Meditation on the Food Network

The $134.00 dent in my VISA card from the Paderno once-a-year warehouse sale, was the initial signifier that my recent addiction of all things food related had come to burden me financially. Not that a 10” stainless steel fry pan, an 8” sauté pan, and a 1.5 litre stainless steel pot are bad things—in fact, they’re quite necessary for most of the cooking I do these days. Throw in a set of dry measures and some measuring spoons and I’ve purchased a lovely addition to my expanding cookware collection. I’ve always enjoyed food and am fortunate to have grown up in a household where food, good cooking and the fellowship that both provide, were always in abundance. Mom had honed her cooking skills much in the same way many of he peers had; under the expectation that she contributed to a working household. But times change and it seems that many people of my generation would be lost if it weren’t for the advent of the can opener and microwave. It’s perhaps one of the reasons why I’ve been mainlining the Food Network recently, because short of reverting to some infantile stage and pulling at Mom’s apron strings while she dances around the kitchen, it’s really the most practical method to familiarize one’s self with the nuances of food and technique. I mean which one of my coworkers is going to tell me what a chiffonade is? Or explain to me the celery root isn’t actually the root of the celery plant? These are all mysteries that would be otherwise unsolved were it not for the people that fascinate me by cooking on television. It also doesn’t hurt that current television chefs are much more attractive than their grand dame predecessor Julia Childs. Though she may be credited with popularizing French cuisine in America, I have little doubt that every household would be making pasta from scratch and Betty Crocker would have long since gone out of business if the likes of Nigella Lawson and Giada De Laurentiis had been Ms. Childs’ contemporaries. It is a known fact that Nigella Lawson, with her love of all things chocolaty, is able to forgo using a double boiler to melt chocolate in favour of using her velvety, intoxicating voice.



Giada’s television success may be credited to the ease of which her cuisine is emulated, by the amateur cook at home. But it’s her stylist who emphasizes plunging necklines and her camera man who has a proclivity for zooming in on said plunging neckline under the guise of zooming in on her food processor that deserve the credit for her success. Though some of my friends describe her as having a fiendishly large head, it is not the only abnormally large part of her anatomy on her otherwise petit frame, so I can’t say I’ve actually noticed her hat size. In fact, a quick search on YouTube has dredged up some footage of her on one of her travel shows, clad in a bikini, with all the monotony of her banter edited out in favour of Europe’s 1986 hit, “Final Countdown” as the backing soundtrack. One Giada….um…fan…I guess has edited a sequence of one of her shows that is laden with more sexual innuendo in 2-minutes than most NC-17 rated films risk in their 96 minute runtime. However, I also found a slightly more tame video clip of Giada, co-starring a couple of rabbits.



Perhaps what is more interesting than these two sirens of TV cuisine is the popularity that celebrity chefs have achieved in recent years. Wolfgang Puck transcended not only the kitchen and the sound stage of his own cooking show, but became a returning character on the popular TV drama Las Vegas. People like Emeril Lagasse not only made cameo appearances on TV shows like The Family Guy, but had an entire character (Neptunian Chef Elzar on Futurama) based on their persona. Similarly, chefs like Rachel Ray have elevated themselves well past the status of celebrity chef, to very simply, celebrity.

At least in part, the rise of the celebrity TV chef is a credit to their character on TV. Most TV chefs—as with most television personalities—succeed by injecting excitement into what they do. The difference between Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter and my drunk cousin is the enthusiasm that Steve featured when approaching an animal—unlike my cousin who intends malicious harm to whatever he approaches when inebriated. In the one instance, we become part of the scenario as Steve’s fascination, love and whimsy brings him, and us, closer to the animals he approaches. In the case of my cousin, we become part of the scenario when we dial 911 to get him emergency medical treatment after a bout of drunken idiocy. It’s this enthusiasm that TV chefs inject into their shows, and it is ironically an excitement based on the pedestrian. At some basic level, we all have the capability to get over to the grocery store, purchase the appropriate ingredients and become a culinary wizard in our own home. We may not be fortunate to have a full set of Le Creuset pots, or our mise en place already prepared, but any of these shows succeed by convincing us the food we see cooked on TV holds the potential to be cooked in our own home. It’s the encouragement of the TV chef that spurs us on and motivates the viewer, and it is our stomachs and the adoration of our friends that motivate us to continue with our culinary adventures.

Yes, charisma plays a crucial role in the increasing popularity of celebrity chefs as there needs to be a charismatic component to anyone that hosts his or her own show, cooking or otherwise. And yet, charisma can’t exclusively carry anyone that far (myself being a perfect example). But given that all of us eat, there must be a unity in food, it’s preparation and its cause and effect that creates a universal language that all of us can understand. There is the reliability of the recipe (assuming one follows it) and a predictability that is hard to otherwise attain in this unpredictable world. This culinary unity can be extrapolated to include the importance of breaking bread with others, having an awareness of the food chain, sustainable farming practices, and supporting local food growers and producers. But I suspect that the reason why celebrity chefs succeed has less to do with the fact that we all eat, or our social awareness. We appreciate TV chefs and the great food they create not because they remind us of the great meals we’ve enjoyed in the past, but because in watching chefs on TV we hope to contribute in some small way, to not necessarily creating great meals ourselves, but to avoid contributing to the litany of bad ones.