the complete emasculation of Stephen Holder and with the relentless near-silence of Sarah Linden. And we've had to put up with the continued delay tactics of the show's writers, who seemingly are bent on providing more silly red herrings than actual credible plot twists. Whatever. It's cool. It's grungy. It's Danish, at least by extension.

What we've also had to put up with is the show's obsession with chewing. As demonstrated in this hilarious video by Vulture, New York magazine's culture section, The Killing is a little too fond of close-ups of mastication. Fast-food burgers (veggie or meat, depending on the season). Nicotine gum. Vending machine chips. (Which is all the characters ever seem to eat, and why Linden's ex is perhaps legitimately suing her for custody of their teenage son.) Turn the page for the video.

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amazon.com

White Trash Cooking's anniversary

How fitting, in a marshmallow salad sort of way, that 25 years after Ernest M. Mickler first published White Trash Cooking, the final season of HBO's Eastbound and Down has wrapped up.

If you've missed "the best f--king show on HBO," as MTV's James Montgomery neatly summed up in Kenny Powers-appropriate lingo, you can still shell out those HBO subscription dollars and watch back episodes. Or you could go with the $19.99, cheap white trash spiral-bound alternative: the recently released 25th-anniversary edition of Mickler's cookbook.

Although Mickler died shortly after the first edition was published, we have a feeling the cookbook author would have been an Eastbound and Down fan.

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