I am Somer Canon: Shiftless lay-about, blog enthusiast, and more importantly, food lover. This blog will share my favorite recipes, cooking techniques, adventures in eating, and just about any subject pertaining to cooking and eating.
Celebrity Foodies/Chefs
I’ve been reading/hearing a lot lately of the celebrity chef. I think that this term is becoming an inaccurate blanket term that covers people who don’t necessarily belong under that category. With Food Network gathering more and more watchers and other networks such as Bravo, Oxygen and the Travel Channel adding chef shows of one sort or another to their roster, the American public is taking much more interest in the foodie culture.
I, myself, have been a fan of the Food Network since I was a teenager. It used to be that I would watch simply because I loved to watch people cook. My first favorite show on food network was The Two Fat Ladies. This is an old school Food Network show that hasn’t been on the air for years now, but I adored these two British ladies and their quirky personalities as well as the succulent dishes they prepared. I also loved how they traveled in a motorcycle and side car. They were awesome.
Also, in the old days, I used to watch Emeril before he got really really huge on TV and got all annoying with his catch phrases. I’d like to meet that guy in a completely mellow environment. I bet he’s cool. He reminds me a little of my grandfather. I bet he’s a little crass, but a great guy all the same. My mother and step-father worship the man’s cooking, and my mother is probably one of the most infuriatingly picky eaters ever, so that says a lot.
Rachel Ray….I hesitate to talk about her. I’m not a fan, ok? To be fair, I can understand why she is a celebrity cook. She has a gimmick that is a great idea for weeknight meals. She also seems to have a fantastic work ethic, which is needed in her business to achieve notoriety. She’s like nails on a chalkboard, though. Her personality is so abrasive and overboard, and I realize that might be part of why she is so famous, but I can’t sit and watch one of her shows all the way through. One thing I will say about her, though, she actually looks like she eats the food she is hocking on her show. Some of these celebrity chef-ladies are rail thin but are trying to sell you recipes of cakes, cookies, pies, cocktails, and other fattening dishes and it really bothers me because you can exercise all you want and you won’t get THAT thin by eating those kinds of foods. Not even a little bit.
Alton Brown: I love to watch his show. There is pure entertainment going on in that show. There’s also a lot of learning to do on that show. HOWEVER, sometimes I find myself shouting at my television because Brown’s anal retentive tendencies go too far. Last night, for instance, he was doing a show on French toast. I make French toast for my family nearly every weekend. I have been doing so for about 5 years. I KNOW HOW TO MAKE FRENCH TOAST. And you know what? It’s not this horrible, long, drawn out process that requires me to be in my kitchen half the morning. Still, I love his show. I love the man. What can I say, I’ve got love for nerds.
Ina Garten: Her recipes are my favorite on the network. Her style and her tastes are right in line with my own and I really just love her. Because she is so laid back and proper, her show can be a little boring, but watching her prepare all of those beautiful dishes is almost worth the loss of a half hour from my life.
Paula Dean: She’s DEEP Southern. I’m BARELY Southern. Her food is way too rich for my blood and her personality is too loud for me. Look, I’m sure she’s a peach and a delight to be around, but I’ve known her type before. Here’s a tip: the next time she prepares a recipe on her show sent in by a fan, listen for the little jab she always includes. There’s never 100% priase coming from her, she always makes one little comment that implies that if she had created this recipe it would have been different and therefore better.
Bobby Flay: He’s an Iron Chef and he’s super duper rich. Why? The guy consistently uses the same 10 ingredients! Every chicken, meat, seafood, and pasta dish all have the same ingredients. I like his show Throwdown because he’s a good sport, but seriously. Branch out, dude!
Giada De Laurentiis: She’s very pretty and I’ve enjoyed a few of her Grandfather’s productions. I can’t honestly say anything bad about her. I feel bad that she was kind of strong-armed into making nothing but Italian food. After so many seasons, there are really only so many dishes you can make before it starts getting weird. Her food is always pretty, and while some of them turn me off (for my personal taste), I really think she has a good thing going on.
Sandra Lee: Some of her dishes are AWESOME. Seriously, she’s got a good thing going on. But, she’s one of those super skinny ladies I was talking about before. There’s no way that she eats the stuff she prepares. She sits in the kitchen and drinks cocktails all day…she has to! But she’s got a nice personality, she’s attractive, and she’s got a great and marketable gimmick.
If I left out any of the other famous Food Network people, it is because they all sort of start to look the same if you step back far enough. Food Network likes a lineup of wholesome, mostly white, gimmicky, older cooks. It works for them and at the end of the day they are still a television network that has to make money. I’d like to see more Latin cooks, and more African American (I like the Neely’s) cooks rocking the scene. If we’re to explore the foodie scene and Food Network wants to be one of our guides, we need a little more culture going on!
Now, I can’t mention celebrity chefs without talking about Anthony Bourdain. I’ve watched him since the beginning. I watched his show “A Cook’s Tour” on Food Network all those years ago. When he moved to the Travel Channel, at first I watched him every week for quite a few seasons. After watching him for so long, I think that it is inaccurate to refer to him as a celebrity “chef.” Yes, he was a chef and he has earned that title, but he is not really a celebrity for being a chef. If anything, he is a celebrity FOODIE. The man is actually foodie royalty. A chef? Not so much. If you’ve ever watched his show, you’ll notice that people who have worked with him in the past take great pleasure in ripping on his cooking skills. There was an episode where he went to Tuscany and horrified the locals with his cooking. Let’s not insult the real celebrity chefs and put Bourdain where he belongs. He’s a foodie. And he’s a fantastic foodie from whom we have much to learn. Eating for him is not so much a necessity as it is a pleasure. He has no fear of strange foods, he relishes in the possibilities of trying new things, and he makes his eating a full-on sensory experience. His personality stinks a little bit, he’s a snob to other American regions, and he won’t let go of his über-fandom of the Ramones. In his niche, that doesn’t matter. He’s a writer, world traveller, and foodie. He’s famous for these things.
Andrew Zimmern is the guy who would take the dare to eat the yellow snow cone when he was a kid. I like his show. I’ve hidden my face behind my throw pillow more than once during his show so as not to watch him eat something horrifying (such as raw camel meat). He also eats semi-normal things that I would like to try. He has a great personality and he rocks the bald guy look. He, too, is not really a celebrity for being a chef. He’s a food critic and, again, the guy who will stick anything in his face hole. What’s not to like about that? He’s our generations version of Mikey (don’t get that joke? He was the kid who would eat anything in the Life Cereal commercial and who apparently died eating pop rocks and soda..which of course was an urban legend).
I think that perhaps there is a little too much emphasis being put on these people on television. I think that perhaps they are being placed high on pedestals that needn’t be there at all. As foodies, home cooks, chefs, caterers, and curious neophytes, we all have the right to be level with these people. Don’t be so quick to make idols of someone simply because they are on your television. You have a kitchen, be it a hot plate and a microwave or a tricked out $80,000 kitchen that you never use, and you are just as capable of creating culinary gold as any of these people on the television. Learn a little from them, if you like, but see them as a possibility of your future self.
