Gosh the Brits know how to do misery, don't they? Miserable weather, miserable class distinctions, miserable food, circa 1960s at least. (The Anglophiles among us need not get their knickers in a twist: Word that there's now fab fare to be found in Britain has leaked out.)

But the grim, gray food of an earlier generation is on full display in the autobiographical film "Toast," based on the memoir of the same name by popular English cookbook author, food writer, and TV show host Nigel Slater. (Regular readers may recall a recent review of his latest tome, Tender, an homage to the humble veg, in a delightful Stephanie Rosenbaum post.)

There's no sugar coating it: Slater's early years were incredibly sad and lonely. The untimely death of his beloved mother, a simply awful cook who adored her boy and he her. Her only culinary saving grace: Toast with lashings of butter served up for dinner after another canned-food failure. Slater had a difficult relationship with his father, who made cheese sandwiches for days on end after the death of his wife. Something of a bully, the father also made it clear his son was a huge disappointment to him. Add to this equation the evil stepmother, played with trollopy gusto by Helena Bonham Carter, who wormed her way into their lives, first as an obsessive cleaner and then with her culinary (and, we're given ample evidence to believe, sexual) prowess.

The woman may have been cheap as chips but she knew how to cook -- and bake. Oh my, that lemon meringue pie!

In the film, with screenplay by Lee Hall who wrote "Billy Elliott," the adolescent Slater (Freddie Highmore) is locked in a culinary clash with his despised stepmother for the attention and affection of his father. He loses, of course, and blames his stepmother for the early death of his father. Moviegoers will get the sense she literally fed him to death; the cakes, pies, and roasts just keep coming out of the oven.

Victoria Hamilton as Nigel's mother and Oscar Kennedy as young Nigel Slater.

The role of food in families -- as both a comfort and a weapon -- is at the heart of this movie, which makes great use of the anguished music of Dusty Springfield for its soundtrack. Dinner time in the Slater household was a desperately unhappy affair. Still, the young Slater finds refuge in food, sneaking cookbooks under the covers to read up on recipes, excelling in his Home Economics class, and triumphing over his stepmom by perfecting his own lemon meringue pie, which pops off the screen as a bright yellow gelatinous mass with a mound of white peaks expertly browned on top.

As in many children's fairy tales, his stepmom also provides his liberation: Following his father's death he simply walks out of her life and flees to London, where a future in food is his for the taking, and he never sees her again.

In a sweet end note, Slater appears in a cameo as himself, reassuring his younger self, who is desperate to find a kitchen job (at the Savoy Hotel, no less) that everything will be fine.

Fortunately for the food world, it is. Slater is the author of ten books, many bestsellers, including Real Fast Food, Appetite, and The Kitchen Diaries. A food columnist for The Observer for almost two decades, Toast the memoir, which won several major awards, including British Biography of the Year, began marinating as a column.

Ken Stott as Nigel's father and Oscar Kennedy as young Nigel Slater.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the adult Slater is not fond of fussy food, he prefers simple suppers made with care and thought, using quality ingredients. And despite his upbringing, he believes that making something good to eat for yourself or for others can lift the spirits in the way little else can.

(In an interesting twist, the daughters of Slater's now deceased stepmother denounced his portrayal of her in the British press earlier this year. The very different accounts of their childhood years serves to remind us that every person's version of the truth can vary wildly. On this much, though, all parties seem to agree: Slater's early years were full of rejection and loss. Indeed the subtitle of his book "A Boy and His Hunger" is both a nod to his need for real, nourishing food and genuine, nourishing love.)

When asked what's missing from the movie, Slater responds without missing a beat: The sex. "Toast is a sexy little book, there's a lot of adolescent sex in those pages and they form an integral part of the story," he said in an interview yesterday. "It doesn't really matter in the movie but honestly I would have liked to have seen a bit more of it. "Toast" was made for prime-time viewing in Britain at Christmas, and I think they wanted a film that the whole family could watch, not something adolescent boys might squirm at."

The movie only hints at the teenage Slater's emerging sexuality; it reveals his crush on a family gardener and a first kiss in the woods with a local boy.

Fans of the food writer's memoir should not hold their breath for Toast: The Second Slice. Here's why: "I'm a very private person and tend to keep to myself, in part because I don't think I'm that interesting," Slater said. "That memoir was the most intimate of memoirs and to this day I don't really know why I did it. But I was writing as a little boy and I was somehow able to differentiate it from my adult self. I stopped at 18 and I've protected myself ever since, I went back into my shell."

There's more. "In practical terms, if I were to do a second book, it would be more a conventional memoir," he said, adding, "and I'd have to write about other people's lives, people who are still alive, and I don't want to intrude on their privacy."

At a time when many of us wax on about the pleasures of the table (this writer included), "Toast" reminds us that food can cause major misery in many people's lives. Audience goers will likely find themselves reflecting on their own childhood food memories while watching the film. Thankfully, this being a decidedly British film, there's a lot of black humor amid the sorrow.

Just as well, too, because this writer, who wanted to rush home and bake her teenage son a cake after seeing the film, found herself wincing at the pain of it all at times.

"Toast" opens in Bay Area cinemas this Friday.

Guests and host, Leslie Sbrocco taping episode 609 of Check, Please! Bay Area at KQED. Photo: Wendy Goodfriend

Check, Please! Bay Area Season 6: episode 9 airs Friday October 7 at 1pm and 8:30pm on KQED TV 9. View other airtimes and channels.

You can watch individual restaurant segments as well as view the entire episode online. The website also provides restaurant information not specified on the show, written reviews from the guests and restaurant recipes. If you have opinions on the restaurants featured please feel free to share your thoughts. This season, Leslie Sbrocco will be sharing wine tips with each episode.

The ninth episode of the season features these restaurants: Pork Store Café (San Francisco), Pizzaiolo (Oakland) and Zarzuela (San Francisco).

Leslie Sbrocco: Wine Tips -- What to do with Leftover Wine

This tribute video was created to honor Jacques Pépin and was shown at the 4th Annual New York City Wine & Food Festival Tribute Dinner on October 1, 2011.

Jacques Pépin's new national TV series Essential Pépin begins airing October 15 on KQED. The series is based on his new cookbook Essential Pépin which is a collection of over 700 of Jacques' favorite recipes from his career that has spanned six decades.

The new Essential Pépin website just launched and you can view four complete episodes before the program premieres as well as view entire episodes one week before they air on TV. Over 75 recipes are available online, which include large color photos not available in the book. You can also connect with Jacques on Facebook and Twitter as well as view a behind-the-scenes slideshow from the taping of the series.

When a world-famous and beloved chef gathers together sixty years of the recipes he "love[s] the most" and stuffs them in a hearty cookbook that measures two inches thick, it's time to make room on the bookshelf. This fall Jacques Pépin publishes his newest cookbook, Essential Pépin, and gives his hungry fans over 700 of his favorite recipes culled from his six decades as an apprentice cook, professional chef, and cooking school teacher.

Always the perfectionist in and out of the kitchen, Jacques didn't go easy on himself when putting this book together. In his introduction, Jacques admits that he could have simply sent off all 700+ recipes to be published with no additional changes, however, he instead decided to reconsider each one and "adjust, correct, and retest [them] for a modern kitchen to make them usable, friendly, and current for today's cook, while retaining the spirit and flavor of the originals." Essential Pépin is essentially Jacques, and the recipes reflect his life in food from the fanciest French dishes to the homiest American comfort foods to his personalized approach to "fast food" cooking.

I don't know what Jacques' original recipe was for Onion Soup Lyonnaise-Style, but this one did me just fine on a pre-Autumnal evening. As I swim my way through a practically tangible haze of slowly simmering onions and browning mountain cheese, I will say that I wish Jacques had been a little more specific about what port is "sweet port." To me, all port -- ruby, tawny, vintage -- is fairly sweet. It's not like sherry where one is clearly sweet and one is clearly dry. I went with ruby for this recipe, but might try tawny another time just to experience a taste comparison. Also, I didn't use canned stock. What with all the scary news about what is going on with canned foods these days, I buy cartons of stock not cans. Of course, that's an even better excuse to make your own stock, which is Jacques' primary suggestion.

Onion Soup Lyonnaise-Style

Serves 6 to 8

15-20 slices baguette, 1/4 inch thick
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
3 medium onions, thinly sliced (about 4 cups)
8 cups homemade chicken stock or low-salt canned chicken broth
1/2 teaspoon salt, or to taste
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 cups grated Gruyère or Emmenthaler cheese
2 large egg yolks
1/2 cup sweet port

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Arrange the bread slices on a cookie sheet and bake for 8 to 10 minutes, until browned. Remove from the oven and set aside. (Leave the oven on.) Melt the butter in a large saucepan. Add the onions and sauté for 15 minutes, or until dark brown.

Add the stock, salt, and pepper. Bring to a boil and cook for 20 minutes. Push the soup through a food mill.

Arrange one third of the toasted bread in the bottom of an ovenproof soup tureen or large casserole. Sprinkle with some of the cheese, then add the remaining bread and more cheese, saving enough to sprinkle over the top of the soup. Fill the tureen with the hot soup, sprinkle the reserved cheese on top, and place on a cookie sheet. Bake for approximately 35 minutes, or until a golden crust forms on top.

At serving time, bring the soup to the table. Combine the yolks with the port in a deep soup plate and whip with a fork. With a ladle, make a hole in the top of the gratinée, pour in the wine mixture, and fold into the soup with the ladle. Stir everything together and serve.

I also tried one of Jacques' pita pizzas -- the one with red onion, tomatoes, Herbes de Provence, chives, and Gruyère cheese -- and it's definitely something I'm going to try out on my toddler. In fact, my husband was so taken with the pizza that I had to make another one right after we scarfed down the first one. I was out of tomatoes, so my second rendition was done up with slices of red onion, Herbes de Provence, chives, Gruyère, and a handful olive oil-dressed watercress I tossed on the pizza after it came out of the oven.

If I recall from my work on More Fast Food My Way, Jacques' pita pizzas are part of his "fast food" oeuvre, and clearly the onion soup smacks of his classical French background, so I decided to round out my Essential Pépin sojourn with his roast chicken recipe, a classic American entry.

My experience with this recipe was somewhat rocky. While I loved Jacques' tip about not covering the finished chicken with foil (because the steaming that ensues makes the chicken taste reheated), I did struggle mightily to keep the stubborn bird on its side during part of the roasting process. I ended up lacerating one of the drumsticks during the balancing act, but since the drumsticks go to my toddler, it wasn't a huge loss.

As my husband and I stood over the warm chicken, tearing off crispy skin and strips of juicy breast meat with our fingers, he mumbled through a mouthful, "Best roast chicken you've ever made." I then whisked some Grey Poupon into the pan of unstrained juices, warmed it slightly, and poured it off into a bowl. We continued feasting, this time dipping our fingerfuls of chicken into the sauce. In this book, there's Jacques the Chef.

I leafed through the rest of the book, scanning other recipes, and suddenly realized I wasn't even reading the recipes because I completely enthralled by the illustrations. In this cookbook, there's no glossy photography showing rivulets of garnet juices running down a slice of steak, no crooked fingers of steam rising from hot-from-the-oven rolls, there's just a gratin pan here, a curly head of Boston lettuce there, an occasional plump chicken pecking in the dirt -- all lovingly rendered in watercolor by the chef himself. In this book, there's Jacques the Artist.

Early in the book is a 3-page "General Information About Eggs" section, which is seeded with smidges of new-to-me information. Here Jacques shares a great tip about freezing individual egg whites in ice cub trays and how raw unbroken egg yolks should be covered with cold water for optimal refrigerator storage. However, the egg tip I find most fascinating is the idea that it's not it's necessary to bring eggs to room temperature before whipping up their whites. The master chef's opposing opinion is that the texture of egg whites is "tighter, smoother, and better if the egg whites are cold, even though the volume after beating is slightly less." Tucked among the 700 recipes are other snippets of advice, like how to make your own proof box for baking and ways to improvise your own fish smoker out of an old pot or roaster and a screen.

The next recipe I'm most looking forward to trying is the Grilled Squid on Watercress. Grilled squid is a dish I always order (sometimes in multiples) if I see it on a restaurant menu, but I've never had sufficient courage to try at home. With Jacques by my side, guiding me through each step, I think I'll finally be able to attempt it. In this book, there's Jacques the Teacher.

Packaged with the book is a 3-hour DVD of Jacques' techniques, which really deserves its own review. The very first technique Jacques demonstrates is the proper way of tying your apron to insulate yourself against burns, and attaching your towel to your apron for attractiveness and ease of retrieval. Genius. There are other worthy techniques, of course, and some are difficult -- making butter roses and gilding them with paprika for color -- and some are easy, like peeling broccoli stems for cooking.

Also not to be missed is KQED's 26-episode TV show, Essential Pépin, which starts airing on October 15th. KQED's specially designed website will feature 2-4 printable recipes from each episode along with delectable photographs of the finished dishes. The website also enables you to watch full episodes online a week before they air on TV.

Guests and host, Leslie Sbrocco taping episode 608 of Check, Please! Bay Area at KQED. Photo: Wendy Goodfriend

Check, Please! Bay Area Season 6: episode 8 airs Thursday September 29 at 7:30pm on KQED TV 9. View other airtimes and channels.

You can watch individual restaurant segments as well as view the entire episode online. The website also provides restaurant information not specified on the show, written reviews from the guests and restaurant recipes. If you have opinions on the restaurants featured please feel free to share your thoughts. This season, Leslie Sbrocco will be sharing wine tips with each episode.

The eighth episode of the season features these restaurants: DOSA on Fillmore (San Francisco), Sapore Italiano Ristorante (Burlingame) and Gather (Berkeley).

Leslie Sbrocco: Wine Tips -- Alternative Packaging Trends

I've always had a soft spot for corner stores. As a child in suburban Sydney I used to walk to the one in my neighborhood run by Greek immigrants to pick up the afternoon paper and ciggies for my mum. Then I'd skim five or ten cents of the change for a little white paper bag of mixed lollies (candy that cost a penny a piece) like bananas, milk bottles, freckles, musk sticks, raspberries and other forbidden sweet treats I'd happily devour on the short stroll home.

When I moved to the inner city as a university student the corner store, run by immigrants of origin that escapes me now, was the place to go for hangover breakfast supplies: milk, tea bags, cereal, yogurt, juice, eggs. (Booze was easily bought at 18 at the drive-through "bottle-o" aka bottle shop.)

I've lived in the Bay Area most of my adult life. But when I go back home, as I do frequently, I love ducking into corner stores in different parts of Sydney. In the inner-city suburb known as Rozelle, one of my first stops to see dear friends, after the obligatory hugs, laughs, and ubiquitous cups of tea, comes a pit stop to the corner store. We pick up Turkish bread, home-made tabouli and hummus, along with Portuguese custard tarts and raspberry friands, a popular little oval-shaped teacake.

It doesn't matter how long I've been away, the Lebanese family who have run the store for years are always there. A door behind the counter is open, and many family members are often sitting in their living room, doing what families do in their living rooms: talking, reading, watching TV, playing, and drinking cups of tea.

Our exchange is always the same: How are you? How are the kids? Look how they've grown! A quick word about the weather or a compliment about the food and my son and I are on our way -- but not before he's chosen his own little bag of lollies he picks up when we travel back to Australia.

As an immigrant myself, I've always been drawn to the stories of people who inhabit two worlds, who call two places home, their homeland of birth and their adopted homelands.

In the three cities I've called home: Sydney, San Francisco, and Berkeley, as all over the world, corner stores are primarily immigrant-owned businesses. And these people have their own stories to tell about where they're from and how they landed here. If only people took the time to ask.

Lucky for us, film maker Katherine Bruens did. No surprise, then, given the subject, that I was predisposed to want to see her documentary "Corner Store," a small film with a big heart airing Sunday at 6 p.m. as part of KQED's "Truly CA" documentary series.

Yousef Elhaj, corner store owner, in his San Francisco shop. Images: Katherine Bruens

Yousef Elhaj is a Palestinian immigrant who has owned a corner store on Church Street in the Castro for more than 10 years. A corner store owner in his homeland too, he left Bethlehem after the second intifada when his business went bust and he was desperate to find work to support his family of five, including two sons and a daughter. There was, he says on camera, no money for milk or medicine. His goal: Put his head down, work hard, and save enough money to send for his wife and kids for a better life in the U.S. Who knew it would be ten years before he saw them all again?

Elhaj, who entered lawfully via a brother already in the States, takes immense pride in his store and works long hours; he opens at 7:30 and closes at midnight. He lives upstairs in a tiny apartment with a neatly made single bed. Every day he speaks with his family, sometimes his children ask him for big ticket items like iPods and cameras. He protests about the expense but then buys them anyway, as parents sometimes do.

Even before she knew his back story, Bruens, a regular customer as well as the film's director, was struck by Elhaj's commitment to his store and customers, she says on a recent Forum episode.

He's a good listener with an empathic ear, says Bruens. She should know, she spent time talking with him when she lost her job and he helped to keep her spirits up. Over time, she learned about Elhaj's own challenges, which she says made her own pale in comparison. As a filmmaker, how could she not document his struggle to reunite with his family?

After a long, lonely, hard decade, Elhaj gets good news: His family can join him in America. We watch as he makes the long journey home and his obvious joy in seeing his children. His oldest, now 18, is a man, with a job and a girlfriend. His daughter is a giggly 16-year-old with a solid grasp of English, his younger son doesn't recognize him. He was two when his dad left home.

A Palestinian farmers' market vendor shown in "Corner Store."

We also witness the conflict he feels as he fits back into the familiar rhythms of life in Palestinian Bethlehem and the pleasure he and his wife show in such simple acts as shopping at local farmers' markets. But there's an undercurrent of greater conflict too: Half the market is walled off and only open to Israeli military officers. It takes hours to get around because of checkpoints and one day the family home's water is simply cut off. Elhaj gives viewers a tour of the modest house where he grew up and the one he built, where the family now lives, with evident pride. The camera reveals the surrounding devastation that only years of turmoil can bring. Despite the challenges and tragedy, it's still home.

But this isn't a polemic on the evils of war, nor is it a social commentary on the goods stocked at most corner stores, including Elhaj's, namely liquor, processed grocery items, and Lotto tickets.

It is the story of how one man created a sense of community in a corner of San Francisco, where most people simply stop by to pick up milk, and the sadness and sacrifice this shopkeeper quietly endures to secure a better life for his family.

Corner Store: Offical Trailer - 2010 from CornerStoreDoc.

Guests and host, Leslie Sbrocco taping episode 607 of Check, Please! Bay Area at KQED. Photo: Wendy Goodfriend

Check, Please! Bay Area Season 6: episode 7 airs Thursday September 22 at 7:30pm on KQED TV 9. View other airtimes and channels.

You can watch individual restaurant segments as well as view the entire episode online. The website also provides restaurant information not specified on the show, written reviews from the guests and restaurant recipes. If you have opinions on the restaurants featured please feel free to share your thoughts. This season, Leslie Sbrocco will be sharing wine tips with each episode.

The seventh episode of the season features these restaurants: The Peasant & The Pear (Danville), Spork (San Francisco) and Ristorante Ideale (San Francisco).

Leslie Sbrocco: Wine Tips -- Wine Gadgets

Like many corner stores, Yousef Elhaj's San Francisco shop is the nucleus of the neighborhood. The documentary "Corner Store" -- produced and directed by one of Elhaj's customers -- follows the Palestinian immigrant's efforts to make a success of his small business as he tries to reunite with his wife and children.

Original Broadcast: Tue, Sep 20, 2011 -- 10:00 AM

Corner Store: Offical Trailer - 2010 from CornerStoreDoc.

Host: Michael Krasny

Guests:

• Yousef Elhaj, shop owner and subject of "Corner Store"
• Katherine Bruens, director of "Corner Store"

More info:

About "Corner Store": TheCornerDocumentary.org

Check, Please! Bay Area Season 6: episode 6 airs Thursday September 15 at 7:30pm on KQED TV 9. View other airtimes and channels.

You can watch individual restaurant segments as well as view the entire episode online. The website also provides restaurant information not specified on the show, written reviews from the guests and restaurant recipes. If you have opinions on the restaurants featured please feel free to share your thoughts. This season, Leslie Sbrocco will be sharing wine tips with each episode.

The sixth episode of the season features these restaurants: Rhea's Market and Deli (San Francisco), Sauce (San Francisco) and the girl and the fig (Sonoma).

Leslie Sbrocco: Wine Tips -- Think About Texture when Pairing Food + Wine

Photo: Wendy Goodfriend

Check, Please! Bay Area Season 6: episode 5 airs Thursday September 8 at 7:30pm on KQED TV 9. View other airtimes and channels.

You can watch individual restaurant segments as well as view the entire episode online. The website also provides restaurant information not specified on the show, written reviews from the guests and restaurant recipes. If you have opinions on the restaurants featured please feel free to share your thoughts. This season, Leslie Sbrocco will be sharing wine tips with each episode.

The fifth episode of the season features these restaurants: Paxti's Pizza (San Francisco), Mercury Lounge (San Francisco) and Trueburger (Oakland).

Leslie Sbrocco: Wine Tips -- Pairing Wine and Food (Chips + Bubbles)