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kottke.org posts about The Mind of a Chef

posted by Jason Kottke

A visit to a French butter factory

In a bonus from the food series The Mind of a Chef, LA chef Ludo Lefebvre visits a butter factory where they make customized butter for restaurants.

So when we visited the Jean-Yves Bordier Butter factory in the Brittany region of France and had chef Ludo Lefebvre help in the process, it was nothing but pure amazement in his eyes. Le Beurre Bordier customizes it’s butter to the specifications of the chefs they send it to.

The video is subtitled and they go really quick, but I love the look on Lefebvre’s face after he runs his thumb through the finished butter: pure childlike wonder. The full episode featuring Lefebvre is available on PBS’s website (likely for US viewers only). This clip pairs well with this video on how to make croissants. (via the excellent the kid should see this)

posted by Jason Kottke

Reminder: The Mind of a Chef

In case you missed it a few months ago on PBS, the excellent The Mind of a Chef is out in downloadable form on iTunes and at Amazon. The first episode is available for free on the PBS site for try-before-you-buy purposes.

posted by Jason Kottke

Watch The Mind of a Chef online for free

Friendly reminder: ten episodes of Anthony Bourdain and David Chang’s Mind of a Chef are available to view for free on the PBS website. I am through two episodes so far and it’s my favorite cooking/food show since The Naked Chef.1 Here’s the first episode, all about ramen:

[I removed the embed because it was autoplaying for some unlucky people. You can watch the first episode here.]

The first four episodes will be taken down after Friday so act now.

[1] No joke, those first couple seasons of Oliver’s show were really good. It’s not the original Iron Chef or anything, but still. ↩

posted by Jason Kottke

Sixteen-part PBS travel/food show with David Chang

How had I not heard about this before now? The Mind of a Chef is a PBS consisting of sixteen half-hour shows that follows David Chang through his world of food. As far as I can tell, this series is basically the TV version of Lucky Peach. Episode one is about ramen:

In the series premiere, David dissects the roots of his passion for ramen dishes and tsukemen on a trip to Japan. Learn the history of this famous noodle as David visits a ramen factory, has a bowl of the original tsukemen, and examines how alkalinity makes noodles chewier and less prone to dissolving in broth.

Check out an excerpt here, in which Chang reveals how he used to eat instant ramen noodles right out of the bag with the pork flavor powder sprinkled on top. The series starts this weekend…check your local listings, as they say. (via ny times)