What are your favorite/least favorite cooking shows?

I wish someone had warned me about what an insulting piece of schlock it is. It looks so good and it’s so well-cast that I didn’t catch on until partway through episode two.

I enjoyed the movie Julie and Julia . With Amy Adams , Stanley Tucci, and and others . I probably won’t watch this new film . But if it’s available for free . I might . For my viewing of Julia. I turn to you tube for Jaques and Julia cooking together. Or her show The French chef with Julia Child and others on pbs . I have watched them over and over.

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Have you seen ‘her kitchen’ at the Smithsonian. That was really fun.

Did the Julia Child exhibit at the Smithsonian several times, and each time I was amazed at the cross-section of ages among the visitors. Young and old came to pay culinary homage…

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Now that’s interesting. I assumed it was a permanent exhibit. If not I’m super glad I got to see it. Put a smile on my face.

The half about Julia Child was great. The other half, well, considering it was based on a blog, it could have been worse.

Some really interesting lesser-known stuff about the Childs and other mid-century foodies in this book:

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Tucci’s tempting and beautiful romp thru Piedmont region. Truffles and more…

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I meant to put oil in there, but I put vermouth instead, but that doesn’t make any difference.

—Julia Child, The French Chef, season 1, episode 2, “French Onion Soup”

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I did not know you could farm black truffles. But that’s what they have been doing in the Umbria region of Italy for generations, as depicted by in the latest segment of Tucci’s ‘Searching for Italy’.

Some years ago when we lived in SW Oregon there was a vendor at our weekly farmers market who ‘grew’ them.

No one has yet figured out how to farm truffles successfully.

You must be talking about white truflles but even then…

As that headline says, “could be possible.” Lots of people have tried and are trying to propagate all the valuable varieties, but no one has yet had significant success. That’s why they’re truffle hunters, not truffle farmers.

That may change in coming years, but the claim that people have been farming truffles in Umbria for generations is ridiculous.

I guess you didn’t read the link I provided which states -

“Comparatively, he says over 80 percent of black truffles are now cultivated, without any change to how they taste.”

I think I’ll take Food and Wine’s word for this rather than yours.

As @gutreactions mentioned during the last segment of the Stanley Tucci Umbria they visit a black truffle farm. It sure looks like they are cultivating black truffles. The farmer mentions on several occasions how the taste, smell and quality of the cultivated black truffles is identical to wild black truffles.

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There are “truffle farm” nurseries that sell saplings inoculated with truffle spores. You can buy a bunch of those and plant them to make a grove or forest where, if you’re lucky, years later you can take your dog and hunt for truffles.

This is the place in Tucci’s show.

https://www.google.com/search?q=truffle+hunting+"+San+Pietro+a+Pettine"&tbm=isch

“Hunters go out daily but never know if they’ll find any truffles, and if they do find them, if they’ll be ripe enough.”

So I guess you don’t believe that 80% of black truffles are cultivated.

When a forager has to go out with dogs and may return empty-handed, personally I think it’s weird to call that a “farm.”

I can’t find any authoritative statistics on what percentage of the black truffles in France are coming from new truffle plantations created by planting inoculated saplings, or from expansions of existing traditional truffle-hunting areas using the same technique. The 80% claim appears in a Wikipedia article, but flagged “citation needed,” so it’s probably just an Internet echo of that American Express (Food & Wine) article.

I take this with a grain of salt since the company sells inoculated seedlings:

Also, in addition to selling actual truffles, Urbani also sells lots of “truffle” products where the aroma comes from 2,4-dithiapentane and the like.

That’s right. They had bushels of them. And a restaurant operated by the owner’s daughter utilizing black truffles every which way…

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