Cooking with the Stars

I used to cook a lot with my late spouse Fran.

After she passed away, I pretty much hung up my apron, but I still have an interest in the concept of cooking. Have had since the late 1960s, when I got into watching Graham Kerr, "The Galloping Gourmet".

Sure, it was a trip watching this mildly drunken, poncey Brit leaping and dashing about his bachelor pad/kitchen set, telling bad jokes, cooking, and making innocently racy comments between minor catastophes and short slurps of wine.

But what intrigued me most was at the end of his shows, when joshing was set aside and the food took center stage. He would take a bite of whatever he'd just prepared and from the look on his face it was as if Graham was experiencing an epiphany, as if he had just received a holy blessing from on high. I wanted that experience. Eventually, I achieved it, sometimes by my own cooking, mostly by others'.

This interest led to my collection of cookbooks and food related books. Not a huge collection, but unique. Some are dry and no-nonsense, like the essential Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook. Some are useful AND entertaining, like my Trader Vic cookbooks. My personal favorites are the CELEBRITY cookbooks. The Best of the Best (or Worst) of these are The National Enquirer Celebrity Cookbook published back when Alyssa Milano was still jailbait; "The Celebrity Cookbook" published by Price/Stern/Sloan in 1966, and CELEBRITY COOKBOOK by Johna Blinn published in 1981. The Enquirer's collection is spectacular for the photos that accompany the recipes, especially Mickey Rooney's picture with his "Hangman's Breakfast".

 "The Celebrity Cookbook" reproduces the recipes from celebs as they were recieved, whether typed out on letterhead stationery or hand written. Stuff like Phyllis Diller's RECIPE FOR GARBAGE SOUP, Jimmy Durante's UMBRIAGO SALAD, Lady Bird Johnson's EGGPLANT CREOLE, and Carolyn Jones's THAT FISH THING. My favorite is Dean Martin's MARTIN BURGERS.

 My prize is CELEBRITY COOKBOOK. It's a collection of celebrity interviews and recipes that were syndicated to various newspapers to fill space in their food sections. I bought it for $1.49 at Pic 'N' Save (now BIG!LOTS). First, let me describe the physical appearance of the book itself. It looks like a thick coloring book. Literally. It is printed on rough, pulpy stock, like a coloring book, illustrated with line drawing characatures ranging in style from lame to hideous. As for the contents, those insipid characatures coupled with Johna Blinn's cheesey writing create magical badness.

Writing about Telly Savalas, Blinn wrote: "His voice was like a big, booming bugle." So, the illustrator draws two bugles just floating in mid-air next to his face.

 Kristy McNichol tells Blinn she doesn't like whipped cream unless its on top of a Bob's Big Boy Hot Fudge Sundae, and the illustrator goofs, naming the sundae "BIG BOB".

Joanne Carson (an ex-wife of Johnny Carson) told Blinn the painful story of being dumb enough to attempt to roast a turkey on Johnny's yacht while wearing a bikini and high heels. No apron. Between a sudden rough swell and stiletto heels, she dropped the bird, burning herself with splashing hot turkey fat. This HI-larious moment was lovingly rendered in crude ink and pen on paper.

As for the characture of TV personality and game show panelist of yore, Bill Cullen, it is a cruel joke.

Other honorable mentions go Jack Bailey's WHAT'S COOKIN'? Jack Bailey was the host of "Queen For a Day". Go ask your grandfather, he'll remember the TV show. He was a rascal. Here's his entire chapter on fish:

I don't like to fish, and I don't like fish. If you like to fish.... fish. If you like fish.... Use your own recipes or steal the neighbors. Forgive me.In the CELEBRITY KOSHER COOKBOOK, George Jessel claims to have invented the Bloody Mary, we learn that Leonard Nimoy's Grandmother taught him how to make Pickled Herring, and Louis Nye confesses his mother fattened him up for his bar mitzvah by feeding him *GASP* -- bacon!

THE LIFE AND CUISINE OF ELVIS PRESLEY is an interesting anthropological study of the foods Elvis ate from childhood through gluttony based on interviews with people connected to Elvis, and research of the time period and locales at each stage of his life. We all know about the peanut butter and mashed banana sandwiches fried in butter, but I like the one he made for himself while stationed in Germany when he was in the Army. Fry a pound of bacon, crispy, then fry a pound of sliced potatoes seasoned with salt and pepper in the bacon fat, slap the bacon and potatoes between slices of white bread (yes, all the bacon and the full pound of fried potato) slathered with mayonnaise. And did you know The King invented gourmet pizza? Living in Graceland with Priscilla, a nearby pizzaria would deliver, but E didn't much care for eye-talian food, so they would debone and shred chicken with barbecue sauce and bake it on a pizza for Elvis and 'Cilla.

I was given THE ROCK & ROLL COOKBOOK for a Christmas or a birthday. It's not very clever, but proceeds of the sale went to The National Music Foundation, so all to the good. The rockers in the book range wildly. Among them Paul Anka, Cher, k.d. lang, Ray Charles, Ozzy Osbourne, Little Richard, Iggy Pop, Bobby Rydel, and Devo. They try, PAINFULLY try, to make the recipe names sound clever-clever. The overwhelming majority are just lame. Some suck out right. They didn't even try with Ozzy Osbourne: "Ozzy's Yorkshire Pudding". The only good one is the recipe from Brian Hyland, who had the hit song Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini, for a dish called "Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weenies with Yellow Peppers and Zucchinis".

Finally, I leave you with Alice Cooper's recipe for:

"Tunafish Malted (for hangovers)"1 can tuna fish
2 scoops pistachio ice cream
4 oz cream
Blend. Drink. Go back to bed.

Tempest in a D Cup

Or how Nigella Lawson alienated two hundred fans in order to gain two thousand.

A couple of years or ago or so, Nigella Lawson relaunched her website and urged members, old and new, to join in the cyber-community of her Food Forum. Nigella not only invited participation in the forum, she encouraged it. She told us of how much she enjoyed reading our posts, complementing some members on their variations on her recipes. It was made to seem vital.

I joined, I contributed, and over the course of two years I found myself enmeshed in the lives of the other forum members, and they in mine. It was a fantastic, international group mind of diverse people from diverse cultures and countries with one thing in common: a love of good food. We learned from each other, helped each other, offered comisseration in bad times, celebrated good times. In short, we had become a family. One in which Auntie Nigella visited from time to time, much to our elation, and in between, well, we just kept the party going. Besides recipes, we shared hilarity and heartbreak, we came to care for and about each other. And we also shared gleeful anticipation of Nigella's new cook book, KITCHEN.

Then, in late August, just prior to the book's release, one single announcement was posted in the forum by Nigella's webmistress that in one day the website would be relaunched with a new design, but no Food Forum and that this discussion board would close. We were recommended to the official Nigella page on Facebook. That's all.

 

Bang. No further word. End of discussion. Dozens of pleas for clarification were posted after it, drawing no further response from either Team Nigella or the domestic goddess herself.

 

And it happened. The new site is up at the same old url: www.nigella.com . No Food Forum. Echoes of it exist in some of the recipes we posted that are in the new database (three of the dozen I had posted are still there, credited to me) and in the bits of Kitchen Wisdom we shared (including my tip about using an egg slicer to slice mushrooms, credited to me). But that's it. No archive of the discussion threads that brought us together and made the forum such a great place to be. For many of us, that was the only point of contact for one another.

 

And the Nigella page on Facebook? Any genuine love of Nigella and of good food and cooking is drowned out by the fawning of sycophants offering only blind love of her celebrity. The number of new people who "like" that page has grown by leaps and bounds since this recent relaunch.

 

Okay, we've rallied with our own Facebook group and a new blog site (http://www.throughtheovendoor.com/) because this community was too good to let die. Too much invested in each other to allow this to disappear. Which is why this.... hurt .... so much.

 

To have this supposedly valued concept, so many posts filled with care and, well, love suddenly dropkicked into the ashcan....

 

It's just shabby and disrespectful. At least explain to us that having a discussion board moderated 24/7 by a rotation of Webmistresses had become too much of a bother. Give us a week to do some archiving. Something more than, "Our new website is pretty! Here's your hat! Don't let the door hit ya where the Good Lord split ya!"

 

And so, the bloom is off the rose. The prospect of a new book is not as exciting. I had hoped that, given the proper circumstance, I would be able to go to a booksigning if Nigella came back to the US to promote KITCHEN, and proclaim my membership in the Food Forum to Nigella at the signing table. Now, I'm not certain that would be proper.

 

I know that Nigella was under no obligation have an official discussion board, or even a website that was anything more than a tool for self-promotion (which is all it is now), but the way in which the Food Forum was shut down has tarnished her carefully crafted image as Nigella Lawson, Friend To The World.

 

It's dopey and meaningless in the grand scheme of things, but it feels like a betrayal.

 

Saddest of all is that Nigella is no longer a person. Yes, there is still a woman named Nigella Lawson, but there is now an artificial entity that has been created in her image, Nigella Lawson ™ if you will, a spokescharacter much like Betty Crocker. True, Ms. Crocker is a completely fictional character and has been from the start, but it seems that over time, beginning probably with the Twinings Tea commercials, that Nigella has been playing the role of Nigella Lawson ™. With the relaunch of the website, what we see now and may only see from this point on is Nigella Lawson ™, the brand name and image, and no longer the woman.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPK8uqm93YU

Hell's Bells

Again? So soon?

Why, FOX? Really, why? What did we ever do to you? Why are you shoving another season of HELL'S KITCHEN at us?

We know what's going to happen. You'll present us with yet another gaggle of big-mouthed egomaniacs who think that tattoos, a bad haircut and a worse attitude equal a personality. Gordon will taste their food and make a huge show of spitting it out, declaring as disgusting or calling it a dog's dinner. There will be some lame-ass twist teased before the first commercial that will turn out to be as exciting as a wet fart when the show resumes. We'll hear the contestants boast of their culinary prowess, issue smack talk about and backstab their competition. The contestants will cook. Gordon will be verbally abusive. Gordon will yell. Gordon will scream. Gordon will use obscenities. Gordon will scream and yell obscenities. Gordon will make a huge show of dumping food into a garbage can while screaming and yelling verbally abusive obscenities. Gordon will make you sick of hearing the word "cow". Kind Gordon will reward. Vile Gordon will punnish. Someone will be declared winner and chosen to boss around the immigrants Gordon has hired at one of the restaurants he owns at which you can't afford to dine, anyway, so what does it matter. There, I've saved you weeks of agony.

Don't everyone thank me at once.

When is Gordon Ramsay going to wake up and smell the greasepaint? He's become a clown! A joke! Why would he bust his ass working his way up the ranks in restaurant kitchens, win acclaim for his cuisine at his fine restaurants, only to become this characature of himself? Seriously, when you hear the name Gordon Ramsay, what's the first thing you think of?

It wasn't food, was it?

As much as I have been enjoying these recent times when being a "foodie" has become chic, and having the ante upped at nearly all eateries to the point where even a place like Jack In The Box can become destination dining for their grilled sandwiches, it has given rise to something I think is so negative: The Chef as Rock Star.

Granted, I have my culinary deities, following the New Testament of Alton Brown and Nigella Lawson and still clinging to the Old Testament of Julia Child and Graham Kerr. While they all posess vibrant and dominating personalities, the first thing you think of beyond that is food. Not so with Gordon Ramsay.

Gordon has fallen into the category of being famous for behaving badly. Maybe a forkfull of his risotto can bring tears of joy to your eyes, and good for him, but his reputation as an asshole has been sealed. I'm not all that sure he's aware that he is marching shoulder to shoulder with the likes Snooki, the Situation, Lindsay Lohan, Spencer Pratt, Paris Hilton, the Kardashians and Andy Dick. Worse yet, it has given rise to copycats! Every one of the contestants on Hell's Kitchen want to be the next HIM! Do we really need that? Can we, as a civilized society, afford that? Should we tolerate it? Should we encourage it? Should we celebrate it?

HELL to the NO!

Also, I wonder, is the kitchen at the Hell's Kitchen restaurant soundproofed? I don't know that I could relax and enjoy a meal there if every three minutes Gordon's mouth erupts like a verbal Vesuvius. I wouldn't pay for that meal, at all. If anything, the dinner should be comped as payment for being a participant in this farce.

Likely, I'll watch the first fifteen minutes or so of the first installment, if only to indulge in my little fantasy, that the contestants, now at their greatest number, will rise as one, overpower Gordon, pin him to a butcher block and drive a stick blender through the bastard's black heart.

A boy can dream, can't he?

Eating Bareback

The last thing I intend to do on this blog is to hand out dietary advice, and by that same token, I don't wish to have any given to me unsolicited. I don't think we should waste food, and I beleive we have to consume food that contains enough nutrition to keep us relatively healthy and functioning. Man cannot live on Cool Ranch Doritos alone.

That being said, I now say to the Food Nazis out there: Shut up and leave us alone!

There doesn't seem to be a thing we do as human beings, with the possible exception of breathing, that some "expert" or "guru" or just plain worry wart wags a finger at us and warns against doing or advises us on the correct way of doing it. Our lists of indulgences dwindle with each passing day it seems. Our pleasures turned into mortal sins.

With tongue in cheek and a mouthful of crispy bacon, I cry out: ENOUGH!

Killjoys of the world, hear me! If I want to have a fried mozzarella stick grilled cheese sandwich at Denny's, I will do so! The same for a bacon cheese burger in a Krispy Kreme donut! A bacon cheese burger served between two grilled cheese sandwiches! If I want a double order of the KFC Double Down sandwich (bacon and cheese between two boneless fried chicken breasts), I advise you to stay out of my way!

Look, I'm not in favor of unbridled, continuous gluttony. As much as I enjoy eating, I wouldn't want Adam Richman's job on "Man v. Food"! Sure, I'd like to eat as much as I want of what I want, but not as much as I can of whatever is set before me, and possibly beyond. Eating to the point of misery is utter stupidity. A free T-shirt and a picture on the "wall of fame" ain't worth it!

I'm just saying, if I eat all my salad, finish my peas and broccoli like a good boy, I am going to have a Carl's Jr. Six Dollar Philly Cheesesteak Burger once in a while, damn it!

A Little Perspective....

I think, sometimes, we expect too much of our food, and of those who prepare it, including ourselves. Of course, we should do the best we can with what we have. Yet with the rise in popularity of cooking shows of all stripes on television, there also seems to have been a rise in our anxiety about our abilities to cook. To be specific, I refer to the competition style cooking shows, such as Hell's Kitchen, Top Chef, Master Chef, and The Next Food Network Star, to name a few and who are among, in my opinion, the worst offenders. Contestants are prodded, poked, goaded, at times berated, urged to "take it to the next level" and "think outside the box", given impossible tasks to be performed in ludicrous conditions only to be shot down by judges who are disappointed they were unable to make apple tarts using only rock salt and Spanish onions.



"Good" it seems just is not good enough.


True, there are occasions when culinary epiphany is revealed unto your tongue. The experience does border on the sacred and can bring as many tears of joy as it does moans of pleasure. But that sensation of Umami, that harmonic convergence of flavor, aroma and mouth feel that sets off fireworks in your mind and strikes that deep and sustained resonant chord in your soul is rare. And should remain so. Otherwise, how far outside the box would we then have to think in order to take food to the next level?


In between, there is good.


And merely good can be great.


For example, I don't consume a lot of soft drinks anyway, but during one of the recent periods when Pepsi Cola made with real sugar was available again, I purchased a cold bottle and a bag of Lay's potato chips (regular salted Walker's crisps to you folks in the UK). At first bite, swig and swallow, I was transported back to carefree Summer days of my boyhood. I did not swoon, no angels danced on my palate. I just thought, "Man, this is good."


I guess my point is that few of you reading are professional cooks, much less chefs. Some of us really don't cook all that much but simply love food. So, let's not overly concern ourselves with the form of the food we cook. We are serving our families or just ourselves, not sending out plates to paying customers, or styling our food for lighting and camera. Certainly, take a little care in presentation, but cook your food with love and not for show. Just make it taste good.


You, your family, and your friends will know the difference.