Tuesday, September 11, 2007
I Want my Ming-TV
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Chef Ming Tsai has a lot on his plate. Plates, actually. There is a glistening platter of oven roasted pork ribs, slathered with a cranberry hoisin sauce. There’s a plate piled high with fluffy rice and chicken. And there is also a steaming bowl of Ja Jien Mien. All foods Ming cooked in his studio kitchen, on camera, and they are begging to be eaten.
Ming also has a guest at his table, one of his idols — his father, Dr. Stephen Tsai. With all the confidence, charm and cadence of a network newscaster, he recaps the menu before him, thanks “us” for watching, thanks his dad, then signs off with his signature, “And as always, peace and good eating.”
Ming has been cooking since 7:00 this morning. And he’ll keep cooking until about 6:00 this evening. He has been cooking in front of the dozen or more stage crew (not to mention the 10 or more cooks in the prep kitchen and the eight or nine folks in the control room). He has been cooking with five cameras hovering around him, just a few feet from his face. He has been cooking with more than 30 bright, hot lights bearing down on him. He has been cooking and talking all day.
That’s what Ming does. He is a celebrity chef with his own wildly popular PBS cooking show, “Simply Ming.” This is Ming’s fifth season on PBS (he has had programs on the Food Network and Fine Living). Today’s shows (which will air this season) are “Black Lychee Tea” and “Brown Sugar and Hoisin Sauce and Cranberries.“ Every program has a pairing of East and West ingredients (Ming’s specialty). In each show he will prepare two or three dishes using the paired ingredients, then a guest chef will do the same.
“I love to teach and I am always, always learning,” says Ming. “It’s part of the circle. Our parents, teachers, coaches, teach us, then we get to a certain age and we become the teachers. Primarily, I am a teacher to my sons, but also at Blue Ginger (the restaurant he and his wife, Polly, own) and here on ‘Simply Ming.’ So I love to teach, then I have a guest chef who comes on and teaches me, and the viewers, something. That’s what it’s all about.”
Check in next week for the next installment…
Comments
All this teaching—I wish I could be a guest on his show so he could teach me a thing or two. I am still burning toast after all these years!
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