Remember Johnny Carson’s favorite blooper? His guest that night was Ed Ames, who played an Oxford-educated Cherokee on Daniel Boone. In a token of his “authenticity,” Ames appeared on The Tonight Show to demonstrate his skill at the tomahawk throw. (This was way before the advent of p.c.) He tossed the deadly tool at the figure of a man painted onto a wooden target about 10 feet away. Sure enough, the tomahawk windmilled through the air and bit firmly into the target—right in the crotch. Viewed from the side, the two-dimensional man appeared to be sporting an erection of heroic proportions. Ames was mortified, but Johnny thought it was very funny and replayed the incident every time The Tonight Show celebrated an anniversary. Ah, the thrill of live TV.
I can’t say that my six-year stint as host of a live cooking show boasted anything quite so amusing, but we definitely had our moments. The first one occurred maybe ten minutes into my very first show, when a pan of cream I was scalding for a chocolate ganache boiled over. I was way too nervous to laugh it off or to airily confess, à la Julia Child, that we all make mistakes in the kitchen. Instead, I pretended it hadn’t happened and simply carried on. As soon as we went to commercial I scrambled to clean it up. Unfortunately, when the camera blinked back on, there I was still mopping away like a madwoman.
The Food Network was not rolling in dough back then and it showed. For roughly two and a half years they shot my show, Cooking Live, on the set of the live food news show hosted by David Rosengarten and Donna Hanover. It was a tiny set with no oven and no pantry. What it did have was a counter so high that I could barely see over it. There was no question of modifying the counter— too expensive. Instead, the budget-minded execs built a narrow riser for me. Balanced precariously on this thing, I spent much of my time worrying about whether I would fall off. I never did, but one night my guest chef, Philippe Chin, did tumble off, disappearing right in the middle of a sentence.
In those days I was assisted by Rob Bleifer and an exceedingly random bunch of unpaid cooking school externs, one of whom was so outstandingly useless that Rob dubbed him the Human Paperweight. With no one else to rely on, Rob spent many a show crouched below my counter like a troll, furtively slipping me things—a spatula, a stick of butter, a plate of fish fillets—that the hapless externs had forgotten. The two of us prayed that no one at home would catch sight of his disembodied hand.
Then there was the upside-down cake episode. I was supposed to make and unmold four—count them, four—separate cakes: pineapple, banana, peach, and strawberry. In full view of our home audience, I confidently picked up the first cake and shook the pan. Nothing happened. The fruit clung to the bottom like barnacles. I picked up the next cake—same result. At that point, my director wisely decided to take a break and have me unmold the remaining cakes off camera.
But no situation was more perilous than the Wednesday night Cook-Along. The seductive premise was that I would make, from scratch, an entire meal in 60 minutes, with no ingredients prepped ahead of time and no swap-outs. (“Swap-outs” are when the cooked dish replaces the uncooked one you’ve just watched a TV chef prepare.) We’d also arrange to have a volunteer viewer cook along with me from home. I quickly noticed that my guest cook-alongers recruited several of their pals to make sure that dinner was actually ready by the end of the hour. That was smart. Working alone, I rarely made it to the finish line. One cursed night the show ended with raw veal chops on the counter. I was horrified. Appetizer? Check. Side dishes? Check. Dessert? Check. Veal chops? Veal chops? Oops & sorry, folks. They never even made it into the pan.
But the dumbest choice I ever made for a real-time cook-along show was fortune cookies, which are ridiculously labor-intensive. You have to make them individually and you only have a 30-second window of opportunity from the time you pull each piping hot little circle of dough out of the oven to fold it into fortune cookie shape. Unfortunately, when I got on camera, I blanked out on how to shape them. Instead of making fortune cookies, I was turning out deflated little half-moons, struggling to wrestle yet another piece of burning dough into the classic shape. A kindly viewer called in and tried to talk me through the cookie-shaping process, but by then my brain had shut down. Although this was hands-down the single most stressful show I ever did, the control room seemed to find it vastly entertaining.
I don’t remember anyone laughing, though, during “The Week the Fires Broke Out.” Two of them occurred between acts and I was able to smother them before the cameras rolled. The third one flared up on Cooking Live Primetime, the live show I did at ten o’clock for 14 months. I was on vacation that night and David Rosengarten was filling in for me. David had already taped three of his own shows and hosted my seven o’clock show before this. Understandably, he was a tad tired, which might explain why he did exactly nothing when a towel caught on fire. He just jumped back and suggested we do a retake. The camera guys silently tried to remind David that the show was live, pantomiming frantically that he should put out the fire. It just didn’t register. Finally, Andrea Immer, our intrepid wine expert, ran onto the set, grabbed the flaming towel, threw it into the sink, and doused the flames with a really beautiful bottle of Bordeaux.
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