If you’ve never checked out Food52, you definitely should. It’s a really cool site, nice blog posts, and beautiful pictures. Some of the food is a little, shall we say, fancy, for my tastes at times, but I get pretty psyched about a handful of chocolate chips stolen from the pantry when I need chocolate. My views are bound to be a little skewed.
Yesterday on Food52, they offered a deal on a really cool print called the Ideal Bookshelf. It’s 30% off, so an 8×10 is only $19. The print is a crowd-sourced compilation of the “essential cookbooks that have made us who we are in the kitchen.” They posted the print on Facebook, and I had one immediate reaction: WANT!
And then I read the comments. The first one:
You missed Saving Dinner!
My initial reaction was one that I find myself defaulting to when it comes to social media. My thought was, hey, it’s crowd-sourced, it’s based on polling, give them a break. If they tailored it to each person, then it would look a lot like this blog post, where I will proceed to outline my essential cookbooks. Continue reading »
I have some public shame to admit to. It all happened because of the blasted Facebooks. Perhaps you’ve seen it. A status update pops up for one of your friends, stating that they’ve tried ___ out of the 100 foods on the list to try before you die.
I have. And I was intrigued. I watch a lot of food TV. I’m a food writer. Surely I had to have a decent showing. Fifty, at least.
I took the quiz. 42. 42?
But I’m a food writer!
After I calmed down from my embarrassing showing (although I still lurk under the radar, waiting for my editor to see my low number and banish me from writing for Distinction magazine henceforth), I thought about the foods on the list. They’re all, shall we say, unique. Some are ethnic. Some are rare. Some are regional. Many are expensive. All are notable. Well, sort of. I’m not sure about the merit behind including Hostess Fruit Cakes in the list.
This got me thinking, though, about food bucket lists. How many of us have them? We have places we want to go, things we want to do, but are foods usually on the list?
In a really lovely interview with Nadia G of Bitchin’ Kitchen (which unfortunately never got published, but perhaps I shall on the blog), I asked her what she would eat on her last day on earth. She thought for a moment and then began an exhaustive list of all the foods she would eat on that last day.
Definitely a dozen Raspberry Point oysters with mignonette, and then some foie gras terrine, and I want it with caramelized onion and fig, on toast points. Then I would go for baby back ribs, nice and spicy. I want some fried chicken with maple syrup and whipped butter and a waffle. Then a little gnocchi poutine. Then it’s time for a fresh salad. Baby romaine, something real simple, a bunch of fresh veggies—cukes, cherry tomatoes—and an aged balsamic and maple syrup vinaigrette. Then I’d take a break. Probably drink a bottle of champagne. Then dessert. I’m going for a dark chocolate soufflé with fleur de sel, and a little piece of crispy applewood smoked bacon in chocolate with smoked salt. Then hopefully it’s open bar.
Yeah. That’s a bucket list.
Which got me thinking about mine. The things I’d want to try before I go. The list falls into two categories: things I want to eat, and things I want to master making. Here are my lists (well, today’s version):
First, to eat:
Fried chicken and waffles (I should have this by now, but somehow I moved out of Georgia without ever having it)
Lobster roll (I also should have tried this when I lived in Provincetown, where lobster rolls were plenty – alas, I missed that chance)
Pic from cookingchanneltv.com
One dish from the Two Fat Ladies show. I’d want to pick which one because some of the stuff they make does not sound appetizing to me, but I’m game to try something. My girlfriend and I watch that show regularly, and we’re always astonished at the sheer volume of meat they use. Recent example: a loaf dish lined with bacon, then layered with goat meat and possibly walnuts (?), and then (here’s what I definitely remember) a bacon lid. Because we don’t want any of that juice to escape. A bacon lid. A lid made of bacon. I mean, really.
Fresh chevre right off the farm. Spread on a baguette with a little bit of honey.
Sole meuniere, just like in Julie and Julia.
And a chocolate souffle.
And then there are the things I want to make. For me, cooking is a way to express love, creativity. It’s a source of comfort. Most of all, it’s fun. So I have a list of foods I want to make before I kick it:
Crab cakes. I’ve had crab cakes made for me so many times, I’ve picked crabs, I’ve had crab sandwiches, crab sushi, crab wontons, but I’ve never plunged my hands in the bowl and made my own crab cakes.
Doughnuts. Fancy ones.
A big pot roast in a beautiful cast iron Dutch oven.
I want! Pic from foodnetworkstore.com
My mom’s peanut butter balls. They have never once turned out right when I’ve made them outside of her supervision, which tells me she’s got a secret to her recipe that she’s not telling me. Right? That’s the only reasonable explanation.
Pizza. I’ve made pizza before, but I want a pizza party with all the dough, toppings, and fixins I could want, just ready for me to assemble into doughy deliciousness.
English Muffin Bread. I saw a recipe for this in my most recent edition ofCook’s Country, and it looked not only delicious, but also simple.
A chocolate souffle. Ooh, no. I saw a recipe in Bon Appetit years ago for vanilla bean souffle with chocolate sauce. The souffles were in miniature, and the bottoms of the dish were lined with tiny, dazzling vanilla beans. After they came out of the oven, you crack open the top by poking a spoon through, and you pour in that rich chocolate sauce. It looked heavenly.
So now that I’m good and hungry, and I’ve set even more goals for myself, I’m going to call my local seafood market, ask them to hold a pound of crab meat for me, and make my own crab cakes tonight. Anyone with advice, pointers, or bucket list entries of their own, leave me some love in the comments section.
A few months ago, I wrote an article in my CSAcation column at AltDaily.com about the woeful state of women in the televised culinary world. My stepdad had introduced me to a new cooking show called “Bitchin’ Kitchen,” featuring the always awesome Nadia G, a host who is a fantastic chef, a great entertainer, and who finally steps up to the cutting board and restores my faith in the state of female chefs on TV.
I’m not naive. I realize that in order to be on television, and be successful, appearance factors in. Sex sells, it has for years, this is nothing new. But with the advent of reality television, we began to see real people: seven strangers living together in a house on MTV’s “Real World,” for instance. Or a rag tag group of contestants living in a remote location in hopes of winning a lot of money (Survivor), or in a house with the same goal (Big Brother). Dating shows, game shows, you name it: the average Joes and Josephines of America came out of the wood work. Sex appeal was still a big factor (cue hot tub scenes on the Real World, Road Rules, Big Brother, etc.), but we were no longer dealing with immaculately groomed formulas of sex appeal. They were, to some extent, real people.
But that formula of reality television can only go so far. So the next step: celebreality (thank you, VH1, for that incredible time suck) and vocational reality shows: Dirty Jobs, Project Runway, Top Chef, America’s Next Top Model, etc.
So where do television chefs fit in with all of this? After Julia Child spearheaded the art of cooking on television, televised cooking grew until it needed its own network: The Food Network.
Bam! | foodnetwork.com
I cut my teeth on cooking shows. Back in high school, when the world was my kitchen counter and I could imagine no greater fate than to stand in a chilly walk-in fridge and play with chocolate all day, I tuned in almost daily to Emeril Live and Good Eats and Molto Mario. Iron Chef was fun to watch for the novelty factor (if you’ve never seen someone cook an octopus, it’s pretty cool). I was convinced that Tyler Florence was a sweet guardian chef angel sent to help us all correct our lasagnas and make our bread rise on Food 911.
Notice anything about that list? All the hosts are men. I didn’t fully claim my feminist card until I got to college, but even then, I could tell a startling disparity in the quality of the shows hosted by men and the ones by women (well, actually, one, at the time – Sara Moulton: her show was a little dry, but at least she brought her A-game and got into the boys’ club at Food Network). The men were exciting and fun. They were authorities on their field, and they actually taught me things I didn’t know before.
I am quick to jump on the Anthony Bourdain bandwagon. He has provided some of the most scathing (and unfortunately, most accurate) criticism of the Food Network in recent years. Of the network itself, he wrote for the the New York Timesabout the state of food from 2000 to 2010, “But 2007 was also the year that Food Network canceled ‘Emeril Live,’ and stopped ordering episodes of ‘Molto Mario,’ a calculated break with the idea of the celebrity chef as a seasoned professional and a move toward an entirely new definition: a personality with a sauté pan.”
It was true. It still is, to a certain extent. I’m not saying that all Food Network chefs are hacks. I’m just questioning the way we treat the boys vs the girls. Take a moment some time to Google images of Food Network chefs, both male and female. Female chefs, especially the younger ones, have usually done at least one photo shoot where they are scantily clad (or at the very least featured in surprisingly low-cut shirts/dresses and playing directly into some fantasy of domestic life where they lick spoons and forks and eat strawberries and give the camera “come hither” stares.
Jennifer: Top Chef badass. | eonline.com
I’m not saying that female chefs can’t be hot, or that they can’t be proud of their bodies. Far from it. I just wonder at the ways that popular publications talk about chefs. Where a chef used to have to prove themselves by the merits of their profession (and are sometimes still required to, thanks to genius television shows like Bravo’s “Top Chef”), where they used to wear hair nets and hats and chefs jackets and the always unattractive slip resistant shoes, where they worked over steaming pots and hot stoves behind the swinging double doors of a kitchen; chefs have now come out into the lime light, and the ones who look the best, who handle themselves well on camera, are the ones who get the attention.
So what does this have to do with Paula Deen? Let me just say: I love Paula Deen. She starts talking, and I just know delicious things are going to happen. I’ll be in Savannah next weekend to be in one of my best friends’ weddings, and the reception will be at Paula Deen’s restaurant. I can’t even talk about how excited I am to eat there.
This week, Maxim magazine published a list of their five “hottest” female TV chefs, and lo and behold, Paula Deen beat out Giada and Padma. The four runners up are featured in mostly flattering photos with a little blurb about their contention with our Lady, Paula Deen. But scroll to the bottom. There is no photo of Paula Deen. There’s a photo of a stick of butter.
Really, Maxim? Seriously? The blogger who wrote the article says, “Just imagining the slippery, sloppy butter-sex we’d have with Paula makes us…hungry for a bacon-wrapped, beer batter-fried stick of butter, weirdly.”
For a moment, when I first read the headline, I was stoked. Maxim saw past age and traditional ideals of sexuality, and they picked someone they were actually into for her cooking abilities, her humor, her personality, something. And that’s what I get for believing Maxim magazine capable of something better and more highly evolved than just being a men’s magazine full of scantily clad women. In choosing not to use a photo of Paula Deen, and rather using a photo of a stick of butter, you take away that woman’s sex appeal and replace it with something you consume, you melt, you cook with. She’s an ingredient. She’s just a means to a slippery, buttery, decadent end.
You might ask yourself, what would I get if I Googled hottest male TV chefs? Cosmo’s slide show of sexy Top Chef Masters, where all the men are clothed and smiling, looking professional. SlashFood’s 10 Hottest Men in the Food Industry, again, all of whom are clothed and look semi-professional. Even SFWeekly’s run-down of the 8 Sexiest Men on TV Cooking Shows. Clothed. Professional looking. One of the chefs is even holding his baby in the kitchen. (Watch out: you might start ovulating.) So perhaps this really all comes down to what women find sexy and what men find sexy. For women (I can only imagine based on what we see here), it’s a chef holding his baby. Or Curtis Jensen smiling behind the wheel of a car. Women apparently don’t need to see shirtless men to find them attractive. Go women.
Perhaps it’s just me. Perhaps I’m overly sensitive. I’ve worked in restaurant kitchens. It’s hard work. And so to say, hey, ladies, don’t worry about getting greasy and sweaty and working so hard: as long as you’ve got a hot body, you can be a Food Network star is already insulting enough. But then, Maxim, to take one of the chefs who doesn’t prance around half-naked and try to sell us semi-homemade crap in 30 minutes or less, and reduce her life’s work to slippery hot butter sex? And in fact, to suggest she’s just a stick of melty animal by-product for your consumption? Too much.
