I don’t know if anybody out there had noticed, but we tend to like to cook around here. We like to make things, to see how things are made, to understand the why behind things like the growth of yeast, the respiration of yeast, the reproduction of yeast. Because of this, I release this plea into the universe: More PBS Chefs, please!
To the rest of the world, who may not have been subjected to the likes of The Food Network, I give you Maureen Johnson’s post entitled Now We’re Cooking. Read it (or down a ways in it, where she starts off “Now let’s talk about Food Network” if you’re not interested in the fact that she’s written a book which has just come out, and that’s what allows her to provide you with this rant). Understand that the person she’s talking about there is about the worst that the Food Network has to offer, but also that she’s not so far off when it comes to the rest of the “chefs” there, either. True, there’s at least one (Alton Brown) who actually still continues to provide something meaningful in the way of television (when he can be bothered to produce a new episode, at least). The rest of them?
You know, everybody’s got channels on their televisions which don’t get watched, ever? I’m sure you know the one – the Military Channel, that weird channel that’s always got Kirk Cameron on it, or the one which always has somebody shark fishing or something? I’m not talking about the one that you occasionally watch merely for the sheer spectacle (e.g. Rural Farm Development channel), but those which you constantly wonder why you haven’t removed from the lineup, which you skip over until the next time you get to reprogramming your channel lineup (i.e. never)?
Food TV has just entered that list of channels – the first list, that is. I believe that I’ve watched every single episode of Good Eats there is, and they’ve stopped playing the real Iron Chef (not that damned knock-off with Bobby Flake). So, I skip the channel. And I skip the channel. And it truly irritates me, in a way that the Military Channel never did. Because it once had potential, but has now been subsumed by the “Reality” TV craze.
Jacques Pepin, Ming Tsai, Tommy Tang (‘though he should let his guests talk & should stop with the innuendo), and all the rest of the PBS Chefs: keep it up. You’re all that’s teaching anybody how to cook!
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I bowed out of the whole TV thing about 16 years ago. Before that My roommate at the time had a small black and white set that would get hauled out to watch Northern Exposure or Star Trek re-runs. When they were over, the TV was put away. I always loved that part the best. It was not always out in the open like a shrine to be worshiped at. We were less likely to just sit and be vacant in front of it if there was the physical act of setting it up included.
Ahh. You bowed out, right about when we were getting our first set. Black and white, got three channels, had a bent coat hanger for an antenna. Those were the days … in which we would watch Iron Chef, subtitled in English, main dialogue in Japanese. We loved PBS because it gave us good cooking shows, of a weekend morning. We couldn’t afford anything exotic, but got nourishment from watching good chefs cook.
And then came FoodTV, and sucked the life out of PBS chefs.
ah, i love jacques pepin. but also alton brown. the rest of the food network is lame… especially rachael ray, but thats ok i just wont pay any attention to it.
you left a comment on “tea and cakes” about what is a FO….. i left a comment there, but in case you dont see it, an FO, in that context, usually means a Finished Object.
🙂
the pink pirate. ARRRGH!
Well, we all know Jacques is my Food Boyfriend, right? Another Cute Old Man of Cuisine…
I have to admit that even some of PBS is weird. I don’t like Weir Cooking in the City, mostly because the food/company tends to be pretentious, rather like watching that woman who is always billing and cooing and surrounded by men (Barefoot Contessa) and that Nigell(er) Lawson chickie, who just… bewilders me. I don’t know, I probably react adversely to her because everyone just makes so much of her looks. To me, she looks like… a girl? Or maybe I’m missing something?
Anyway. Probably the nicest thing about PBS chefs to my mind is that they’re all working chefs – not bound up in their celebrity for celebrity’s sake. They WORK for a living, and sometimes get filmed. Even those chefs whose cooking methods raise your eyebrows (Oil AND butter, Saint Julia? Oils of All Kinds, Italian Lidia?!) cook like they cook on the job.
I enjoy the randomness of things like Great Chefs and Chefs A’Field, both of which highlight the whole world and take you all over. Minus the applauding crowds (okay, Yan has a small crowd. And he applauds himself…) and the lights and make-up people, PBS chefs just seem a lot more… real.