Tag Archives: food network

Dec 29

Please your customers, not your peers

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I was an early fan of Rachael Ray, then went through Rachael Ray burnout, but I have to say I really love the answer she gave to a question in an AV Club interview. Anthony Bourdain, who I really enjoy, used to use Rachael Ray as the personification of the dumbing-down of Food Network (the way I use Guy Fieri). Bourdain eventually shifted most of his wrath to Sandra Lee. Anyway:

AVC: There are people out there like Anthony Bourdain who do criticize that kind of “everyday cook” philosophy that’s on the food networks. But when I talked to Bourdain he said he can’t make fun of you anymore because you sent him a gift basket.

RR: Nah, he’s funny. I didn’t mind a bit either way. He’s also said a few nice things over the years. But you know what? Not everybody is supposed to like everybody on the playground. You gotta be thick-skinned about that. I love Tony Bourdain. I love his books, I love him, I love his attitude. I think he’s fantastic. Whether or not he likes what I’m doing that week in my life, or the food that I’m making at that moment, that’s Tony’s choice. It shouldn’t affect my decision about whether or not I like his work. Otherwise I think I’m being immature and mixing up the two. But regardless, that’s not my job and it’s not who I work for. I work for the people who do want that type of programming or do want to cook my type of food.

[snip]

But I think that people over the years have wasted so much time asking me about Martha [Stewart] or Tony and all this. I’m like, it’s never, ever, ever, ever, ever entered my mind for five seconds if somebody else wasn’t putting it there. 

I mean, those aren’t the people you work for. I am a waitress at heart. I work for the people that I’m there to serve …. I think that anyone who spends their life trying to make other people happy or impress their peers rather than their customers are going to have a very short-lived career.

Not bad advice.

Nov 13

Gummy cuisine

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I was a huge fan of the original Japanese “Iron Chef,” and for a good while I was a fan of “Iron Chef America,” especially because of the involvement of Alton Brown.  But as Food Network became obsessed with a glut of food competition shows, I got tired of the phenomenon. And, strangely enough, I was never really a fan of “The Next Iron Chef,” although I can’t really explain why. One of the few times I did watch it, a chef who I thought behaved like a total jerk (*coff*JoseGarces*coff*) ended up winning. Yes, it’s a cooking contest, not a popularity contest, but that’s sort of the point – I’d rather the producers pick an Iron Chef who is both talented and likeable.

Anyway, when Cooking Channel debuted – with everything I used to like about Food Network – I started watching it, and now I rarely watch Food Network at all. (Even Alton’s “Good Eats” reruns have moved to Cooking Channel).

But tonight, with nothing else to watch and not ready to go to bed just yet, I’m watching an episode of “The Next Iron Chef.” This season, unlike previous seasons, is an all-star edition featuring well-known chefs, most of them already current or past Food Network or Cooking Channel personalities. (They stole that idea, like much of the “Next Iron Chef” format, from “Top Chef.”) They’re preparing two dishes – one sweet, one savory – and each of them has been assigned a movie theater snack or candy as a secret ingredient. Alex Guarnischelli, who apparently won last week’s episode, got to choose her own candy – chocolate-covered raisins – and then assign each of the other chefs with their treats, which included cinnamon “red hot” candies, gummies and those super-sour-coated sweet candies, as well as popcorn and root beer. Surprisingly, Chuck Hughes got poor marks for his popcorn dishes; you’d think that popcorn would have been the least-objectionable of the options for savory cooking.

Anyway, this episode is relatively entertaining, and several of the participants – like Guarnischelli and Michael Chiarello – are chefs whose programs I’ve enjoyed in the past. I might tune in again some time between now and the finale.

There was also a foodie theme to “The Simpsons” tonight, with guest voices from Anthony Bourdain and Mario Batali.

May 28

Bitchin’ Kitchen

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I had a Facebook conversation about Jacques Pepin with one of my “Cash On Delivery” castmates, Sharon Kay Edwards, the other night . Apparently, one of NPT’s secondary digital channels carries his most recent cooking show. I don’t get the secondary channels from my satellite provider; Sharon, on the other hand, doesn’t get any of the cable channels, so she can’t watch Food Network or Cooking Channel. I told her I really enjoyed chefs like Pepin who know what they’re talking about, as compared to some of the catchphrase-spewing attention hogs on Food Network. (Mr. Fieri …. paging Mr. Fieri ….)

One of the reasons I like Cooking Channel is that its chefs (like the ones on public TV) tend to be lower-key, more about cooking and less about self-promotion. But one of the exceptions happens to be one of my favorites: “Bitchin’ Kitchen.” This is something unique – part cooking show, part comedy performance. It started as a series of web videos before being picked up as a TV show.

Nadia Giosia (billed as “Nadia G.”) hosts the show in character, as a sort of Italian biker chick. (That’s probably a bad description, so feel free to provide a better one.) But it’s obviously a character, and she even has goofy supporting characters who provide supporting information about various ingredients. But the show is actually quite serious about its cooking; the recipes are solid, but presented in an accessible fashion, with explanation of terms and so on. (It’s a great entry-level cooking show, and I mean that in a positive way.)

Each episode has a theme, like meals to console you after a breakup, meals to serve the in-laws, low-cal meals to serve your overweight spouse, and so on. There’s sometimes a little playful, but not entirely unserious, life lesson mixed in.

Maybe I’m off-base and only trying to justify my love of the show, but I think there’s a difference between Nadia G. – who uses humor and fun in the service of the content — and the Food Network people, who too often seem to be promoting themselves instead of what they’re cooking.

Then again, the other great example of comedy mixed with cooking is on Food Network – Alton Brown’s “Good Eats,” which unfortunately is about to go out of production after a dozen years of Peabody Award-winning brilliance.

Mar 05

This recipe is a weiner

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One of the great things about Food Network and Cooking Channel is that they’re very good about putting the recipes from all their shows online, where they’re immediately searchable. The only exceptions are a few shows produced by outside companies that place some sort of restrictions on how many recipes can be published online, or on how long they can be left online.

This thoroughness, however, has sometimes been carried to the extreme. For example, a TV chef might talk about all of the elements of a meal, or about a day’s worth of food and snacks, and in the course of that discussion the chef might mention something which is not so much a recipe as a way of serving an already-prepared product. In some cases, somewhat absurdly, Food Network has posted such non-recipes online alongside all of the real recipes from the episode in question.

For several weeks now, the web site Food Network Humor — dedicated to mocking all things Food Network — has been calling attention to “Ridiculous Food Network Recipes” for things such as dark chocolate. The readers of the humor site, alerted to the absurd non-recipe, head on over to the official recipe page and leave snarky comments about it.

Someone at Food Network is apparently a little thin-skinned about this, apparently, because whenever it happens the non-recipe and the snarky comments get taken down and that URL is redirected to some other page on the site — another recipe by the same chef, or what have you.

The latest such fiasco: Michael Chiarello’s hot dog recipe. As I write this, it’s still up at the Food Network site, but who knows how long it will last.

Sep 29

Good Eats and the Good News

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I am home sick. I’m supposed to be lying down – and I will be again, in a few minutes – but I had to check my e-mail.

My e-mail contained a notice of a new Twitter follower. I’m still not exactly sure who he is, but we have some Twitter contacts in common, so I went to check out his profile page.

I’m glad I did; he had a link to this article about Alton Brown. Any regular reader of this blog knows that I’m a huge fan of Alton’s – but apparently, I wasn’t a huge enough fan to know that Alton is a Christian:

When I go to New York and I tell people I am going to church tomorrow, people take a couple of steps back from me. What I’ve learned to do is go ahead and take two steps forward. But yeah, it’s tough, and there have been times when I’ve broken out in a sweat a little. I still feel a funny little tinge in my stomach when I’m out to dinner with my wife and daughter in New York. We’ll go to dinner and we’ll be sitting around the table and we’ll say Grace. You know what? People are going to stare at you. I used to feel really self-conscious. But I’ve gotten to a point where I think, nah, I’m not going to feel bad about that. I’m not going to apologize about that.

It’s a nice article, and a pleasant surprise. One thing that struck me: So many people think – falsely – that science and religion have to be at odds. I think one of the interesting things about Alton is that “Good Eats” is, in large part, a show which popularizes science.

One of the earlier episodes of “Good Eats,” the one about casseroles, took place at a little white country church – a United Methodist church, which they took pains to identify by name through an on-screen graphic. The church reminded me of a lot of the churches my father used to pastor. Of course, all that proved was that Alton had been exposed to religion, and (given that he grew up in Georgia) that wasn’t too unexpected.

So, good for Alton. Although, I have to say, I’ve gotten a little tired of “The Next Iron Chef.” Why are they doing another one so soon? Is one of the existing Iron Chefs leaving? How many Iron Chefs does one network need? I didn’t watch the last “Next Iron Chef” except for the last couple of episodes, and I really didn’t like the arrogant Jose Garces, who ended up winning the thing.

Now I’m suddenly even sadder that “The Wittenburg Door” is in limbo. At this point, I would certainly have been calling Bob Darden to try to pitch him an interview with Alton, who would have fit the magazine to a T.

Jun 01

Cooking Channel goes to the vault

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Me, yesterday:

I’d love it if Cooking Channel pulled out a few shows from the Food Network vault from time to time — Ming Tsai’s “East Meets West,” for example, or “Molto Mario.” I don’t think that’s likely, though.

I’m watching “Molto Mario” right now, and I just got through watching “Sara’s Secrets” with Sara Moulton. I stand happily corrected.

Yesterday’s opening-day schedule emphasized the channel’s new programming, in some cases doubling up on shows. But today, what seems to be the regular schedule does indeed include some items from the vault — not just Mario and Sara but even Graham Kerr and Julia Child!

I was amazed, by the way, at how many of the channel’s new cooking shows are imports. The prime-time schedule, which is more travelogue and documentary-oriented, is home-grown, but virtually all of the stand-and-stir cooking shows which premiered on Monday were imports from Canada, the U.K. or Australia. There’s nothing wrong with that; I just hope that as Cooking Channel matures and does more of its own programming, that programming takes the same tone, rather than the approach now common at Food Network.

May 16

Skating past ridicule

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Imagine, for a second, that a major Hollywood movie — a satirical comedy — picks you as a subject of ridicule. The movie includes a musical number which sarcastically imagines that you are a role model and a trusted source of wisdom, the comic implication of which is to make it sound silly that anyone would look to you for advice.

How would you react?

Olympic figure skater Brian Boitano, who was parodied in “South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut,” apparently took it in stride. In fact, he’s made hay out of it, turning the “South Park” song “What Would Brian Boitano Do?” into a cooking show, “What Would Brian Boitano Make?”, which even uses the movie song as its theme. (As the logo appears, the word “do” is scribbled over and “make” is written in its place.)

I run across the show every now again, and Boitano looks like a pretty good cook (or at least has pretty good coaching from the Food Network staff). But mainly, I like the way he can laugh at himself and take satire in the spirit in which it was intended.

May 15

Murder on the menu?

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Six years ago this month, I wrote a blog post which, in part, praised a Food Network chef named Juan Carlos Cruz for his upbeat approach to lower-calorie cooking:

… “Calorie Commando,” starring Juan Carlos Cruz, is about low-calorie, low-fat cooking … I really enjoy watching “Calorie Commando.” Cruz has an infectious enthusiasm about his cooking. The premise of his show is that a viewer brings him a favorite recipe and then Cruz develops a lower-calorie, lower-fat version. He explains, with great gusto, why he’s using this ingredient or that one. For example, when making macaroni and cheese he noted that he wasn’t too impressed by the lower-fat cheeses available in the store. So he used real cheese — but very-flavorful varieties of cheese in slighly smaller quantities. That required him to adjust some of the other ingredients to make sure the final product would still be creamy and have the same texture….
Cruz … is fun to watch and really makes you want to try what he’s cooking.

Well, Cruz disappeared from Food Network years ago, although apparently you can still find some of his recipes in their database. And now, sadly, he’s accused of a pretty serious crime.

Jan 29

Appetizing

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Both Food Network and Travel Channel, among others, have occasional specials along the lines of “Hamburger Paradise” or “The World’s Best Pizza,” where they travel around the country profiling a variety of unique restaurants serving the specified dish. Some of these specials are better than others, and taken as a category they get a little repetitive; while I would still someday love to have a steak at Peter Luger’s in New York, I have at this point seen 57,832 TV segments about Peter Luger’s and do not particularly need any more.

But Food Network has put a new and refreshing spin on the restaurant travelogue: “The Best Thing I Ever Ate.” The show is presented with fun, flash and humor. The format is that various chefs and foodies (a mix of Food Network personalities and prominent restaurant chefs) wax poetic about their favorite pizza, or their favorite restaurant dish with bacon, or their favorite chocolate dessert. Each segment intercuts the foodie who is recommending the product (in a studio, against a white backdrop) with on-location footage of the restaurant being recommended, and its chef or owner. The enthusiasm is genuine, and infectious.

Sometimes, the personalities introducing the items talk a little trash by way of transitioning from one segment to the next. (“Well, Joe can have his fancy west coast pizza. Arugula? You’ve got to be kidding me. Give me a big slice of deep-dish Chicago pie any day of the week.”)

Good fun, and highly-recommended.

Jan 16

Doorknock dinners

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I believe that “Doorknock Dinners” had either ended production or was close to that point by the time I first got access to Food Network. But I got to see some reruns of the show before it disappeared completely. It was a fun show, and I wish Food Network — or its soon-to-be sister, once Fine Living turns into The Cooking Channel later this year — would bring it back, if only as a series of specials.

The show was hosted by Australian Gordon Elliott, who is now busier as a producer than an on-air personality. The premise was that Elliott and a professional restaurant chef would drop into a residential neighborhood and go door-to-door until they found a family willing to participate. Then, the restaurant chef would have to prepare and serve a gourmet meal using only ingredients, cookware and appliances from the home kitchen. I think the chef was sometimes allowed to bring his or her own knives, but nothing else. Everything else had to come from on-site. Meanwhile, while waiting for dinner to be served, Elliott clowned around with the homeowners, teased them (in good fun) about messy closets or cheesy bric-brac, hoped the kids would say something humorously embarrassing, and so on. It was lots of fun.

At one point, Elliott realized that the show had never done any episodes in the South, and a mutual friend recommended that he work with a gregarious restaurateur from Savannah, Paula Deen. That was what launched Deen’s TV career, and Gordon Elliott has been an executive producer of her various series on Food Network.

“Doorknock Dinners” is ripe for a revival, don’t you think?