B. Rodell

#thetaste

Remember the good old days, when you'd watch TV, then think about it a bit, then perhaps discuss it the next day at work around the water cooler? Now that's not nearly enough. While watching TV, you must read everyone's live tweets about the show, then watch the after-show about the show, then hashtag all your thoughts about the show, then read all the blog recaps about the show, then tweet about the recaps.

A couple of years ago, during the first Golden Globe Awards after Twitter had become pervasive, I tweeted, "Twitter just became this big weird room where everyone watches television collectively." While that statement today seems ludicrously obvious, in January 2011 it seemed like something worth observing, and it struck a chord, getting a couple hundred retweets and replies.

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Cooking Channel

The Chinese New Year's Eve feast Ching-He Huang planned for her upcoming Cooking Channel special is less a menu than what she calls a blueprint. It's a sensible approach to the task of transcribing a storied tradition like a Chinese N.Y.E. dinner. After all, Huang faced a range of possible interpretations -- varying first in region then among families -- for each precept that guides a particular dish. Turn the page for her suggestions for how to prepare your own feast this Saturday evening.

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Disney ABC TV Group via flickr

The Taste judges

We're guessing there won't be many vegan dishes featured on ABC's new show, The Taste. On last week's episode, three vegan cooks got a smackdown when the judging panel sampled the non-meat offerings.

"I suspect vegetarianism," intoned Anthony Bourdain, as if someone had just served him a dirty sock; "Oh uh oh" uttered Ludo Lefebvre (at least that's what we think he said); "I need meat cooked on my team," said Brian Malarkey (Really? For every course of every meal? Malarkey!) and from Nigella Lawson: "I'm confused."

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Inside My Kitchen

Balsamic Fig and Mascarpone

In a world where attention spans are rapidly decreasing, it's tough to stay afloat unless you have a catchy storyline, good characters and, preferably, scrumptious photography. Inside My Kitchen, a YouTube-funded web series, is doing all of that.

Launched in Sept. 2012, the Los Angeles-based production gets behind the scenes at a local restaurant each week and pushes out four to five shorts profiling the eatery. Episodes literally go inside the kitchen of local staples like 800 Degrees, Delphine, Yamashiro and -- most recently -- Coolhaus. In each feature, the restaurant chef shares the tricks, tools and recipes that makes his or her particular restaurant stand out from the crowd.

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ABC

The Taste. Photo courtesy of ABC

Well, kids, The Taste premiered last night on ABC with much fanfare. We sat, we watched, we followed the (trending!) tweets and we're here to recap. Just in case your DVR didn't work, or you just want to relive it all in print.

The premise -- as previously mentioned -- is a mash-up of The Voice and Top Chef. For two hours, contestants were shown making a single-bite dish that was blindly tasted by the four judges. The judges -- Bourdain, Lefebvre, Nigella Lawson and Brian Malarkey -- then tried to figure out what they had just eaten and if that bite merited landing the cook a spot on their individual teams. The teams will be mentored by the judges, but the tastings will continue to be held blindly. This means a mentor may end up sending home his own mentee. And that means there's lots of room for drama and crushed egos. Oh, and we should mention the prize for this throw-down is $100,000 and a shiny new car. Oooooh-eee.

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ABC

The Taste

When a chef sees something he likes, he inevitably wants to make it, but better and with his own twist. Perhaps that was the rationale behind culinary luminaries like L.A. favorite Ludo Lefebvre and Anthony Bourdain of Travel Channel fame, hitching their wagons to The Taste, a new reality competition cooking show on ABC that debuts tomorrow night at 8 p.m. PST.

Maybe the judges -- Bourdain, Lefebvre, Nigella Lawson and Brian Malarkey -- were all ready to show the world how a real cooking show should go down. We can imagine Bourdain thinking that. Since all of them had turns on the gold standards for the genre, Top Chef and Top Chef Masters, now it's their turn to amuse America and marvel at or spit out dishes they have to eat blindly. In this day and age there is simply no better way to build a brand.

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Isabella Vosmikova/Bravo

Cosentino

We don't know Chris Cosentino, but we have tasted his brains risotto -- the warm, cinnamon-scented webs, the rice, the tender little chunks of chicken thighs studding the bowl. We have had his marrow salad and his tripe. The Top Chef Masters champ -- San Francisco's dark prince of "the nasty bits" -- can cook, no doubt. A dinner at Incanto makes you drunk.

Marrow goo runs through your veins like lava in slow motion. Voices sound fuzzy and distant. Your polenta legs buckle and sway. However, in addition to allowing Cosentino's creations to do battle with the inside of your stomach, you may now wear them on the outside as well. Yes, that's right -- Cosentino is hawking offal-themed apparel.

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ABC/RICK ROWELL

Mentors/Judges on The Taste: Brian Malarky, Ludo Lefebvre, Nigella Lawson and Anthony Bourdain, looking ever-so-unconcerned about what you think of him

Anthony Bourdain describes himself as an "enthusiast," though strangely, as we watch him globetrot across our televisions eating some of the world's most exotic and delicious foods, living a life many would trade their first born for, his demeanor is rarely all that enthusiastic. Known well for his ascerbic nature, "this doesn't suck" is one of his most commonly doled out compliments. Yet surprisingly, at a press luncheon held at the massive Disney compound in Burbank last Friday for ABC's The Taste, he seemed almost giddy.

The Taste is yet another culinary competition show premiering later this month, and Bourdain serves as both an executive producer and on-screen personality. It pits accomplished chefs against home cooks in a blind taste test battle for which he, Nigella Lawson, Ludo Lefebvre and Brian Malarky are judges as well as mentors for their team of cooks. They don't know who's made what dish, and they don't know who they're sending home. It's something like American Idol and The Voice combined, but with food.

In other words, a bit hokey sounding, and frankly, when we first heard of it, we were surprised Bourdain was involved at all.

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Wikipedia

Huell Howser

As many Angelenos probably already know, Huell Howser died Sunday night at the age of 67. In memoriam, we thought we'd channel-surf through some episodes of Howser's KCET series California's Gold, which have covered myriad subjects over the course of the beloved reporter's long career -- Howser only retired in November. Among the topics? Secret burger menus, fair food, ostrich omelets and plenty of old guys in the desert. Turn the page. Howser, a Tennessean who came to Southern California in 1981, will be deeply missed.

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E. Dwass

It's a guy's world

Last week the CBS sitcom The Big Bang Theory offered a spot-on observation about something funky in the world of cereal. As the brainiac crew of scientists settled into breakfast, astrophysicist Raj (played by Kunal Nayyar) began to rattle off the names of cereal mascots like Tony the Tiger, Toucan Sam and Snap, Crackle and Pop. He had made a startling discovery: All of the mascots are males.

Inspired by his rant, we headed over to the neighborhood market to do a little research of our own, and we couldn't find one girl cereal mascot on any box. Instead, just as Raj pointed out, the featured characters were Count Chocula, the Trix Rabbit, Cap'n Crunch, the Lucky Charms Leprechaun, Dig'em Frog, and Buzz the Honeynut Cheerios bee, to name but a few. (Ironically, Raj will have trouble telling an actual woman about his discovery, because, in an ongoing joke, he can talk to females only when he's drunk.)

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