Chef Jamie Oliver puts together memorable meals with his own garden produce for his show

Food worshippers, flip on the telly this season. Let culinary celebrity, Bobby Chinn hold your hand through a five-course traditional Bengali meal, even as he trawls the bylanes of Calcutta for the authentic kathi roll. Chinn’s gastronomic experiences in the City of Joy are part of the second season of World Café Asia, a show on local cuisines, beamed on Discovery Travel & Living. “I am going to eat my way, and lose my way through the back streets of Calcutta, and do a little bit of cooking as well,” he says.

Alternatively, surf through the channels and follow CNN IBN’s special correspondent, food and hospitality, Bikramjit Ray on a trail across the culinary landscapes of Coorg, Karaikudi and Haridwar, sampling everything from the home-style pandhi (pork) curry to the frothy sweet concoction called rabri. Or go shopping for exotic ingredients and haggle with vendors in bustling marketplaces with Kunal Vijaykar in Times Now’s The Foodie.

As food fascination skyrockets, culinary programming on television channels is undergoing a renaissance of sorts. A battery of star anchors, celebrity chefs and confectioners are bringing to the table a truly bountiful food hamper, flinging into it other entertainment options like travel, history and culture.

In Kylie Kwong: My China, the culinary diva rustles up specialties from nine different provinces of the country; (below) Rachel Allen takes viewers through the scrumptious world of modern baking and punctuates her show with interactions with contemporary culinary stars

Says sommelier Magandeep Singh, the host of NDTV Good Times’ Around the World in 85 Plates, who goes around the planet tucking into some of the finest local cuisines and sipping his way through an astonishing array of exotic drinks: “Time was when food shows were hosted by anchors whose claim to food was that they have travelled and dined thanks to their glorious lifestyles. Now food knowledge is important. Viewers much prefer a guy who has actually stood behind the range and felt the flame,” he adds.

As a result, the new crop of shows mostly has culinary professionals holding forth on the contemporary rages in food fashion, livening up recipe workshops with behind-the-scenes commentary. More importantly, the latest programmes have introduced innovative formats to boot, focusing on hot culinary trends of the moment, popular and legendary food haunts and dishes that have gained iconic status.

In fact, the food show format gets a new high with Discovery Travel & Living’s flamboyant debut this summer called Man v. Food. In what can only be called a bizarre eating spree, theatre personality and food presenter Adam Richman takes on the toughest of gastronomic challenges while hotfooting it from one legendary American food establishment after another, devouring 13-pound pizzas, seven-and-half pound burgers called Kookamungas and what have you.

Highlights of the ‘spectacle driven’ show include Richman stretching the limits of his belly by gorging on monstrosities like a 72-ounce steak in Amarillo, US, that’s hailed as the meat capital of the world.

Also wowing audiences with an out-of-the box dining concept is Zee Café’s English chef Jamie Oliver in his series Jamie at Home. His quirky take on food consists of putting together memorable meals with his own garden produce. In fact, the introductory episode of the series showcases Oliver’s well-tended garden bursting with the freshest of tomatoes and how the champion of healthy cooking serves up a lip-smacking tomato salad accompanied by fusilli with salsa rossa cruda. Discussing the innovative quotient, Sujay Kutty, senior vice president and business head, Zee Café and Zee Studio says: “Each week, Jamie uses a different cooking ingredient which has been grown organically at his home in rural Essex, UK.”

Credit the insatiable appetite for culinary diversity for the burgeoning food bazaar on TV. Discovery Travel & Living with its primary focus on food, travel and in most cases a combination of the two has zoomed to a subscriber-strength of 30.5 million currently and the number is growing exponentially. “The channel has become a window for viewers to explore world cuisines, trends and spirits,” says Rajiv Bakshi, director, marketing & communications, India, Discovery Networks Asia-Pacific.

Ritu Dalmia has sampled the best of Italian cuisine as she zipped across the country for her TV show

To be sure, food shows are getting more viewers today than ever before. For instance, according to TAM Media Research, the cookery genre is the most watched genre on NDTV Good Times, accounting for about 33.2 per cent share of all programming in the January 17, 2010 to February 13, 2010 period as against a 22.4 per cent share in the same period a year ago. On Discovery Travel & Living too, TAM Media’s figures show that the genre’s share has grown from 12.3 per cent to 18.8 per cent in the same timeframe. It’s the second-most popular genre after travel on this channel.

Most of the food shows have such a soaring fan following that they are now going into the second and third seasons. Vijaykar’s The Foodie has currently completed nearly 200 episodes while Chinn is hosting a second series of World Café Asia. Kylie Kwong too has two shows (Kylie Kwong: Simply Magic and Kylie Kwong: My China) running simultaneously on the channel.

According to Ray of CNN IBN, the growth curve of dining extravaganzas on the silver screen is constantly inching upwards: “There’s an aspirational quality to such culinary programmes and with a lot of cash to spare, Indians now want to bone up on gastronomic skills and trivia.” Ray is currently conceptualising his fifth series around the cooks of Indian royalty.

Husband-wife duo Nikhil and Natasha Chib entertains the audience with their take on Asian cuisines

Inevitably, travel occupies centre-stage in this latest slew of food shows, with their anchors hitting the road to every corner of the planet from Lombardy in Italy to Malacca in Malaysia. The various pit stops in the domestic culinary circuit are not given a miss either. “I have scoured the earth for authentic recipes and sometimes they come from the most unusual places,” notes Ray, who had criss-crossed the villages of Kerala for his show Secret Kitchen, trying to track down an authentic Alleppey fish curry recipe.

Eventually, the treasure hunt ended when he chanced upon a 70-year-old lady named Mariyamma who rustled up the delicacy using the fresh catch of the day.

Says Rachel Allen, author, chef and host of Travel & Living’s show Rachel Allen Bakes: “I’ve visited different bakeries all around Ireland and the UK. In the process, I stumbled across a wonderful Irish bakery where the sour dough bread is fantastic. It’s not just pure cookery.”

Agrees restaurateur and food show host Ritu Dalmia, who has hopped across delightful parts of Italy such as Umbria, Lombardy and Emilia Romagna in search of food items as exotic as Gorgonzola and mozzarella. “In the third season of Italian Khana (NDTV Good Times), I have done the craziest of things and enjoyed every bit of it. In Italy, I have gone truffle hunting, stepped on to the wine trail and discovered some of the best olive oil producing outfits tucked away in the picturesque countryside,” she says.

Bikramjit Ray peppers his show with interesting anecdotes about various food items; (right) Tata Sky’s ACTVE Cooking Service has recipe demonstrations telecast 24x7

Even Kylie Kwong has stepped out of the kitchen in her latest avatar, and her new series Kylie Kwong: My China, has her wending her way through nine different provinces of China, including Sichuan and Yunnan. She has been dropping by food markets, Chinese cities and the countryside, taking in everything from fresh produce piled high in the marketplaces to local cooking practices. Kwong likens her programme to the dishes she creates: “I want it to be with a lot of textures, flavours and ingredients.”

As anchors, in their new incarnations, lay out elaborate feasts on the sidewalks of the globe, their culinary sojourns throw up interesting food trivia. For instance, the gastronomic heritage of Calcutta was brought to the fore as Chinn sampled delectable prawn chips and other assorted fare at the first Chinese eatery of the city.

“While the Chinese chicken buns are about as Indian as Jackie Chan, they are so good that everyone seems to eat them,” he says.

Even Ray has a kitty of culinary anecdotes that he peppers his show with, gleaned from his trips to different corners of the country: “We had once filmed the elaborate preparation of haleem (a ritualistic dish cooked in the month of Ramadan) in Hyderabad, by a crew of Hindu cooks. The cooking process needed tasters and Muslims, observing roza, could not oblige.”

The new age audience, a gastronomically evolved lot, is also incredibly demanding. And satiating their food fantasies is Allen, who’s upping the ante on her show by visiting uber-successful and creative modern bakers such as Eric Lanlard and Mich Turner (Madonna’s wedding cake confectioner) quizzing them about their latest offerings.

Also putting a new spin to the dining spread are Rocky Singh and Mayur Sharma, anchors of Jai Hind (NDTV Good Times), who embark on a journey of the palate with the Indian Armed Forces. Juggling between laborious tasks that are de rigueur in soldier territory and several mouth-watering repasts, the presenters spin an enriching tale of hardship and rewards.

For husband-wife duo Nikhil and Natasha Chib, anchors of The Chef and his Better Half, on the same channel, innovation is the watchword too, as they rustle up delicacies as a couple. “It was very cute to have them interact on every aspect of the show — from the recipes, to what they would say to camera and even their clothes,” says Monica Narula, head of food programming, NDTV Good Times.

However, programming content is not the only thing that’s had a facelift. Cookery shows, as a concept is undergoing a huge make-over. “With a busy lifestyle, a lot of people find it hard to keep an appointment with their favourite cooking shows,” says Vikram Mehra, Chief Marketing Officer, Tata Sky Limited. The direct-to-home (DTH) satellite TV has hence launched interactive services like ‘ACTVE Cooking’that offers viewers nine new recipe demonstrations daily.

The convenience quotient is further hiked with texts of the recipes in both English and Hindi being flashed on the screen. What’s more, the service is available 24X7 on demand.

Indeed, food shows on the idiot box are packing a mean punch. There are choices galore for every foodie dying to don the toque while zipping across time zones. The dinner menu at home is undergoing a sea change too with expert help from culinary doyens across the world. Bon appétit!