I don't know how long I've been watching The Food Network, but probably
since it began. I always liked watching cooking shows on PBS, like
fabulous Julia Child, funny Joyce Chen (you should hear Char talk about
Chen's recipe for Peking duck...and I still think of "oil" as "oir," which
is how she pronounced it), and Martin Yan, from whom I took two series of
cooking classes here in Davis. What fun he was to learn from!
I don't cook Chinese much any more, but there was a time when I could
prepare a 7 course meal without hardly blinking (Tupperware is a necessity!)
But
then the Food Network came along. At first it was similar to the PBS
shows, with chefs like Emeril Lagasse, who was there to show that fancy
recipes weren't that difficult after all. His signature "Bam!"
was when he tossed his special spice mixture into a pot with panache.
The audience applauded.
The problem with Emeril, for a cook like me, is that while he made it all
look simple, a look at the length of the "easy" steps was often daunting and
I don't know that I ever made any of his recipes.
Rachael Ray was probably the first Food Network "star" who was relatable to
the average home cook. Her "Thirty Minute Meals" made cooking fancy
stuff seem like child's play and I enjoyed her. Unfortunately her fame
propelled her into overkill, with a line of cookware, and even furniture,
and now a daily show (is it still on?). After a few years, I went into
Rachael overkill and stopped watching her. Entirely too perky!
But the thing about Rachael Ray is that she ushered in a new look in food
programs for The Food Channel. I don't know exactly how it started,
but maybe it was the "Next Food Network Star," a competition program, like
The Apprentice, where a bunch of home cooks fie to get their own cooking
show. The first winner(s) were a gay couple, The Hearty Boys, who did
a show for two seasons about entertaining. We even find losers on the
Food Network in some capacities like Carla Hall (who was on Bravo's Top
Chef, but lost).
The
bizarre, yet lovable Guy Fieri was another early winner. He has
parlayed his win into a dominating presence on The Food Channel, with not
only a cooking show but a game show (Grocery Games) and the
ubiquitous Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, which I swear runs more often
than Law and Order SVU. Show after show of burgers and other
comfort food in dives across the country. Even I am often
appalled by the amount of grease consumed in the average show, though there
have been some places I've seen that have intrigued me (like a crab place in
San Francisco that I will visit someday!
It's kind of embarrassing how many of the winners of Next Food Network
Star I can remember. Like the adorable Indian cook Aarti Sequeira;
the saccharine Demaris Phillips, whose food I like but whose personality
rubs me the wrong way; Jeff Mauro, the sandwich king; Eddie Jackson, the
most recent winner; and Richard Blais, who moved from show host to show
judge, as he often appears on shows like Chopped, or Cooks vs.
Cons.
The Food Network still has chefs that I consider real "chefs," like Ina
Garten (the Barefoot Contessa), Bobby Flay, and all those chefs on Iron Chef
America.
It was a crossover when Ree Drumond, "The Pioneer Woman," whose food blog I
followed for years was signed for a season on The Food Network, which has
run into several seasons, now -- we've watched her kids grow up on
television.
The network now even has make-over shows with chefs like Robert Irvine, who
takes restaurants that are in danger of failing and helps them recover.
Then we began seeing celebrities doing cooking, supposedly from their homes.
Chefs like Giada DiLaurentis (granddaughter of director Dino), Valerie
Bertinelli (One Day at a Time), Tiffany Thiessen (White Collar),
Patricia Heaton, Marilu Henner, and my favorite, country singer Trisha
Yearwood, perhaps the most relatable (for me), since she cooks like I do!
(I've been watching The Food Network for so long that I remember before
Giada got married, when she was pregnant, after she gave birth, and now her
divorce!)
The
one show I have no desire to watch is a new show called Ginormous Food,
where a guy eats enormous quantities of food. Pizzas larger than truck
tires, 10-patty hamburgers, taller almost than the guy who is eating it
(with onion rings on each burger), enormous bowls of spaghetti etc. It
is done with a cheering audience Some how in this day and age where
hunger is so prominent, this show has zero appeal for me.
Duff
Goldman became famous for making incredible cakes and had a regular program
(Ace of Cakes), showcasing those cakes. (He made Obama's
inauguration cake, which was copied this year by Trump). But he now
has become a host of the Kids Baking Championship, where he helps and
encourages young bakers to create amazing things.
That's the latest thing in the Food Network....kids' competitions. It
boggles my mind watching these young bakers, some as young as 9 (Brianna
will be 9 in April). They make such incredible things and they have
the lingo down pat. They talk about "depth of favor" and "flavor
profile," and their personal point of view. I wouldn't know a depth of
flavor if it bit me on the butt. But these kids know the lingo and
they know how to "plate" attractive foods. They put me to shame!
The most amazing kids are those who appear in the show Chopped, where
contestants are presented with baskets of ingredients which must be used in
creating a dish (on Halloween, one basked contained eels, candied bats, and
congealed blood!); another round on another show featured whelk snails and
lemon bars. An easier round was making an appetizer out of chicken
soup, pork, squash and BBQ sauce.
The Food Network has come a long way from Emeril Lagasse, and now has a
second cable channel as well, The Cooking Channel, for the shows that don't
fit into the Food Network schedule.
I suspect it has done wonders for home cooks, and maybe more people are
trying cooking at home than buying dinner out every night.
I should add parenthetically here that I had no idea how much I knew
about The Food Network before I started writing this ... and I haven't even
gotten to Cooks vs. Cons or Bakers vs. Fakers.
Joyce
Chen was one of the many who preceded The Food Network and was lots of fun
to watch, but my word you couldn't make any of her recipes. What she
did to a duck for Peking Duck shouldn't happen to...well...a duck.
Chinese cooking became more accessible when Martin Yan (from whom I took two
courses) came along and made Chinese cooking fun.
