Hold the flash: 'America's Test Kitchen' sticks to the basics

"America's Test Kitchen," which airs Saturdays on WNPT-TV, Channel 8, bills itself as "public television's most-watched cooking show," and justifiably so. It's not as slick or flashy as the cooking shows on Food Network or other cable channels, but it's both pleasant and informative, something that seems to be a low priority for Food Network at times.

The show is hosted by Christopher Kimball, who founded Cook's Magazine in 1984. It stopped publication a few years later, but then he ressurected it in 1993 as Cook's Illustrated, and now has a companion magazine, Cook's Country, as well. The TV show is an offshoot of Cook's Illustrated, promotes it and draws from its staff.

Kimball, dapper and dignified in his bow tie, doesn't do most of the cooking himself, even though he's an accomplished author on the subject. Instead, he serves as the viewer's surrogate, asking questions and making comments as chefs from the magazine's staff do the cooking.

The viewer surrogate is, in my opinion, a great way to present cooking content. It's common, of course, when a chef appears on a talk show or midday news show. Food Network has tried it a few times -- such as the incarnations of "How To Boil Water" where an established chef was paired with a host who was, at least for purposes of the show, being taught basic cooking skills.

One of Bobby Flay's earlier Food Network shows, "Hot Off The Grill," paired him with a co-host, Jacqui Malouf, in this fashion, and I liked that not only because of the format but because Malouf occasionally punctured Flay's ego.

One of the best viewer surrogate shows I can recall was the second season of "Cucina Amore," an Italian cooking show which ran on PBS. The first season of that show featured a personable chef named Nick Stellino, by himself, and he was fine.

But when he left the show, producers decided to replace him with a rotating group of chefs and a single host, the late character actor Vincent Schiavelli. Schiavelli was funny, and charming, and had an easy rapport with the chefs, and it made the show more enjoyable than it would have been with only one host.

But I digress. "America's Test Kitchen" is presented in a magazine format, so it also has segments that go beyond cooking -- for example, there's often a taste test segment where various commercial products are compared, and Kimball gets to try them himself to see if his preferences match those of the magazine's test panel. Food Network, by comparison, tends to shy away from any mention of specific brands in its cooking shows.

"America's Test Kitchen" also addresses cooking equipment, a quite important topic that Food Network leaves largely untouched with the exception of Alton Brown on "Good Eats."

One downside of "America's Test Kitchen" is that, like most of its PBS siblings, it depends on alternate revenue streams and so it's parsimonious with its online recipes. Food Network makes nearly all of its recipes, new and old, easily available on its web site, and it's easy to link to them, recommend them to friends and so on.

"America's Test Kitchen" puts the recipes from its current season online, but you have to register for a user account to be able to see them, and that registration process includes a pitch for you to subscribe to Cook's Illustrated. In fact, you have to be careful to uncheck a box during the registration process or else you'll find yourself signed up for a trial subscription. Past season recipes are only available if you're a subscriber to the magazine.

But that's a quibble. "America's Test Kitchen" is a great cooking show that's actually about cooking instead of catch phrases. I haven't seen its new companion series, "Cook's Country," but I look forward to that one as well.

--John I. Carney is city editor of the Times-Gazette and covers county government. He is also the author of the self-published novel "Soapstone." His personal web site is lakeneuron.com.