Michael Haggert
Bobby’s Dinner Battle, Chopped, Food
Fight and Ultimate Recipe Showdown –
that’s just a small sample of titles found on
the Food Network, not to mention Cupcake
Wars and Iron Chef. Which leaves me with a
question: when did cooking shows on
television become a contact sport?
In the 1960s, Julia Child started off with
The French Chef, Graham Kerr came on the
tube in ’69 with The Galloping Gourmet, and
the CBC made a distinctly Canadian
contribution to cooking on television with
Wok With Yan. As a youngster and
cook-to-be who watched those early
offerings, perhaps the innocence of those
pioneering shows was part of their allure.
They seemed to combine varying
techniques with a clearly defined plan in a
low-tech production that was fairly easy to
imagine transferring to my family’s kitchen.
They were also hosted by characters
who combined serious culinary talent with
a light-hearted, often comedic personality.
The shows were educational as well as
entertaining, and the TV screen was
transferred into a window that let us join
them in their kitchens.
It’s a stark contrast to so many of
today’s shows. The slick production values
start with the promotional hype selling the
viewer on the need to watch the conflict.
There’s some sort of prize for the ultimate
victor, sometimes huge cash sums, other
times a trophy of ridiculous proportions.
They’ve turned cooking into a sport, and the
kitchen into a battlefield. Contestants are
thrust into fits of creativity by having
ingredients and other conditions imposed
on them that are about as realistic as
blindfolding a pole vaulter.
Nothing about these shows looks like
my experience in the kitchen. If I don’t have
an ingredient, I either go get it, or do
without it. Or sometimes I just change
tracks and make something completely
different. If something I’m making isn’t
ready at six o’clock, the world doesn’t end –
we just eat at 6:07 instead. Cooking isn’t a
sport, it’s an art. Most of the art I enjoy
doesn’t induce stress or panic.
Nothing turns out right if you cook
when you are angry or stressed. But it’s
more than just that. There’s a magic that
happens in the kitchen. The spirit of the
cook imbues the dishes with something
more than the sum of the ingredients. It’s a
complicated formula I can’t quite pin down.
But the basic statement is that the joy
derived from eating the food is an amplified
quality of the happiness that went into
making it.
Spring is here! Be light-hearted and
happy in the kitchen. Spread the joy on
many plates. Surely that matters more than
the food matters.
Cooking shows
then and now click the TV
screens to
compare!
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April 2015 - The HUB 7