Slate Praises Rachael Ray

http://www.slate.com/id/2122085/

Enjoy.

Best,
Michael / EC

Her skills are as estimable as those of any Michelin-star-winning chef,

You've got to be kidding me.

In reference to 30 minute meals:

The show is also fantastically entertaining

Sure, if you can get past the screeching voice being transmitted over the airwaves.

She employs kitschy abbreviations—EVOO

This wouldn't be so awful if she didn't also say "extra virgin olive oil" after every mention of EVOO

Sure, Rachael Ray has a purpose. Most of the time I think it's to personally drive me crazy. I believe that this kind of attention is only due to the popularity (read: dumbing down) of the Food Network. What's next? Possibly, a dramatic series loosely based on the MacGyver of pre-packaged food products, Sandra Lee?

Flip

I can take or leave Rachel Ray: her gratuitous hand gestures, also agreed on the ubiquitous explaining of evoo thing, and that Pillsbury giggle, wait, I can't forget that everything she samples on $40 a Day is "fantastic!" But, she's merely indicative of the Food Channel's continuing prostration before pseudo-celebrity. I await the day that MTV-like, a Food Channel/2 spins off to actually concentrate on cuisine and not lifestyle.

Lest I forget, last Christmas I drew the name of an extended-family member requesting several Rachel Ray cookbooks. "Whatever floats your boat," I mused. I was even going to track down a signed copy on the Food Network site(not that Ms. Ray hasn't perfected instore signing redundancy). No such luck on that front. Later to discover(a relative let slip) that she hadn't found anything to cook among the three I picked out. Sigh.

I just don't get the hate. Is comparing her to a Michelin-rated chef hyperbole? Sure. Are her detractors guilty of hyperbole too? Good lord, are they ever. Does she take a lot of shortcuts? Sure. Does she have good kitchen skills, including knife skills I can only dream of? Absolutely. Is she catering (no pun intended) to the complete range of home cooks from beginners to sophisticated home chefs who develop their own recipes? No. Are her recipes really any less authentic than, say, America's Test Kitchen's, with their half-hour coq au vin and quick pasta bolognese? Eh, it's a wash as far as I'm concerned, except she's a lot more likely to get someone whose food comes mostly from pizza and hamburger joints to actually try to cook.

And her show's a few years old, now, dating back to the days of Cooking School Stories and A Cook's Tour, so it's hard to use it as a marker of anything being dumbed down.

Not to mention this. Sorry, I couldn't resist.

That is so many varieties of wrong. Paging Nigella.

Bob S. wrote:I just don't get the hate.

Me neither.

Christopher Gordon wrote:That is so many varieties of wrong. Paging Nigella.

yes much better

That FHM photo shoot of Ray is ironic considering one thing she can't make is cheesecake.

I'm here all week. Try the veal and remember to tip your waitstaff.

For the mindless and tasteless masses, perhaps Ms. Rae has something to offer regarding actually getting them to try to cook home-made meals rather than microwaving pre-made Volksfutter (mangime delle masse) or getting take-out Volksfutter from Boston Market or KFC. The dishes she cooks are without doubt a couple of large steps above the prissified garbage that, zum Beispiel, the semi-homemade person makes.

That said, despising Rachel Rae is a reasonable and proper thing; to say she is less appalling than someone who is truly and extravagantly appalling is, after all, more a form of condemnation than praise. The amount of disinformation she and the rest of the village idiots that nowadays populate the Food Network give out each day is no less amazing than it is depressing.

Yes, contempt for her I have, and for the all the other entertainers that have replaced the folks who once upon a time had shows on the Food Network... the David Rosengartens and Michael Lomonicos and Mings and Bourdains... People who actually know something about cuisine...

The Food Network is now a place I can visit either for hoots or to increase my level of spleen whenever I start to feel excessively tolerant and forgiving...

Now, isn't Giada DeLaurentis just about to come on?...



Antonius

My hope is that as more and more video moves to the Web, it won't be long before I can call up the old c. 1999 Food Network shows that actually showed you how to cook something, not the new ones that are food game shows. In the meantime there's always Rosengarten's book and the like...

I don't get the hate either. At least I get more, "hey, I could do something along those lines for a weeknight meal" ideas from that than, say, Emeril.

But I really miss the COOKING. Bring back Sara Moulton's similarly-themed show. Does Mario Batali even have new eps anymore? Oh, it's on at noon.

At least Giada Di Lorentis' show has this 'what the hell did she just do?' aspect. It's always entertaining just to spot the bizarre. I'll take her show or a Rachel Ray over the Barefoot Contessa's fawning, Sandra Lee, or the Low Carb robot.

For me the great thing about FoodTV is that I can leave it on to drown out background noise, and if something interesting shows up, I can always rewind the TiVo and learn something. I can't do that though with the 'Everything Is Important' announcer style of The Best Of, Unwrapped, and most of their festival shows which seem to dominate primetime.

JoelF wrote:At least Giada Di Lorentis' show has this 'what the hell did she just do?' aspect. It's always entertaining just to spot the bizarre. I'll take her show or a Rachel Ray over the Barefoot Contessa's fawning, Sandra Lee, or the Low Carb robot....

I've already said the most positive thing I can conjure up for Rachel Rae. One might possibly say the same to some degree of DeLaurentis -- that the simple dishes she makes may serve as examples and inspiration for people who would otherwise just go drool over offerings from corporate chain restaurants or eat 'semi-homemade' things...

What is disturbing to me about these shows is the sloppiness and ignorance of the writers. If America is generally speaking an (increasingly) ignorant society, it is in good measure because of the inclination for people -- including the (semi-)learnèd -- to look to the television sooner than the bookshelf. We are, therefore, to a frightening degree dependent on -- or better, at the mercy of -- the makers of television 'product' to tell us things that are more often right than wrong. Of course, there is no reason that television shows (such as virtually all of the ones currently aired on the Food Network) should necessarily give out wrong information of all sorts, except that to whatever degee there once was some notion that that network was intended to teach, it is now there simply to entertain; wasting time getting things right would lower the profit margin.

Anyone who is serious about food and has watched the Food Network over the course of its history surely must agree that it has been dumbed down to a tremendous degree, but the dumbing-down isn't simply a matter of offering less real, useful information but also of offering more and more 'disinformation'.

Back to DeLaurentis, who can serve as an example... I find it quite amazing the degree to which the dishes she makes are presented as if they genuinely are products of traditional Italian cuisine. Family anecdotes, many of which ring obviously false to anyone who actually is Italian, are offered to help make the sale. But in the end, Giada's cooking is in spirit and detail about as close to genuine Italian cooking as is the cooking at Olive Garage and Romano's Macaroni Swill. If one wants to learn something about Italian cooking, her show is just about the last place to which one should go.

Antonius

P.S. 'Low Carb Robot'... I like that...

Antonius wrote:If America is generally speaking an (increasingly) ignorant society, it is in good measure because of the inclination for people -- including the (semi-)learnèd -- to look to the television sooner than the bookshelf. We are, therefore, to a frightening degree dependent on -- or better, at the mercy of -- the makers of television 'product' to tell us things that are more often right than wrong. Of course, there is no reason that television shows (such as virtually all of the ones currently aired on the Food Network) should necessarily give out wrong information of all sorts, except that to whatever degee there once was some notion that that network was intended to teach, it is now there simply to entertain; wasting time getting things right would lower the profit margin.

I agree, although I'm not sure it is even really entertainment. Probably Douglas Adams put it best:

Douglas Adams wrote:Television companies are not in the business of delivering television programmes to their audience, they're in the business of delivering audiences to their advertisers.

- from "What have we got to lose?" in Salmon of Doubt (ISBN: 1400045088) Amazon Link

I've been cablefree two years now and I don't miss FoodNetwork.
While it is fine idea to encourage people to start cooking and broaden their culinary horizons, it should be done right. If not, I can churn out pseudofood by the wokload without any help, thank you very much. No hate, but really Ms. Ray's cooking made her (more) annoying. The few episodes of Essence of Emeril I've seen were interesting, Live was simply hoopla.

I'm pretty pleased that that simple little link inspired such an interesting conversation. I can't defend Rachael Ray. I really found the Slate article to be laughable. I do watch 30-min-meals from time to time, and I'm not sure why.

I do feel compelled to defend a few Food Network shows:

--I'm a big fan of Alton Brown's "Good Eats". I may not always agree with him, but I love what he's trying to do and I love how he's doing it. There are a couple episodes that have changed the way that I cook for the better, and there are a few recipies of his that have become staples of mine (with some minor tweaking, of course).

--Every now and again, I like watching Mario Batali cook.

--I'm not ashamed to say that I love both Iron Chef and Iron Chef America. Plain and simple, they're both really fun to watch. I don't care if they are set-up or rigged. My only major complaint about the new series is that I'd like a more in-depth background on the challenging chef.

--Finally, I'm less ashamed to say that I'm completely charmed by Paula Deen.

My biggest beef with the Food Network is that they've never had a chef/host that has left me awestruck in the way that someone like Jacques Pepin has.

Best,
Michael / EC

Antonius wrote:Anyone who is serious about food and has watched the Food Network over the course of its history surely must agree that it has been dumbed down to a tremendous degree, but the dumbing-down isn't simply a matter of offering less real, useful information but also of offering more and more 'disinformation'.

I used to be able to watch it 24/7 (well, not the infomercials that they ran in the late night/early morning). Now I can barely bring myself to look at the station, except for some all to rare instances.

Antonius wrote:P.S. 'Low Carb Robot'... I like that...

As opposed to the big headed robot that is Giada DLR.

I don't get the hate either...

I won't spout my credentials here but as a well-travelled, culinary professional, I think she rocks. And it takes a hell of a lot to impress me. I say just don't watch her if she bugs that much - simple eh?

I agree with many of the posts about the quality of Food Network these days. Time was when I could get home from work, turn it on, and be entertained and provoked for hours. I am SOOO tired of Good Eats and shows that highlight cooking "festivals."

At least, there's Alton.

If there's hope on cable, it might be Anthony Bourdain's new show "No Reservations," on the Travel Channel. It sounds to be more like Bourdain's books, and less like the producer-mangled "A Cook's Tour" on FoodTV. The new series starts July 25, and my TiVo reports that the first episode is "Why the French Don't Suck".

Cheers,
Wade

That's a good point: FoodTV is not the sole source of Food TV.

PBS still gets a good show every once in a blue moon (though I love Bayless' cooking and books, I can't listen to him, though), and Style has Ming's Quest (really more travel than cooking, but at least he really cooks on the show), and Napa Style, which is more of the same of Michael Chiarello's male Martha (it's a good thing).

I hate to say it, but the Food Network has gone the way of the lazy fat American: the focus has become consuming (eating) not producing (cooking).

At least Rachel's 30 min meals demonstrates cooking if not cuisine. Ms Rae's other programs are her stuffing her face and fawning uncontrollably to the point where I'm embaressed for her. For this I lose respect.

I still enjoy Food Network for Mario, Alton, and the amusing Iron Chef.

As an aside, I've found I almost have to watch this network alone. If any other family member is present they will soon, zombie-like, snack on whatever processed crap is handy. I find it depressing to have the teenager nuke some pizza rolls while I struggle to expand my culinary knowledge. What else do we expect from the Idiot Box?

JoelF wrote:PBS still gets a good show every once in a blue moon

This is my chance to put in a plug for my current new favorite cooking show, which happens to be on PBS on Saturdays. It's called Daisy Cooks. Daisy Martinez is a young, attractive New York born Puerto Rican woman who shows how to cook food with a Latino bent. Mostly, it's Puerto Rican favorites, but I have seen her do some Mexican and Cuban dishes as well. She cooks with many of the same sensibilities that I have, ie. she's not afraid to add some spice and heat to her recipes and doesn't seem to dumb things down for the Gringo audience. Daisy is not very full of herself, either. She has a pretty good sense of humor and it shows. I also love her NYC attitude.

stevez wrote:

JoelF wrote:PBS still gets a good show every once in a blue moon

This is my chance to put in a plug for my current new favorite cooking show, which happens to be on PBS on Saturdays. It's called Daisy Cooks. Daisy Martinez is a young, attractive New York born Puerto Rican woman who shows how to cook food with a Latino bent. Mostly, it's Puerto Rican favorites, but I have seen her do some Mexican and Cuban dishes as well. She cooks with many of the same sensibilities that I have, ie. she's not afraid to add some spice and heat to her recipes and doesn't seem to dumb things down for the Gringo audience. Daisy is not very full of herself, either. She has a pretty good sense of humor and it shows. I also love her NYC attitude.

Steve:

I'll agree with almost all of what you say except for the comment about Daisy being "young" -- no, I do not think of her as old but I suspect she belongs roughly to my generation and I'm afraid even the younger side of that isn't really 'young' anymore.

However young or old she be, though, yes, Daisy seems to be swell. I've only seen her show a few times but would really like to try to find a way to see it regularly (inconvenient time is the problem). All I've seen from her has been good: simple, delicous food clearly explained, with a minimum of the horseshit and disinformation that characterises FN programming... Plus, I love her devotion both to her father and the NYC Fire Department (my maternal grandfather was a highly decorated captain in that organisation, may I add with great pride). The Puerto Rican mechado she made last week looked great... Maybe with continued viewing my positive impression may change a bit, but at least I feel drawn back to the show for something other than 'hoots' and maintaining my spleen-level...

And just before Daisy these Saturdays is the great Jacques Pepin...

These are precisely the kinds of shows that the Food Network should have but now does not. Unfortunately, as the allegedly excessively liberal PBS is pared down by an excessively not liberal government, the best of PBS is surely soon to go away in favour of more corporate informentaries, or whatever one calls their commerciaganda these days.

Bayless, Daisy M., Jacques Pepin, even the cooking in the real world series (I forget what it's actually called), all these are vastly superior to the entirety of that which is offered on the Food Network these days, at least with regard to serious cooking. On that score, Food Network, even with the size of its line-up and number of hours of broadcasting per week, gets in my book a 'D' and PBS, with all its limitations, gets a grade somewhere in the range of 'A-'.

In support of my claim here, I call attention to the case of Michael Chiarello, who has one of the better shows on FN these days with respect to the ratio between serious presentation of cooking to horseshit and hijinks. Even so, Chiarello's current show's ratio leans a little more toward the latter than it did when it was on PBS. But the real point here is that Chiarello was 'discovered' (i.e., first given a national profile) on PBS. The more recent 'discoveries' of the Food Network are such culinary frauds as Rachel Rae, Giada DeLaurentis, or the nincompoop they have recently touted as the next 'superstar' chef, the thoroughly inane and talentless Dave Lieberman.

On the other hand, Ming Tsai, who (I believe) got his start on FN, now has a show on PBS and his new show is - not surprisingly - even more focussed on cooking and more informative and well put together than his good FN show was. Ming was one of the last of the good, serious 'discoveries' that FN came up with.

Now, if only the corporate advocates in Washington can be stopped from pulling the funding...

Antonius

Typos fixed.

Antonius wrote:Steve:

I'll agree with almost all of what you say except for the comment about Daisy being "young" -- no, I do not think of her as old but I suspect she belongs roughly to my generation and I'm afraid even the younger side of that isn't really 'young' anymore.

Antonius,

I'll agree with everything you said except to add that I enjoy watching a Rachel Ray episode every once in a while. I find her entertaining, if not a "Great Chef of the World". As to Daisy's age, perhaps vibrant would be a better descriptor than young.

P.S. As I am typing this, Michael Lomonico is on Ming's PBS show cooking up some soft shell crabs.

Christopher Gordon wrote:I can take or leave Rachel Ray: her gratuitous hand gestures, also agreed on the ubiquitous explaining of evoo thing, and that Pillsbury giggle, wait, I can't forget that everything she samples on $40 a Day is "fantastic!" But, she's merely indicative of the Food Channel's continuing prostration before pseudo-celebrity. I await the day that MTV-like, a Food Channel/2 spins off to actually concentrate on cuisine and not lifestyle.

Food Channel chooses their celebs by their personalities as well as ability to cook. The recipe can be wonderful, but if the chef can't keep the audience's interest, the show is a disaster.

Case in point, just recently they did the section on finding the new Food Network Chef. What were they looking for besides being able to cook? Personality. That's why the two gay guys won. They worked well together as well as off of each other.

And as much as you seem to knock Rachel Ray, she's also one of the top celebs on the network. She also comes off as the bubbly girl next door which is obviously one of the reasons she is one of the top celebs.

And if her personality bothers you so much, there's always grabbing a cook book off of your shelf. No personality, just "cuisine."

Antonius wrote:

JoelF wrote:At least Giada Di Lorentis' show has this 'what the hell did she just do?' aspect. It's always entertaining just to spot the bizarre. I'll take her show or a Rachel Ray over the Barefoot Contessa's fawning, Sandra Lee, or the Low Carb robot....

I've already said the most positive thing I can conjure up for Rachel Rae. One might possibly say the same to some degree of DeLaurentis -- that the simple dishes she makes may serve as examples and inspiration for people who would otherwise just go drool over offerings from corporate chain restaurants or eat 'semi-homemade' things...

What is disturbing to me about these shows is the sloppiness and ignorance of the writers. If America is generally speaking an (increasingly) ignorant society, it is in good measure because of the inclination for people -- including the (semi-)learnèd -- to look to the television sooner than the bookshelf. We are, therefore, to a frightening degree dependent on -- or better, at the mercy of -- the makers of television 'product' to tell us things that are more often right than wrong. Of course, there is no reason that television shows (such as virtually all of the ones currently aired on the Food Network) should necessarily give out wrong information of all sorts, except that to whatever degee there once was some notion that that network was intended to teach, it is now there simply to entertain; wasting time getting things right would lower the profit margin.

Anyone who is serious about food and has watched the Food Network over the course of its history surely must agree that it has been dumbed down to a tremendous degree, but the dumbing-down isn't simply a matter of offering less real, useful information but also of offering more and more 'disinformation'.

Back to DeLaurentis, who can serve as an example... I find it quite amazing the degree to which the dishes she makes are presented as if they genuinely are products of traditional Italian cuisine. Family anecdotes, many of which ring obviously false to anyone who actually is Italian, are offered to help make the sale. But in the end, Giada's cooking is in spirit and detail about as close to genuine Italian cooking as is the cooking at Olive Garage and Romano's Macaroni Swill. If one wants to learn something about Italian cooking, her show is just about the last place to which one should go.

Antonius

P.S. 'Low Carb Robot'... I like that...

Antonius, I sense a bit of snobbery here and that's sad. If you really thought the Food Network was supposed to take the place of a culinary school, then you definitely were disappointed. Even in the case of Rachel Ray, as she says, "meals in 30 minutes," which means it's designed for the working woman who wants to get a "healthy" meal on the table quickly. It's not about quiches, pate or beef wellington. It's about the average everyday meal. I don't know why you were expecting more.

As far as DeLaurentis, her cooking might not be classic Italian, the dishes are indeed ones that stir the pallet. And again, not meals designed to be fitting for kings and presidents, or something you'd see in a New York five star restaurant, but they aren't meant to be.

And if you feel you can offer the general public a lot more, why didn't you try for the contract for the next Food Network chef?

OneTallCaChef wrote:I don't get the hate either...

I won't spout my credentials here but as a well-travelled, culinary professional, I think she rocks. And it takes a hell of a lot to impress me. I say just don't watch her if she bugs that much - simple eh?

Hear! Hear! Unless you're strapped to your chair, just find something else to watch. It's easy to complain.

Cooking_Guru wrote:

OneTallCaChef wrote:I don't get the hate either...

I won't spout my credentials here but as a well-travelled, culinary professional, I think she rocks. And it takes a hell of a lot to impress me. I say just don't watch her if she bugs that much - simple eh?

Hear! Hear! Unless you're strapped to your chair, just find something else to watch. It's easy to complain.

I like Rachel Ray, but I think it's possible to offer a critique of any television program, or anything else for that matter, that you have the option of avoiding. I mean, you go to a restaurant, you don't like it, and so you write about it; it would seem strange to say in response to that critique, "Hey, you don't like the restaurant, just don't go there."

Hammond

Cooking Guru, the thing is, it's not a theoretical idea of what the Food network could be, like someone saying the Independent Film Channel isn't showing REALLY independent film, man!

Five or seven years ago it WAS a cooking school on TV. Shows like Rosengarten's, Mario Batali's, Two Hot Tamales, etc. did all focus on demonstrating real cooking techniques and education on a fairly high level. You compare what any of them cooked to what the new stars of the channel cook and you've got a network that basically went from being Gourmet to being Woman's Day; from being about making something using interesting authentic ingredients to making something quickly (and I don't think healthy is usually part of the equation). Apparently they picked up viewers, but they certainly lost me because that's just not the sort of thing I want to learn about.

That we shouldn't talk about this is a damn funny attitude to take on a culinary chat site.

Eh, talk is fine; I just don't get the weird mix of snobbery and na

Bob S. wrote:And since no one's mentioned it, the show I respect most is Food 911, where Tyler Florence does what America's Test Kitchen wants to do, in a way that gives the beginner some hope of accomplishing it while allowing the more experienced cook to appreciate the subtleties of a dish and its context.

Add a shout out to Tyler Florence's other show, How to Boil Water. For a begining cook, this show offers the solid step by step instruction that was an early hallmark of The Food Channel.