On Food Television
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I dislike the Food Network for several reasons, though for the most part, I dislike it for its hypocrisy. On the one hand their purpose (insofar as the viewing public is expected to intuit) is to elevate an understanding of the preparation of food, for the betterment of your diet, your happiness, and your culinary knowledge. New recipe ideas are provided, new ingredients identified, different cooking methods are explained, and the ostensible goal of a television network devoted solely to Food would be to open minds, get kids to not eat pre-packaged crap, and offer moms and pops the privilege of variety, superior taste, and ease of preparation. Yet, if you watch the advertisements stuffed between the seven minute food preparation stretches—as I do and do constantly—you’ll notice ads for microwavable meals, cereals rife with sugar, and, of course, other Food Network shows, emphasizing the ease of the recipes presented, or the excitement of Food challenges. I can’t hold it against them, those Food Network execs, because advertising sales are the prime mover, the demographic is more hypocritical than the chefs, and everyone’s got to make a living somehow. So, in that sense, I dislike it, but it amounts to no more than a failure of our culture, something the network has no control over. We state that we want quality, yet are drawn by mediocrity, and if they cater to both sides—on the one hand with lies and on the other with a reaction to the truth of the matter—what the Food Network does is walk the distinct line between sales figures and ostensible mission statement quite adeptly.
Where the Food Network really gets my goat, the exact bone I want to pick clean with gnashing teeth, is the content of the shows themselves. Advertising aside, they have a unique opportunity. They have the ability to expand the minds of the watching public, and they will forever have the audience (for who does not like food?), yet they choose to fill air time with pizza hurling competitions, cake pyrotechnics, and, worst of all, bad recipes and mediocre food knowledge. Worse yet, perhaps, is that from show to show, they offer conflicting advice—all wrong—and say it with a straight face. As such, Americans who watch feel secure in bad knowledge, eat tasteless parts of even more tasteless birds, the market responds accordingly and the cheapest thing, the highest in demand and supply—chicken—is crap the country over and we all suffer the ignominy of not being able to get what’s good.
Recently, I was watching an episode of “Good Eats.” If you don’t know the show, it’s hosted by Alton Brown (whom I like) and, though it has an annoying format with childish themes and hooks, the advice he gives is generally sound. But, on this particular day, and on this particular episode, he was doing something with mushrooms, and when cleaning a bowl of buttons he stated that washing them under water was okay (which is perfectly correct), so long as they don’t soak. The next show on air was “30 Minute Meals with Rachel Ray”! (For some reason, and I know I’m not alone, I can’t think of the woman without a parade of exclamation points.) And Rachel Ray (!) was doing something with mushrooms, too! And she says, straight-faced, to the camera, as she grabbed her kitchen towel(!) and made for the stack of ’shrooms (sic) that you should never, ever(!), wash the mushrooms under water(!). It makes them mushy and they discolor! So what you do (guys) is rub them gently with a damp towel to remove what little dirt is on them (most mushrooms are cultivated now guys!). And then she proceeded to make her yummo (sick) dish.
The difference between the two methods, and their respective explanations, is what has been termed the controversy of cleaning mushrooms, and, in this case, Alton Brown takes the cake for being correct. Rachel Ray’s advice, no doubt geared towards the witless home chef, whom (we’re in
So Alton Brown wins that round, but he fails in another respect because of a lack of respect for the self-same ingredient. We can move away from the seat of TV food mediocrity and turn towards PBS, and, more specifically, one Jacques Pepin. Jacques Pepin, for those of you who don’t know, is a master of the craft (though he does have a book—a great book—called “The Art of Cooking”). He is a teacher above all else, swatting away food myth with a kindly, (and now) grandfatherly hand, and watching him in action is an inspiration. He, too, has a mushroom episode, in which he states, in his endearing way, that though “wild” mushrooms are now available in many supermarkets across the country, his preference is for the common button mushroom variety. He proceeds to tackle the controversy of cleaning mushrooms, echoing the sentiments of Alton Brown, but then, regarding the selection of which mushroom to cook with, he offers a revelation. Alton Brown, when talking about selection, states that the desirable mushroom is one with a close-fitting cap, the ones with no gills exposed, for what reason god only knows. Jacques Pepin, in a matter of fact way, states quite simply that the mushrooms you should look for are the ones with “exposed black parts,” the ones with gills in plain sight, for these are older mushrooms with more taste, more flavor, and as such are the best for any and all uses. He then goes further, offering personal advice. Since the desired aesthetic in this country for mushrooms is the close-fitting cap, he suggests that you ask the manager of your local store for the loose mushrooms that didn’t make it into the nice packages at the front of the store, and usually there’s a bevy of more mature, gill-ridden mushrooms out back, which you can buy in bulk for about a dollar a pound.
Now, I’m no expert, and I can’t say with any certainty who is right. But I can’t imagine a man like Jacques Pepin, widely regarded as Julia Childs’s equal with respect to broader American culinary trends (and, to boot, they were good friends), misleading the viewing public for the paltry reason of saving a buck. And Alton Brown, is he misleading the viewer, then? Or is he simple wrong (when, usually, he is right)? I have no idea. When I heard him say to go for the close-fitted caps, I let out a growl. That’s not what Jacques said! I grumbled aloud (and, incidentally, I have followed my trust in the man and discovered that he is, in terms of price, correct. Regarding the heightened taste of an older mushroom, I can not say. De gustibus, etc.). And yet, I tend to believe that Jacques is right, because if there is one fault in the man’s food preparation, it is his somewhat plebian presentation of dishes, a peasant-like quality to the food on the plate, which, somehow, in some way, evokes from me an unqualified trust in his dedication to taste.
That would not necessarily be enough, but Jacques has proved himself for generations. Take one look at “The Art of Cooking”—a beautiful, well-executed book—and you can see what I mean. He says in the introduction that the book covers every important technique in the kitchen (similar in scope to his “Complete Techniques”), from making stocks to butchering meat, and the method employed is akin to a narrative of recipes. Each recipe illustrates some specific technique, and gradually, cumulatively, if you proceed through the whole book, you’ll acquire a base set of essential culinary skills—how to dice an onion, how to prepare an artichoke, how to skin, butcher, and prepare a whole baby lamb—and, as his catch-phrase goes, you’ll understand how “great cooking favors prepared hands.”
Those are books, though, and TV is the topic for this piece, so let’s move back to his cooking show (or the one I am most familiar with), “Fast Food My Way.” This is no “30 Minute Meals”—the recipes are actually not the fastest, though there is, in watching his execution of them, direct proof that speed in the kitchen is predicated on technique. For example, in most every show of his (and this can become tiresome, if you watch his show often enough), when he pulls out an onion, or a clove of garlic, he spends about twenty seconds explaining the proper technique for dicing or mincing. And when you see him dice that onion in a couple of seconds, or pound the clove of garlic into oblivion with one confident smack of his hand on the flat of the knife, you can see how good technique translates into speed. And his speed with his knife allows him to digress and explain. In fact, almost every ingredient he pulls out of the larder is accompanied with a quick survey of all the ways in which it can be broken down and used. Let’s say he pulls out something as simple as cheese. He tells you what he’s going to do with it for the recipe at hand, then he tells you what can be used as a substitute, and then he’ll quickly give a completely different recipe idea, such as what to do with several different kinds of leftover cheese. All of this in under a minute, after which he will usually fumble a piece of cheese into his mouth, consider its taste, and pronounce his judgment: “That’s quite good.”
How is this different from other food TV? Not very much, you could say. The goal is basically the same. Provide recipe, perform recipe, put on a plate, and offer advice along the way. And though Jacques’ recipes are consistently good (the final measure of any chef’s, on TV or not, skill), it is the ease with which he navigates his kitchen that appeals, it is his very matter-of-fact tips that inspire absolute trust, and it is his seeming indifference to fad and hype and ingredients-of-the-moment that makes him seem right.
The Food Network is not the only culprit of food TV. Fox has “Hell’s Kitchen” and Bravo has “Top Chef,” reality shows gussied up, for all their ostensible focus on food, with bitchy drama and glistening sets. And though one could find more fault with the former, the latter is probably the worse of the two, as it seems to be more concentrated on product placement and celebrity chef related sales than anything else. PBS is also not free of blame. Though they have Jacques and Lidia Bastianich and Colameco, they also have Todd English, who seems to think that watching him stuff food into his chipmunk cheeks is not only entertaining, but enlightening. They also have the self-satisfied mug of Mark Bittman (of New York Times fame!), traipsing around the world with a Google map in tow (!), touting pearls of wisdom like, “These chefs just know!” how to pick ingredients, how to make a sauce, how to chop tomatoes, or how to eat, and for some reason, by watching him watch them we are supposed to think that he, somehow, too, is supposed to know.
But, with the notable exception of “Hell’s Kitchen,” these shows aren’t half bad when compared with the Food Network. Consider the show (I can’t, for the life of me, remember the name of the show or the host) wherein, from a tawdry set got up to look like an old-fashioned diner, the host provides little known facts about things like Hostess cupcakes, Twinkies, and Entenman’s baked goods, or the grand history of taffy, or the mass-production (in vacuum-sealed bags, no less!) of cotton candy. Or, for the ultimate in food TV mediocrity, think of “The Next Food Network Star” where each and every contestant seemed ignorant, stupid, overly-emotional, incapable of following instructions, and entirely without the most basic of kitchen skills. Then there are shows like “Ace of Cakes,” which, so far as I can tell, is a show which has as its sole purpose showcasing over-sized elementary school sculptures, which just so happen to use cake rather than Styrofoam (and, if possible, seem less appealing to eat than packing nuts).
But these shows, I think, can be written off as fluff. The network is caged in by Food, and there are only so many in-the-kitchen shows they can do without exhausting their limited store of acceptable recipes—after all, how many times would you like to see a boneless, skinless chicken breast dish prepared? Or how to use yet another pile of ground meat? Yet in the cross-section of the two types of shows, the one in-the-kitchen and the other, so to speak, on the road, you can gauge the demographic of the network and see what makes them tick. On the one hand, they would like to see their TV chefs sell food with sex—cleavage and whoreseyes and kissy-faces, it would seem, make watching people cook food on TV more appealing. On the other, what people really want to know about the food they eat is where their junk food comes from, where to get the best diner food, or, quite simply, that people the country over eat in almost exactly the same mediocre way. There are exceptions to this rule, of course, and so Rachel Ray doesn’t (or can’t) sell food with her sex, so she skews the hook to lie on the mediocre side. Giada Whateverhernameis, with a mouth that could hoover a bag of whatever phallic symbol you choose, kisses the camera in the kitchen and goes off to “paradises” around the world, to show off her (admittedly) nice body and flash her coquette’s lashes and boobs. Then there are the sad male chefs, who must come across as “cute” in the kitchen, somewhat capable of producing a meal, yet always, without a doubt, they end up looking like so many cogs in the mediocrity machine (dear lord, no more burgers, please!).
It would be high time to note that I think this a purely American phenomenon, a product of our very strange and variegated take on “food culture.” Let’s take
In the episode of “Beef Vs. Pork” I saw, the cooking method was deep-frying, and they presented, in turn, a cote de bouef and a pork rack roast, both marbled exquisitely. After the almost hysterical applause subsided, the show gave mini expositions about where the beef and pork came from. I missed the portion about the beef, but the bit about the pork was interesting. The pigs lived in rather large pens on a peach farm, where they were fed the peaches, which they washed down, after each meal, with a bottle of peach wine. The wine, the pig farmer said, made the pigs drowsy after their peach meal, and as a result, they would fall asleep almost immediately, burning less fat due to their inactivity. The show went on to give a brief history of the oil they’d use to fry both meats—a sunflower oil—which was very in-depth, albeit very uninteresting. Then the cooking ensued: both racks were cut up and the meat was stripped from the bone and cut into rather thick cutlets, which were then breaded in panko and deep fried with appropriate sauces as accoutrements. I believe that beef, to uproarious applause (both from the TV audience and from the family gathered around the TV set), won the battle.
“Celebrity Smackdown,” as explained, involved a multi-course meal, with each dish of each course getting a brief history of all the ingredients used, the method of preparation, and, of course, a rather longish segment with each tarento’s reaction to the dish they had requested. Amidst all the oishii’s and umai’s and the painfully fake joyous expressions on the tarentos’ faces, what the viewer received was a very detailed analysis of all the components that went into the dish, a bevy of food knowledge that no show, that I’ve seen in the U.S, has ever tried to equal. Beyond that, the idea behind the food show was unique: watch celebrities eat a great, expensive meal (not anything special), but then watch them try and hit the price tag on the head, and if they miss the price tag completely, they truly have to foot the bill (which always gave me a thrilling satisfaction). The unlucky loser would always make pained faces, as would his or her lucky competitors, because, in the Japanese fashion, even the winners would chip in to alleviate the loser’s “shame.”
The last of the three, the documentary, “Tuna,” was by far the most interesting. I remember watching the three hour documentary with my Japanese relatives, all of whom watched in a somber, serious silence. Tuna is, for the Japanese, and more specifically, for those Japanese from
Now, I am not making the case that Japanese like eating more than Americans—more than we—do. One look at our median national physique would tip the scales on that opinion, even if I were to opine it. After all, Japanese cuisine and American cuisine, though drastically different, share one thing in common: they are both bastard cuisines. If American cuisine is a melting-pot of many different influences, so is Japanese cuisine. Their noodles were stolen from
Of course, within our vast country we have the dedicated foodies. I am not disputing that. But let’s go back to our Food Network, the cable station that touts itself as all food all the time. Seldom is a truffle, or a lobe of foie, or a bittergourd, or even a fava bean seen. You don’t get tips on braising, or how to best use beef tenderloin if you buy it whole, or even how to cut up a chicken. What is focused on is store bought filets, pre-cut vegetables, dips and party snacks, different takes on “classic favorites” like franks and beans and nachos and steak sandwiches. And this is either because the Food Network wants us all to eat the mediocre food we always eat (but perhaps a little different because of a pinch of thyme…) or because the Food Network thinks that their demographic would switch to another channel if anything out of the ordinary, like whole roasted fish, using pig’s feet in a stew, or (for the love of god! A national delicacy!) soft-shell crab were to appear on any instructive cooking show.
On the other side of this scale are the more “upscale” cooking shows, which aren’t really about cooking, like “Top Chef,” Todd English’s banal culinary journeys, and Mark Bittman’s insufferable escapades. In these, people eat like normal human beings, and usually the dishes eaten and presented aren’t limited by a child’s view of what’s good to eat. But, as said before, these don’t teach very much, they’re just about watching people eat (or cook) in a restaurant fashion, as if to get a soft-shell crab or some conch and cook it at home is beyond the ability of a home cook in, say, New Jersey or Missouri. And that, if possible, might be worse than what the Food Network does, in that it makes good food seem unreachable unless you have the money or you save or you go off to places exotic and expensive just for the sole purpose of tasting these “crazy” things. Regardless, this is the state of our food television, and as such, I could easily end this essay with a flippant, “I’ll stick with my Jacques, Lidia, and Colamecco, because they teach, they enlighten, and they make cooking for myself fun and delicious.” But that would be too easy, and it would be beside the point.
The point? Well, if, as I say, the Japanese like their food more, or, as Lidia or Colamecco, in their occasional travelogues to Italy or France point out, the Italians and French respect their ingredients more, then why is it that Americans fall so short in appreciation of food? The new craze, with catch-phrases like “seasonal” and “organic,” is for great quality product grown close to home, which the average Joe can have easy access to with just a little bit of effort, a little discernment, and it speaks of a growing awareness that food can be much better if you demand a higher standard of your basic ingredients. That’s fine, and if you live in a major metropolitan area, for the most part you can hone your appreciation for foods, you can learn that to judge a fresh tomato you must smell the stem, or that if you want fresh greens you’ll probably have to know how to wash them. But, if you shop at major supermarkets, or you buy Purdue chickens because they’re cheap, you’re missing out. And why is it that the millions of Americans who do buy Purdue chickens and watery, tasteless, unripe tomatoes don’t seem to care? I think it’s a problem of education, of exposure, and in this respect food television, and specifically Food Network, is to blame.
Let’s return to Jacques Pepin, who in one episode (though there could easily be many, since he tends to repeat these ingots of wisdom whenever he can) discusses the sad state of chicken in our country. Birds, he said, as a general rule, taste better when they’re slaughtered at an older age. This was a bit of a novel idea for me, as I’d always associated young with tender, babies with delicious. But, a memory of a chicken leg I ate when in
—SS