Went down to hang out with my mother

[conuly]

and Jenn was there too, and we watched... the holiday baking challenge? I don't know, one of those baking competition shows.

So the first episode we see just the tail end, and the woman who is definitely about to be kicked off is being criticized for her decorations being too sunny and not Christmassy enough (because she'd forgotten to put snow instead of grass on the ground and then sort of had to fake it with snowmen) and I really was rooting for her to say "You know, in my country it doesn't snow. This IS seasonal", but she didn't. She should have.

And then in the next episode the producers remembered that holidays other than Christmas exist, so for the first event (or, as they cutely call it, the "pre-heat") they wanted the contestants to make rugelach, but with innovative fillings. I don't exactly think of Hanukkah and go "Oh, yes, time to eat the festive rugelagh!", but what do I know? I never like that stuff anyway. When I go by the farmer's market or the grocery store and there's rugelach on sale, I buy something else. Never even crosses my mind that I might want some to snack on or after dinner.

Perhaps predictably, the one guy who both a. knows what rugelach is and b. bakes it regularly for his store flubbed his recipe and they came out all flat. Meanwhile, everybody else is freaking out over decorating the stuff, and all the time Jenn, my mom, and I are all staring at the screen going "...but it's rugelach. You can't decorate it. There's only so much you can do with it, and decoration isn't exactly on the table here. Because it's rugelach." Their attempts to decorate were interesting, and that's all I can say about it.

Then they all went and made tiramisu. I was on tenterhooks waiting to see if anybody would tell the guy with the oddly-shaped gingerbread men that he'd accidentally used a reindeer cookie cutter instead. (They finally did! And he still won!)

It's nice sometimes to watch some fluffy, not-too-thinky TV for a while with the family :)

Comments

[jesuswasbatman]

Don't know about America, but British cooking culture now discourages deep frying in pans on hobs due to the fire risk.

[crystalpyramid]

I have no idea, I'm just a person who sometimes cooks things, not someone who keeps up with the latest recommendations on how I can't cook things without a special device.

[conuly]

Question: Does BrE distinguish between pans and pots?

[jesuswasbatman]

It might vary within the UK, but my general rule is that a pan has a long handle on one side, while a pot has no handles, or small ones on multiple sides.

[conuly]

...it doesn't have to do with the depth of the vessel?

[jesuswasbatman]

Not at all - "pans" can be anything from a frying pan to a saucepan that's six inches or more deep. There are limits to how big a pan can be, but they're down to purely how heavy a vessel filled with water can be and still be capable of being lifted one-handed using a side handle.

[conuly]

*mind blown*

[jesuswasbatman]

And I now understand the derivation of "deep pan pizza", which had always puzzled me - British cooks would be more likely to think of the vessel a pizza was baked in as a baking tin or tray, depending on how high the rim was.

[conuly]

In the case of pan pizza, I wonder if it has to do with Italian translation. Like, a lot of Italian-Americans call tomato sauce "gravy".