Serving up food programs

Which came first - chicken (cordon bleu style) or the egg (Benedict please)? Did Australia's obsession with food come first, or did the plethora of programs about food? One of the fastest growing television styles is the cooking show. From celebrity chefs' culinary shows, exploration of national cuisines, to reality cooking competitions, there's some kind of spin to make each program a little different. Whether you're Naked, Fat, Good, Bad, or Great, there's sure to be one to tempt your tastebuds.

But what of the educational value of these programs? How do you break through the hype and adapt these programs to teach students learning hospitality and home economics, food science and generally about nutrition?

Here are some programs EnhanceTV has selected for their educational value:

Cooking from scratch

• Gourmet Farmer is a new program starting Thursday 7 January, 7.30pm, SBS. Australia's toughest food critic, Matthew Evans, has chucked in his city life for a taste of some small farm living in Tasmania; that heart shaped island somewhere down the bottom of Australia. This series plots the new trajectory of Matthew's life: from living in Australia's biggest and busiest city to a country life in an isolated part of the island state. He's eager to seriously put to the test his primary belief that we should all be directly connected with our food: either by growing it or rearing it ourselves, or sourcing it from local producers. Having spent most of his life writing about what good food actually is, Matthew now wants to go directly to the source. He aims to find the best local produce: to rear and grow as much as he can himself. He wants to get pigs, chooks, sheep and a cow. He wants to grow things for the plate and have his farmhouse table groaning under huge platters of food. And then he wants to have lots of his old and new friends over to share in the spoils. Only problem is, he doesn't know how to chop wood, and he doesn't know anything about growing fruit and vegetables and even less about rearing animals. However, he does know how to eat. How hard can it be?

Food Science

• For The Juniors: Food - Cooking Food Why do we cook food and how does it change when cooked? This program looks at the evolution of cooking - taking us from early campfires and primitive white settler kitchens through to the wonder of microwave ovens.
• Food for Thought (Complete Series 10 x 15 mins) This series from ABC Education explores the technology and science behind our food supply.
• Food Investigators (Complete Series 10 X 30 Mins) We're all fascinated by what we eat. This 10-part series will investigate food; explore the myths, the hidden nasties, and just what is good, or not good, for us in our diet.
• Scope: Cooking Science At Scope we decided to move from the lab to the kitchen to try and uncover the science that is mixed into frying, baking, boiling, steaming and, of course, eating. Join Dr Rob as he puts on his chefs hat and scopes out all the science behind cooking.
• For The Juniors: Food (Complete Series 4 X 15 Mins) For the Juniors, for students aged 6-8 years, aims to stimulate children's curiosity and imagination, widen their horizons and encourage them to explore their environment, present enjoyable experiences which relate broadly to the lives and interests of the children and raise issues.

International Cuisines & Culture

• Kylie Kwong: My China (Complete Series 9 X 30 mins) Kylie Kwong returns to the land of her ancestors and confronts the vast contrasts of China to take us on a culinary journey.
• Ayen's Cooking School For African Men and Study Guide For the Sudanese men and women who arrive in Australia as refugees, they find the clearly defined gender roles of their culture are out of step with the values of their new country. In Sudanese culture, culinary traditions and responsibilities fall within the realm of the women. In Australia, Sudanese women are also burdened with other duties such as paid work and study, placing tension on their culture's customary gendered division of labour. This program provides an insight into the difficulties of blending two vastly different cultures.
• Food Safari Maeve O'Meara leads a voyage of culinary discovery through the restaurants and home kitchens of Australia in a new series of Food Safari.
• Cooking in the Danger Zone from the Arctic, Afghanistan, South Korea, Burma, and more.
• Heston's Feasts: Tudor, Mediaeval, Victorian. The future of cooking, Heston tells us, lies in the secret recipes of the past.
• Planet Food - Mexico, Carribbean, Italy, Germany.

Australian Cuisine

• Margaret Fulton: Our Food Journey - This one-hour documentary celebrates the history of Australian food through the recollections of Australian food legend Margaret Fulton, a pioneer of the Australian kitchen.
• Inside Australia: Love's Harvest (Eggs, Garlic, Raspberries, Cheese) Love's Harvest is a series of four half-hour beautiful and intimate stories about organic farmers.
• Our History - the Colonists arrive - Food This program looks at the challenges that Governor Phillip faced trying to feed the new settlers. The diet of the first white settlers was not very healthy.

Running a Restaurant

• There's Jamie's Kitchen: Australia (where Jamie Oliver trains a group of 16-24 year old disadvantaged Australians), and restaurants in Parramatta, to the Biggest Chinese Restaurant in the World click here.

Images top to bottom:
Take Off, 'Breakfast at Le Piaf's 03-23, Gourmet Farmer (image supplied by Essential Media), Le Defilé des Soldats Rouges, Spices,
Raspberries