stevez wrote:

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.

Wait, they replaced the comedically unfunny comedian and the french guy with Tyler Florence?

That's truly good news. Tyler Florence is one of the best people that network has managed to keep around.

I cut my teeth on Great Chefs of the World, which the Discovery Channel used to air with some regularity. That was the ultimate cooking school.

-ed

gleam wrote:Wait, they replaced the comedically unfunny comedian and the french guy with Tyler Florence?

That's truly good news. Tyler Florence is one of the best people that network has managed to keep around.

I cut my teeth on Great Chefs of the World, which the Discovery Channel used to air with some regularity. That was the ultimate cooking school.

-ed

The good news is that they indeed replaced that annoying French guy with Tyler. The bad news is that they also replaced his sexy little cooking partner with a new woman who appears to be playing for the other team. The quality of the show has risen dramatically, though.

Hopefully maintaining coherency without quoting ad nauseum , I take issue with the tacit condemnation of possible rigorous critique and personal opinion on a chat site. Part and parcel of an impotent cultural theater is the idea that any critical investigation is, as the kidz say, "playa hatin'."
Puhleeze.

-back on topic:

Food channel good: the sometimes jovial, sometimes irascible Batali, the mighty polysyllabic Paouwla Deeen, Emeril outside of the simpering, sycophantic zoo that is his nibs Live, the orig. Iron Chef(the American version concentrates to much on personality), Sara Moulton's off-kilter, often socially-awkward, personability.

Food Channel bad: Tyler Florence(I find him ingratiating and it's odd how few men he allows on his show), Bobby Flay(the camerawork on his grilling program makes me dizzy), Barefoot Contessa(that whole Hampton's schtick plus her disturbingly hushed tones), Alton Brown(I appreciate the concept, but find him smarmy), those endless(and endlessly repeated) theme weekends, county fair coverage, stereotyping regional cuisine(most egregiously that of Texas and the South in general), lack of international cuisine coverage, concentration on the hausfrau cliche to the detriment of culinary aptitude, oh, and the abomination that is the vaseline-lensed "doyen" of Semi-Homemade---

quick aside: speaking of Semi-Homemade: does anyone remember a PBS program from a few years back in which a farm wife in her "kuntry kitsch'n" felt duty bound to include a can of cream of mushroom soup and dried parsley flakes in every recipe? Occasionally, her husband would stumble onscreen, trucker cap precariously-perched atop his sunburned pate, only to be quickly shoo-ed away. A laugh riot.

I'm not arguing corporate perogatives. A tv station is a tv station is a tv station: just look at the travesty that is WTTW or, the non-sequiters comprising SciFi channel, the plethora of increasingly patronizing classic and alternative film channels.

Debate is healthy, right? Think (groupthink) one's implicit censorious ways before one attempts to shut another down.

Antonius wrote:Be that as it may, I am glad to see you're getting good travel tips from Rachel Rae [sic].

Can't say I think much of "$40 A Day." It's an odd and fairly arbitrary figure (and these days, very influenced by the poor exchange rates when she's traveling abroad), and someone who's going to hop around the country and the world is better off doing so without that contrivance. If anyone here in town has to worry about keeping it down to $40 in neighborhoods like Pilsen, Devon, Hegewisch, and Albany Park, they're missing a lot of the best around the city.

But "Best Of" often wandered around cities to capture some of those points, so clearly it's an issue of execution rather than concept. But if someone's going to excoriate the network for having travel shows at all, they aren't distinguishing between the good and the bad.

stevez wrote:The good news is that they indeed replaced that annoying French guy with Tyler. The bad news is that they also replaced his sexy little cooking partner with a new woman who appears to be playing for the other team. The quality of the show has risen dramatically, though.

Oh, now I remember. The replaced the obnoxious comedienne with a shortish blonde woman. Is she the one who has been most recently replaced?

Hopefully they'll change the name of the show, next..

Despite the promise of cable and its 500 channels (I barely get 300 myself) there's something that tends to happen over and over, which is: a channel with a niche, which is what gets it accepted by cable operators (that is, ones not owned by the same company), gradually moves away from its niche toward the center in hopes of capturing a bigger audience than that niche. Thus The Nashville Network became The National Network and finally Spike, the first network for men (a redundancy if ever there was one); A&E, which now officially no longer stands for Arts & Entertainment, moved from ballet to Murder She Wrote reruns; American Movie Classics became an 80s-90s movie channel; and, last but hardly least, the food and travel channels became largely indistinguishable from each other.

My problem with Food TV is just that you turn it on and you hardly ever get a show that has that much to do with cooking; you get a game show like Iron Chef (which I know some enjoy, but not moi) or you get a travel show. I don't make a moral argument out of all this, I just find that my attempts to flip it on and find something worthwhile are almost never satisfied-- as opposed to, say, my first stint of freelancing circa 1997, when I in fact did relatively little freelancing but a whole lot of cooking off Food Network.

But we are probably in a relatively brief period of media history when it is commercially advantageous to start a "niche" channel and then immediately ditch your niche for a perceived broader audience. Soon video via computers will be as easy as video via a hole in the wall and a black box; and if David Rosengarten can make a living with a newsletter he could probably make one with video podcasting or something-- at which point the changes in the Food network won't matter to me at all any more.

P.S. In the meantime, for food media of a higher order there's always this.

gleam wrote:

stevez wrote:The good news is that they indeed replaced that annoying French guy with Tyler. The bad news is that they also replaced his sexy little cooking partner with a new woman who appears to be playing for the other team. The quality of the show has risen dramatically, though.

Oh, now I remember. The replaced the obnoxious comedienne with a shortish blonde woman. Is she the one who has been most recently replaced?

Hopefully they'll change the name of the show, next..

No. I was talking about the obnoxious comedienne. Actualy, I much prefer her to the present sidekick. At least she played the clueless-airhead stereotype to a tee.

Rachel Ray, eh?

I went through phases with Rachel.

First, a brief infatuation - she was cute, a bit sexy, and I found myself attracted.

Then I was briefly amused, when I found her visting places I liked and gushing about them cutely.

Then I became tired of her, finding all her presentations identical, her voice and exclamations grating.

Finally, I tried one of her recipes and became angry with her (it was a "Cuban-spiced pork tenderloin" of some sort and suffered from both a faulty cooking shortcut whose only benefit was speed, and unbalanced, overseasoning to offset the abused pork, I suppose).

Now when I see her I am bitter and hypercritical. Her form, her voice, her words, all provoke me. Perhaps this explains the hate - many of us are disillusioned, former lovers, as it were.

On the other hand, while we are an elitist intelligentsia of food here, I do think that posts which dismiss most people as being without taste or brains are beneath us, as true as they may be. Noblesse oblige, after all.

It is disappointing that FoodTV has gone the direction they have, but this is all driven by ratings as noted above, and the point is to sell as much advertising at as a high a price as possible. Any other approach by management would be unprofessional, and profoundly career-limiting. Rachel draws eyeballs to their network.

I waited a while to post this... but here goes...

I like 30 Minute Meals. People who know me knows that I do not cook. Rachel is perhaps the only one that will actually get me off the couch and in the kitchen (Alton Brown is probably the only other person).

For people who just want to make and eat dinner in an hour, the show actually motivates us to go do it. Hey, if it takes her 30 minutes, the most it would take me is an hour, right?

Don't get me wrong, I would love to have 5 star meals every night. I would love to go out and eat every night. But the pocketbook and waistline sometimes win the argument.

Just because I like 30 Minute Meals, does not mean that I like $40-a-day... Thought it is amusing to see how much she tips...

And I have to fess up... I own 2 of the 30 Minute Meals books, and actually attempt to cook out of them once in a while. But of course, I also put ketchup on my eggs...

Seems like this Rachael thing is spreading all over the net.
http://www.cyberbilly.com/meathenge/

Food channel good: the sometimes jovial, sometimes irascible Batali

No kidding. Molto is the Man. Is there anything he (seemingly) doesn't know about Italian cooking ? He cracks me up. In the basic pasta episode, the guest sitting next to Michael Stipe asked if he should put oil in the pasta water and he replied "<so and so>, this is my SCOWL" and glared at him menacingly

It also helps that every dish I've made from MM has turned out top notch. He has/had his "keep it simple & fresh" mantra down to a tee.

His celebrity guest amuse as well -- Michael Stipe, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jake Gyllenhaal (twice, once w/ Maggie), Michael Iperioli (a real dud on the show. didn't say a thing), Tony Bourdain.

and a google of "Molto Mario"+guests revealed the following, posted by MB himself ! Looks like MM is definitely kaput (the post was a year ago).

http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?s=9 ... ntry654876

Tyler and Bobby: that's hot.

I love my Nigella Mezzaluna.

Rachel is making some dough. No wonder we don't like her.

Oh...I don't care how much money one's making, I'm deeply suspicious of obviously, workshop-ed, "personalities."

and, imo, the two British women of The River Cafe(as seen on PBS), sexed-up the mezzaluna long before Nigella(of the priviledge and mammaries).

and if David Rosengarten can make a living with a newsletter he could probably make one with video podcasting or something-- at which point the changes in the Food network won't matter to me at all any more.

I really loved Taste with David Rosengarten. It was a great show. Just think -- 1 whole show on how to make french fries. First, the wrong way. Then, David's way.

I didn't even mind his daily "food news" show that paired him with the 2nd ex-Mrs. Rudy Guiliani. His Taste cookbook is great (excellent pecan pie recipe), and I miss him terribly.

The current line-up annoys me in one way or another. Alton Brown is a pale substitute for David. I wish he'd come back.

For those who care, Rachel Ray has a new show starting in August, Rachel Ray Taste. Saw a commercial last night and it looked like $40 a day without a price limit.
Paulette

stevez wrote: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.

My Tivo finally grabbed an episode of Daisy Cooks this past Saturday. Was it... unusual in any way? Because for all the bottles and cans and jars she's opening on this episode, she strikes me as a fairly good duplicate of ol' Rachael, even down to the weird stories about her father. Both her personality and her dedication to shortcuts (migawd that sure was a lot of Goya Adobo seasoning, which is mostly salt, she covered those pork chops with) make her seem like Ray's Latina understudy. What was missing from last Saturday's episode that the others have had?

Bob S. wrote:

stevez wrote: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.

My Tivo finally grabbed an episode of Daisy Cooks this past Saturday. Was it... unusual in any way? Because for all the bottles and cans and jars she's opening on this episode, she strikes me as a fairly good duplicate of ol' Rachael, even down to the weird stories about her father. Both her personality and her dedication to shortcuts (migawd that sure was a lot of Goya Adobo seasoning, which is mostly salt, she covered those pork chops with) make her seem like Ray's Latina understudy. What was missing from last Saturday's episode that the others have had?

I can see why it might be easy to color Daisy with a Rachel Ray marker, but I think the episode your Tivo grabbed overexaggerated the comparison. Unlike the other episodes of Daisy's shows I've seen, this one focused on quick-and-dirty prep (from daisycooks.com):

Fast and Fresh
Not every day is a big family get-together at Daisy’s. On some days she’s whipping up dinner in a hurry for her husband and children. Here are some of her favorite “everyday” recipes, on the table in well under an hour: Chuletas de Abuela (Grandma’s Pork Chops), Pink Beans with Ham—adapted to use canned beans—and rice simmered with sweet corn.

Daisy's fun to watch. Plus, she makes her own sofrito and recaito. My PR grandmother-in-law, who used to cook most people under the table, didn't even make her own.

--Zee

Zeeshan wrote:I can see why it might be easy to color Daisy with a Rachel Ray marker, but I think the episode your Tivo grabbed overexaggerated the comparison. Unlike the other episodes of Daisy's shows I've seen, this one focused on quick-and-dirty prep (from daisycooks.com):

Fast and Fresh
Not every day is a big family get-together at Daisy’s. On some days she’s whipping up dinner in a hurry for her husband and children. Here are some of her favorite “everyday” recipes, on the table in well under an hour: Chuletas de Abuela (Grandma’s Pork Chops), Pink Beans with Ham—adapted to use canned beans—and rice simmered with sweet corn.

Daisy's fun to watch. Plus, she makes her own sofrito and recaito. My PR grandmother-in-law, who used to cook most people under the table, didn't even make her own.

--Zee

Thanks for the context, Zee, and I'm glad the resemblance was just a coincidence of timing, this being the first show I caught. I'll keep her on the To Do List for a while and see how it goes.

Z-

You raise a gripe I have about Caribbean/Latino cooking that is universal from Miami to your (and my) abuelitas' kitchens.

Recaito, the Caribbean analog to battuto using recao (aka culantro, aka ngo gai) and sofrito, the Hispanic analog to soffritto are exceedingly easy to make at home, and should be. On the other hand, outside Florida and cities with a large Vietnamese population, recao is damn hard to find.

Abuelitas do love their Goya sazon, recaito, adobo, mojo criollo etc. Most of it is pretty good (albeit filled with salt and msg). My knock is that the across the board use of these premade products has given Cuban, Dominican, PR food a consistent/monotonous flavor across restaurants and home kitchens that has few if any parallels in other cuisines. Goya has in a way defined the way this stuff tastes, which really is not the best representation of this food. The only thing that comes close off the top of my head is the compulsive use of Lawry's in BBQ rubs.

JeffB wrote:My knock is that the across the board use of these premade products has given Cuban, Dominican, PR food a consistent/monotonous flavor across restaurants and home kitchens that has few if any parallels in other cuisines.

Jeff,

Speaking of Dominican, I had a new, to me, Dominican plantain dish this weekend, Mangu. Mashed plantains, lightly sautéed onions and garlic, it was described as mofungo without the bits of fried pork skin. I did not notice any Goya Sazon/Adobo seasoning in the dish.

I quite enjoyed the mangu for its pure starchy goodness, though it’s extremely filling, even in small quantities. One of the people at the party thought it was very similar to her mom’s potato salad, though without the bacon and made with plantains.

Enjoy,
Gary

Gary, at some point the LTH headline was my quote about the relative merits of mangu, fufu and mofongo. Mangu is the subsitance starch in the DR, and most closely resembles the rather bland pounded cassava, yams, etc. of Sub-Saharan Africa. I love the DR and eat mangu (mostly for breakfast) but I'm not a huge fan. Add some pork rinds, lard and more garlic, then you're getting somewhere.

JeffB wrote: Add some pork rinds, lard and more garlic, then you're getting somewhere.

Jeff,

I think that pretty much describes any food, not just mangu.

Enjoy,
Gary

Regarding Daisy Martínez, etc.

Goya products are generally speaking remarkably good (especially when compared with their analogues for other cuisines) and while it is a given that a homemade sofrito or recaito will be better than one spooned out of a jar, it is also true that the Goya versions are very popular and that they are pretty good for what they are. As Zee noted, DM’s show this week was devoted to dishes that can be made quickly and well, though then requiring some shortcuts. The canned or preserved ingredients she used were, as best I can remember, the corn to go into a rice dish and a can of habichuelas rosadas. Beyond that, her recaito was frozen but homemade and, indeed, especially with almost all the required ingredients growing in our garden, I’ve found her advice to make up large batches of the two flavouring bases for freezing in handy doses a useful one. (In this regard, has anyone seen fresh culantro lately?).

As I said above, I’m not sure how well DM’s act will wear with me over time but so far I’ve seen and pretty much enjoyed three (and a half) episodes and in each one, she made ‘authentic’ dishes and explained how to make them clearly. Equating Daisy Martínez with Rachel Rhea, at least so far, seems quite off the mark: Martínez is presenting especially one cuisine (Puerto Rican) as she learned it from her family and community while Rey is presenting her own composed theme meals which draw on or are 'inspired' by various cuisines and necessarily fit into the ‘30-minute’ framework. So far, any similarity of substance is not apparent.

***

Regarding Hats

BobS wrote:Eh, talk is fine; I just don't get the weird mix of snobbery and navete, let alone the tinfoil-hat theories about "disinformation" (from people who can't even spell her name, her very short name, right) as if she's saying we've always been at war with Eurasia...

BobS,

Since you've dragged this thread up to the top of the forum again...

With regard to the “the weird mix of snobbery and navete [sic]” that you attribute to me, I’m afraid you might be projecting. In any event, you assume the difference between our positions toward FN programming is that you understand how these things really work and I do not. That assumption is sadly very wrong and I would suggest as a more accurate formulation of the difference of opinions the following: We both understand how these things work but you happily accept the system as it is and I do not. I do not believe that people in general, the ‘masses’, should be fed only what is easy to digest but rather that they should be –– on occasion, at least –– edified, challenged, offered alternatives to what large corporations wish to market to them. And, whereas you ridicule me for speaking of ‘disinformation’, I stand by my claim that it is a reflection of laziness born of greed that the writers of almost all the current series on Food Network offer shows that are filled with incorrect information on matters of actual cooking as well as on related issues of food history, general history and culture. Of course, one isn’t bothered by such bits of ‘disinformation’ if one doesn’t know or care about these things, and in the long run they may not be very weighty matters, but from my perspective, knowledge is a good thing and I see it as sad and unhelpful that the programming on FN and other media organisations of similar ilk are so little concerned with getting things right.

Are you certain it is I who misspell Rachel Reij's name and not she? Be that as it may, I must add that, while I (the person whom you think "can't even spell [Ms. Reh's] name, her very short name, right") know a thing or two about language in general and quite a few individual languages as well, I’ve never felt any inclination to criticise other posters with regard to their spelling. But since spelling is ostensibly so important to you, please note: it's «parmigiano», not “parmaggiano.” And «naïveté» or «naivety», not “navete” [acute accent missing on the final vowel]. Now, shall we all agree to leave issues of spelling to the kids in the spelling bees?

Finally, concerning hat-wear, I’m quite sure you are far more familiar with the tinfoil style of the day than I. And whatever kind of hat it is I wear, I never talk through it.

***

That I may well be guilty of employing hyperbole in condemning FN for what I perceive to be a strategy of playing to the “mindless and tasteless masses” I readily admit. And I certainly regret having offended those of good will who are fans of Rachael Ray or Giada Delaurentis or whomever else. We all have our likes and dislikes and reasons for them; on further reflection, I can see to some degree at least good reasons why any and all of the more popular FN cooking shows are watched. That said, I maintain my position that FN has ‘dumbed down’ its offerings generally and considerably, though perhaps the genuinely bad wastes of air-time aren’t the cooking shows I don’t like but the endless gimmick shows that are little more than info-mercials. Be that as it may, I’m happy to see that my Landsman, fellow Bergenaar, who ought to know something about this topic from first-hand experience, seems to share my “tinfoil hat theory”. The following passage, which appears in an interview on eGullet, was recently brought to my attention:

Egullet interview with Bourdain (link)

Excerpt:

R: Did it end because they didn't want to spend money on it?

A: It was great for two years. The people who used to run it, for a while, were able to make those kinds of decisions at Food Network. One of them was Eileen Opatut, and the other was Judy Gerard, the president. I liked them. They let me get away with murder at that network and they were both really really proud of the show, and happy that they did it, and I really respected that. But these munchkins who came in later were clearly (pause) it was impossible from the get go. There was pressure for more and more domestic shows. Obviously, they wanted the budget to conform more to their business model and their important target viewership. This means I'd be doing barbecue shows every week (they get huge ratings spikes every time they show you a barbecued rib on that network). So it would be funny if they suddenly "rediscovered" those shows.

We have a collection of quotes from various executives near the end at Food Network, as the old machine that we liked was going out and these new people were coming in. Some of them were really hilarious. [For example] "they talk funny, we can't understand them," was a comment on any show where there was anyone with an accent.

R: Well that's just par for the course, according to many members of the eGullet Society.

A: You know that foodies are not their target audience. They're about food as much as MTV is about music.

Antonius

Toni:

Hope you feel better now.

Bob

Bobe,

valde laetus sum et de Bobo gaudeo.



Antonius

P.S. I love the European spelling of 'Toni'.

Nigh Onan: I believe I opined as Bourdain vis a vis empty-v several posts back. Either you've been pre-programmed to sup at the (rickety) table of Food Network, or you ain't. Mainly, I'm immune to celebrities and their insatiable Molochian sycophants(read: admen); -can't quite wrap my head around anyone who delegates energy in defense of the Rachel Raise of the world. Long Live the New Flesh.

Back to Daisy, since I don't have cable, and thus Food Network. (If I develop a terminal illness, I will get cable so I can plug in an earphone to my TV when well-meaning but annoying people come by to sympathize with me. I hope by then Food Network is back on track. This was my Mom's strategy when she was ill, and one of the things that convinced me I shouldn't have cable, as we whiled away our days watching cooking shows. Apparently that was in the salad days of FN).

So, back to Daisy. She actually likes food. She cooks like a lot of PR, DR, Cuban cooks I've known. She's actually on WTTW, so I can watch her (a big plus) and she talks about the connection between food and.....life of all kinds.

She does have a little tendency to throw a little alcaparado (oh, please, did I spell that right) into everything, and then a little of the brine (like her mother did). But that doesn't bother me. I generally just drink a little of the brine straight from the jar (no fooling) but hadn't thought about throwing some in the food. Silly me. A judicious addition of vinegar has its place in the stews and sauces of many a cuisine.

Antonius wrote:Bobe,

valde laetus sum et de Bobo gaudeo.



Antonius

P.S. I love the European spelling of 'Toni'.

It sounds like we're both happy then! (And actually, I was going more for the Tony! Toni! Tone! flashback. Did the '80s come and go again already? And adding to the embarrassment, I'd meant to misspell my own name to dress up the punch line a little, but was interrupted by The Boss and had to finish up extra fast. Alas.)

Seriously, aside from feeling there's a valuable distinction between disinformation and misinformation, I agree with that last post of yours spot-on. It's just that it feels like such an easy target to me, and I think Ray takes a disproportionate amount of the heat -- although now that her newer shows are just getting stupider and stupider as she's redefined as a celeb, it's getting tougher and tougher to say "get over it," let alone try to defend her, which is mostly on theoretical grounds anyway. "30 Minute Meals" in its earliest seasons wasn't so focused on jars and cans and popping things in the oven for a minute because when they're hot they taste fresh, and there's even a few of those from '01 and '02 I like to watch when they're listed on the Tivo, but these days, eh. It's the same droning sound I hear when the Trib's Good Eating is slapped around -- there are 11,000 of us and 7,989,000 of them, so what's the right target market for a profit-hungry corporation?

As for Daisy, well, I did qualify my post by saying it was the first episode I'd seen. I liked her enough to keep watching, but "was this an unusual episode" was a valid question, especially because the answer was "yes."

Bob S. wrote:...although now that her newer shows are just getting stupider and stupider as she's redefined as a celeb, it's getting tougher and tougher to say "get over it," let alone try to defend her, which is mostly on theoretical grounds anyway....

Hey, just when we were getting to the "Countercheck Quarrelsome," a denouement? What a gyp. And just when I had taken the first few hesitant steps toward accepting the ineluctable Ballo Decision....