This is the way my century ended, not with a bang or even a whimper but with a “bam!” from the most popular chef-performer in the nation, and the sizzles, stirrings, and chop-chops from grills and stoves on stage sets and in TV cooks’ home kitchens. I’m not alone: Some 60 million American households are enthralled by the sounds and sights, if not the smells, thereof, courtesy of local, network, cable, and public television stations.
It has not always been so, this mass preoccupation with food and cookery. Of course there were the great chefs, the great restaurants, the great and small gourmets, and Mom’s home cooking, great and not so great. There were even a limited number of cookbooks: I remember as a child finding one of the very few, on our kitchen shelf, the Borzoi Cookbook, and opening it to a recipe that began, “Take one suckling pig…” I uttered the then equivalent of “gross!” and did not resort to a cookbook for more than 20 years.
My mother, a librarian who had given up her career for housewifery, always felt I had “better things to do” than develop kitchen skills, but somewhere along the way I learned to make chopped liver and a chocolate cake encased in thick cocoa-and-butter icing—both of which you could die for then and probably die from now. When I married I did have the ability to boil water, fry an egg, and broil a chop, but not the courage to use a wedding-present pressure cooker, the in appliance of the day. My husband did: It was he who experimented with the thing, passing some of what he learned on to me.
And so the pressure-cooker cookbook and others (bless The Joy of Cooking!) became this working wife’s and working mother’s prime supports. Beyond the books there were food columnists to be read, the most inspiring in mid-century the great Clementine Paddleford, whose mouthwatering pieces were the pride of the New York Herald Tribune worked. There were recipes to be clipped—and perhaps even followed—from newspapers and magazines, and to be traded with friends and relatives. My mother-in-law’s put me off with “butter the size of a walnut” or “as much flour as needed.” And neither my brother nor I could ever duplicate Aunt Mollie’s fabulous potato kugel. As the century progressed, there were also—not on a working woman’s schedule—cooking segments and programs on radio and television.
And then came Julia Child, certainly the star of cookery gone public—on, in fact, public television. With her debut in the winter of 1963 as The French Chef, she set an extraordinarily high standard for that mix of culinary art, exposition, and personality that is the hallmark of a good cooking program. The First Lady of food shows, now 87 and as feisty, carnivorous, and pro-butter as ever, is still going strong in her eighth series for public television, a 22-parter, Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home, Julia’s home. Jacques, of course, is Jacques Pépin, the French-born chef whose current, sixth series, Jacques Pépin’s Kitchen: Encore with Claudine, teams him with his daughter, who knows a lot about wine but could use a few pointers on making a plum cobbler.
The success of child, the public-broadcasting mother of it all, has been a major factor in the proliferation of cooking shows. And in that continuing proliferation lies the paradox: all these lessons, demonstrations, talk-abouts, and how-tos in the course of a century that in its final decade had fewer and fewer family cooks.
Of course, fewer cooks mean more mothers like mine—unable to pass on kitchen wisdom to their offspring. Someone has to teach us how to bake a cherry pie, which means we need cookbooks and cooking shows more than ever. A major source is the Food Network, which was launched in November 1993, 30 years after Julia Child’s debut. It got off to a rocky start, with a mere 6 million households tuned in, and wound up the century with more than 45 million. It’s currently offering more than 30 programs, with some repeats, between 9:30 a.m. and 5 a.m. on weekdays, and 9:30 a.m. to 4 a.m. on weekends—far beyond the more normal hours on public broadcasting and local and network stations.
In its statement of “philosophy,” Food Network declares, “Food is the ultimate social and emotional connection, and Food Network is well connected, with shows that touch, reach, teach, and, above all else, entertain.” Put that last word in italics. The man who put “bam!” in the national vocabulary when he added spices to his concoctions, Emeril Lagasse, a respected chef and restaurateur, is the network’s star: His hour-long Emeril Live is on at least twice a day seven days a week. His casual approach to cuisine, his cavalier manner in mixing, his scattering of information (“Canapés [which he pronounces variably as “canapeas” and “canapay”] comes from the word for ‘sofa’ or ‘couch,’ so you can lay something on them”), his catchphrases (“Kick it up a notch”), his naughty-boy–connoisseur attitude toward matters alcoholic (“Life’s too short to drink bad wine”), all bring applause and laughter and oohs and aahs from his studio audience of all ages. Entertainment? Suffice it to say that while there are about a thousand requests a week for recipes, there were some 500,000 first-day requests for tickets when this show was opened to a studio audience in 1997.
Two imports, Britain’s Two Fat Ladies and Japan’s Iron Chef, are also in the entertainment category. The first presents two indeed buxom women (one of whom, alas, died last year) traveling by motorcycle and sidecar to cook for groups ranging from Boy Scouts to barristers—cooking, it seems to me, just about everything edible with lard and/or butter. (A Saturday Night Live takeoff had them buttering lettuce leaves.) My favorite moments involve the late Jennifer Paterson, she of the lipstick and lacquered nails, noting, as she doused some scallops with vermouth, “I like [to use it] because I’m not tempted to drink it,” and “If you don’t want [fillet of beef] rare, don’t cook it at all.” And Clarissa Dickson Wright, she of the au naturel appearance, won me over by confiding that, among other reasons, she “gave up the law books for the recipe books” when, to a judge who asked what sardines are, a lawyer explained, “M’lord, they’re a small fish cooked in oil and favored by the lower classes.” How right Clarissa’s decision!
As for Iron Chef, it’s a hyperactive World Wrestling–gladiatorial sort of affair in a stadiumlike setting with two huge kitchens side by side. The reputed Iron Chef and a contender compete against the clock for the number of dishes they can concoct using a specific main ingredient. A passionately involved, ruffle-shirted emcee with handheld mike provides a chop-by-chop, sizzle-by-sauté, play-by-play report: “Iron Chef is marinating!…The challenger is adding hot bean sauce!!” There’s a distinguished audience looking on (a “famous geisha,” elegantly dressed and impassive, is given a close-up at one point), as well as a jury of four—an actress, a pop singer, a psychic, and a politician, during my viewings—commenting at times and finally tasting and judging. At “A Spanish Mackerel Battle,” for example—when the emcee notes it involves “$300 fish!”—the actress says, “I tend to fry it,” and the singer ripostes, “I love fish, too.” We know this via English dubbing and occasional subtitles that give this frenzied show the loony flavor of Woody Allen’s 1966 What’s Up, Tiger Lily?, a Japanese Bond-like adventure flick dubbed into a hilarious quest for a priceless egg-salad recipe. Empathy? My heart went out to a loser who couldn’t pry the lid off a jar of caviar as the time ran out. Memorable line? The emcee’s declaration, “Like Forrest Gump’s mother said, you’re not going to know what you get from Iron Chef,” as lobster was soaked in Dom Pérignon.
Public broadcasting programs, however, do wind up being more on the “educational” side. Surfing—and stopping—I found myself the wiser in some respects. Marcia Adams, via her More Cooking from Quilt Country, in which she makes American dishes “easy enough for the cooking-impaired,” taught me to transport crust dough unbroken and unstretched from board to pie plate by furling it on the rolling pin and unfurling it over the plate. Joanne Weir, of Weir Cooking in the Wine Country, whose girlish manner belies her status as chef and teacher, charmed me by confiding that it took her “years” to achieve that slicing superspeed that separates the pros from us laymen. To “catch the seeds,” she filters lemon juice through her fingers, whereas Ming Tsai, the Asian-American charmer of East Meets West, uses his fingers to separate eggs, yolks in palm, whites dripping down. That’s what I call hands-on cooking.
Even though crêpes Suzette haven’t yet appeared on my home menu, Julia Child taught me—and Jacques Pépin (she stopped him in midstream)—not to pour the alcohol for flambé into the pan from the bottle lest leaping flames encase it and one’s hand. Ladle it in. And though I’m no outdoor cooksman, George Hirsch, the supper-griller whose mantra (and show title) is Know Your Fire, has given me firm, frequent, and vicariously delicious support in my contention that garlic, caramelized or not, can be used in practically everything from soup to nutty desserts. He’s amateur-cook friendly, urging us to “make it nice and easy on yourself,” as he resorts to canned artichoke hearts, and reminds us, “Cooking isn’t a science. Baking is.” Things are a bit more highbrow with chef-restauratrice Caprial Pence, whose Cooking with Caprial concentrates on “American bistro cuisine.” Her definition thereof is broad, her offerings varied. She’s generous, even sharing the recipe for the scones with hazelnuts and smoked salmon that she brought to Julia Child’s 80th birthday celebration, and her manner is forthright:“Lamb is my favorite meat. You love it—or you don’t.”
The Cooking Secrets of the CIA are those of The Culinary Institute of America, whose program presents chef-hatted, note-taking, and sometimes participating students getting lecture-demonstrations from the master faculty. Good stuff, even beyond baking a chicken encased in five pounds of coarse salt. One “secret” was not only the making of hazelnut biscotti but also the eating of those crisp twice-baked cookies (after dunking, of course, in coffee). The timing of the latter, need I note, is essential to keep the nuts from dropping into the cup. In contrast to the CIA setup, Lidia’s Italian Table provides the assurance from Lidia Matticchio Bastianich that “you’re with me in my house.” Her thesis, in contrast to the multi-ingredient, 10-condiment, and “bam!” approaches of other shows, is simple: “Less is more. Use two or three ingredients and let them shine.”
Lidia’s homeyness is rare. It’s the multi-everything culinary atmosphere of most food shows that gets a “Yeah—sure!” response from me. If I had all those lackeys (or production assistants) to shop for me, to chop and measure all those added ingredients and spices and lagniappes; if I had all those burners and ovens and counters, all those gadgets and tools and gorgeous cookware, and even more gorgeous serving plates and platters with garnishes at the ready—and that army to clean up after me & But for many viewers, I’ve found, it is the very overabundance presented in some of these shows that fascinates, that educates, that comforts, and furthers the have-nots’ illusion that they could do as well given the tools—and the talent.
The range of age and demographics of those millions of viewers is enormous. Many are children and teenagers who, one food expert speculates, may be making up for the lack of observing or participating in cooking in their own family life. Watching chefs in action, one woman told me, is “easier than reading a cookbook.” Older women, many of whom have given up “real” cooking with the dispersal of their families or for reasons of health, seem to be watching pour le sport. One said, “It’s a pleasure to watch chefs at work, the way armchair athletes watch professional sports.”
Whatever. The food-show mania is indeed a sign of our time, which one thoughtful observer has labeled the age of “gastropornography,” with intellectual conversation abandoned and food the topic that dominates the dinner-party or restaurant table. Not, mind you, that staff- of-life eating can’t be pleasurable in itself or, on occasion, extraordinary in its delights. About 40 years after my initial cookbook trauma, with the help of my housekeeper-cook, I did indeed “take one suckling pig…” The result was incredibly and unforgettably delicious.