Yesterday I had a happy pan, when the oil smiled at me. I didn’t intend for it to become a smiley face. I poured in the oil as I always do before cooking. That’s when my imagination thought it saw something. Yep, a face. I was amused enough, and I thought that my imagination was seeing something clear enough for others to recognise, so I took pictures.
The Swiss Television archives shared this nice news item about how to prepare a fondue from 1969. It’s nice because we see the old way of preparing a fondue with the fluid burner rather than electric heaters. We also see the ingredients being placed in the caquelon.
For a few weeks now I have been thinking about how you could make a 360° cooking show. For this video I would like to be able to see the process from an angle where I see the person cooking. I would also like to see all of the ingredients and the preparation of various stages of the recipe. For this you would need an open plan kitchen where preparation takes place in the middle of the room. If it was to be filmed with just one camera then the camera should be lower than eye level but not by much. I would want to look straight ahead in to the eyes of the person preparing the meal and talking. As the person speaks about ingredients I would like to be able to look down and see all of the ingredients. You would need enough room for chopping and marinating. I would think about having a camera above the cooking surfaces so that we can see how the textures change from the start of cooking to when the mix becomes “saucy”. That’s how they describe it in recipes. I want the 360 approach to be justified. I want to make it so that the viewer has a reason to wear VR goggles. The video above justifies a 360° video whereas the video below does not. The camera needs to be placed as close to the action as possible. It should be designed so that the viewer has to turn his head to see what is happening. This video does not justify the 360 approach because the action happens in front of the camera and although you can look around the background is not relevant. The action is too small on screen. You can’t see what they are doing. The camera operator and the producer should learn the recipe and identify what the stages of preparation are. They should have a shot list of every thing that is relevant and place the camera accordingly. Is an oven or a grill used? is sauce prepared? Is something timelapse friendly? A few years ago we were up in a swiss chalet with a friend and we decided to cook a pizza with a log fire rather than an oven. We started the log fire and then we placed the pizza next to the fire. As the fire was only on one side we rotated the pizza to get it to cook in full. In watching the playback you see the pizza cook as well as the logs go from being logs to embers and “melt” downwards as they burn. If the camera can safely be placed close enough to the fire then you could look down at the pizza as the ingredients change appearance and look up to see the logs decrease in size. I believe that 360° cooking shows have a future. In theory you need just one well placed camera and editing is cut down to a minimum. Instead of editing and vision mixing from two or three cameras you need just one. I believe that the programme should not be more than 5-10 minutes. People, for now, are still getting used to VR headsets and may find extended periods of time more tiring to watch. How long will it take before someone like Jamie Oliver uses VR cooking simulations to teach people to cook in the real world. With enough time they could emulate real cooking times at different heats so that when you transition from VR to reality you have the right intuition to successfully cook for yourself and others.
Last night I was sitting in my room surfing the web and thinking about a variety of things when I could smell burned so i checked the heater. Cold. Visual inspection of my room, nothing apparently a problem. I decide to go outside my bedroom towards the kitchen and open the door. Oh fuck, the room was filled with a dense smoke and a pot was on the hob. I rushed to the window and opened it to disperse the smoke. I then moved the pan from the hot hob to a cool one, turned off the power to the unit and opened the second window. once that was done I opened the kitchen door and the flat door to create a draft that would take the smoke out of the kitchen. It worked. I checked the pan and poured water into it. Some idiot had left two chicken legs to cook without keeping an eye on. If I haden’t gone to investigate the fire alarm might have gone off and flames may have made this more serious than it was. I really want to say that I believe at least one of my flat mates to be an absolute idiot for doing something so stupid but I’m afraid that individual will read what I wrote. Apparently it’s not unusual for kitchens to be found extremely warm because students had left the hobs on overnight. Most probable cause, after reading certain threads on facebook would be drunk students. They think they’re sober enough to cook something so they heat the hobs and start to cook, decide to nap for ten minutes and fall asleep. At least the only damage is to the pan and two chicken legs. No one was harmed, no going off of the fire alarm and no material damage to university property. Happy Valentine’s
It’s a wooden tray with two sauces on the left, a dish to the right with chips, at the back some vegetables. Front and centre you find a slab of stone. It’s very hot. That’s because it’s Entrecote sur ardoise, similar to a steak. There’s a hot slab of stone and you use it to cook your meal on top. It’s delicious.