For The Love of Cooking

Julia Child's kitchen in the
National Museum of
American History 

I love to cook.  As for cooking shows, well, there has been a lot to love and hate.

Years ago, the enormously likable (and a little wacky) Graham Kerr, "The Galloping Gourmet," and Jeff Smith, "The Frugal Gourmet," entertained and informed my culinary interests thanks to public television.  Both men stood on the shoulders of Julia Child. 

Julia's early television efforts not only demystified French cuisine for American cooks but highlighted her lovable, self-effacing approach to making mistakes while cooking.  She educated without being stuffy. 

All three chefs portrayed a stress-free, lighthearted kitchen where goof ups happened as a matter of course.  They offered sweet relief for home cooks charged with the everyday chore of meal planning and prep.  

Graham Kerr would cook in front of a live audience and invite one of them to feast with him on the freshly prepared meal at the show's conclusion.  He would sometimes include footage of a visit to the country where a recipe originated.  And of course, the British accent made it better.  At 84, he continues to instruct in small gatherings near his Seattle home.  

Some critics noted Jeff Smith had a haughty way about him, but I never found it so. I enjoyed his show until charges of sexual abuse ended his television career. He died the same year as Julia - 2004.

While my mother, grandmother and aunt - my Italian Kitchen Trinity - inspired me to cook, the welcomed ease of these early television chefs gave me confidence.  Inspiration and confidence: what more could a neophyte home cook ask for?

I can tell you what I did not ask for - the hyped up, competition based, tense music, and dramatic lights of many 21st century cooking shows.  The explosion of offerings such as Top Chef, Chopped, Iron Chef, Final Table and most anything with Gordon Ramsay as host has created a culinary hysteria that kills my cooking buzz.  I understand mania runs the day in many restaurant kitchens. Replicating that tension for television feeds an audience that is hungry for more.  But for more of what? 

Life outside my kitchen bombards my overworked senses enough each day.  Cooking is my respite - a creative and delicious outlet.  Seeing chefs and chef wannabes tensely rushing around a kitchen fearing failure under a militaristic barking (I hear you Gordon Ramsay) or being given a surprise "mystery ingredient" all under the sound of harsh music and stark spotlights ultimately leaves me uninspired.  

It's the difference between "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" and "Jeopardy" - both are fun quiz shows but one injects dramatic hype (again with the lights and music!) while the other showcases each contestant's intellect and strategy (wagering before final Jeopardy answers are revealed - brilliant!) Plus "Jeopardy" gives the home viewer so many more opportunities to answer questions from a wide category spectrum, making us feel smarter or perhaps less smart.  Within the walls of my kitchen, I choose instructional over intensity. 

With an appreciative nod to Rachael Ray, Martha Stewart, Ina Garten, Nigella Lawson, Giada DeLaurentis, Carla Hall, Alton Brown, Lidia Bastianich, and Mollie Katzen as well as chefs with no television show i.e. Yotam Ottolenghi, Sami Tamimi, Michael Solomonov, Steven Cook, Marc Vetri, here are some of my favorite food shows: 

Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat with Samin Nosrat on Netflix:  Four episodes so beautifully filmed and executed that I floated along inhaling every visual morsel.   Samin  has the culinary chops from her work at Chez Panisse and understands how the four elements of food prep in her show (and cookbook) title are foundational to flavorful, satisfying meals. Also, she mostly chooses local female chefs as her culinary partners. I must become Samin's friend. I must cook with her.  (Hear that Universe?!?)  My daughter gifted me Samin's cookbook and had it personalized after attending a Brooklyn book signing, so this clearly puts me three degrees closer to meeting her. Amen. 

The Great British Baking Show (all the varieties): Bloody brilliant. Peacefully delicious.  Even when the baked goods fall apart, Mary Bell, Prue Leith, and Paul Hollywood keep perspective and support the contestants. They seek quality results always with a kind approach.  The show's persistent civility shocks my American senses.  The Welford Park setting creates an insulated, pastoral oasis framing the irresistible gentility taking place under the big white tent.  And, yes, I am sucker for the contestants' British, Scottish, Irish accents and colloquialisms.  I have cried because the heartfelt tone comes through each episode.   Stunning bake!

Chef's Table: I initially avoided this show solely based on its title thinking it was another intense cooking competition. How wrong I was.  The first episode of Season 5 with Christina Martinez contained everything appealing to my sensibilities: a compelling personal personal story, cuisine birthed from culture and tradition, glorious filming.  It is instructional in both culinary choices and life lessons.  We are immersed in the country of origin and each chef's specific journey while glorious visuals celebrate the food.  If "smell-avision" ever becomes real, shows like Chef's Table will be perfect.  I am now binge watching all previous seasons. 

Anthony Bourdain's Parts Unknown: More travelogue than cooking show, every episode is an immersion because of Bourdain. He seeks cultural experiences born of genuine curiosity. He is the perfect visitor because, for all his bravado, he listens. Bourdain absorbs the setting and locals all the while persistently searching for authenticity in food.  His love of language is a bonus. From West Virginia to Manila, he instructs through experience. Of course he is intense, but it is not gratuitous.  I checked out my library's audio book of Kitchen Confidential last year and found the best time to listen was while I prepared dinner.  Bourdain's high velocity chatter and bottomless restaurant tales were often head spinning, yet I listened because this chef offered himself 100%.  I also listened because I wanted to hear that voice once more. Sigh. 

Doorknock Dinners with Gordon Elliott: In 1999, these little PBS shows were my favorites. Elliott would select a neighborhood and, with a film crew and chef in tow, knock on doors to ask if he and his merry band of food folk could prepare a meal in the owners home using only what was in their refrigerator/freezer.  He hit on the day to day conundrum of most home cooks: what do I have to make dinner?  Elliott's humor disarmed the homeowners while the chef liberated them with easy meal prep and delicious results. This was one of the smartest shows for anyone who makes meals. 

If you enjoy cooking, who inspires you? 

Between the Lines

I lock the bedroom door behind me and perch at the end of my bed as I am filled with tingly expectation.  I have invested in this moment for the last month. The well timed payoff is tonight.  I feel more and more like myself as I watch the clock inch closer to the prearranged start time.  This will have been worth all the effort- I know it!

It is the early 1990s.  In those years I have changed employers, been promoted, moved twice, married, bought my first (and only) home, and given birth to a sweet baby girl.  In hindsight, this whirlwind of change seems less like who I know myself to be. Yet, Life's goal lines move fast as a thirty-something woman and I'm determined to meet every single one. 

In those days, an hour-long daily rail commute into the city usually finds me doing work reviewing resumes of potential job candidates. (This is way before algorithms usurped the task.)  The quiet, uninterrupted block of train time is perfect for this effort.  It is a better choice than using the gorgeous exhale of eventide after I put my infant daughter to bed.  

Yet, I yearn to read something more for myself - the Me who is not someone's wife, mother, daughter, sister, aunt, employee.  I rediscover my love for reading books. 

Reading has, for as along as I can remember, been pure pleasure.  Summer days in the late sixties, early seventies were spent reclined on the hard plastic cushions of my parent's front porch iron glider as I gently rocked to and fro, a book resting on my tanned stomach.  Our restless little street of compressed row homes bursting with kids and pets faded away on this screened-in roost once I cracked open those blessed pages. 

Whether I was transfixed by Mario Puzo's The Godfather (before the film release) or entertained by the mindless fluff of Coffee, Tea or Me? (and its sequel) I did what most readers do - willingly offered myself over to an author's invented or real world. 

(Fun fact: I seriously considered becoming an airline stewardess (not yet called flight attendants) because of the fictional hijinks of characters Trudy Baker and Rachel Jones and completed applications to a few airlines in my senior year of high school.  Airlines could incredibly still ask for such personal data as birth date, height, weight, hair color, eye color.  My work as a corporate recruiter years later would see this type of job application as folly (and discriminatory) but at the time, I was all in and, sadly, rejected due to my age.)

Back in my adult bedroom, filled with anticipation, I turn on the radio to my local NPR station - 90.9FM WHYY - and its inaugural book club radio show.  This predates Oprah's infamous book club.  Amy Tan's The Kitchen God's Wife is on the docket. I have gleefully devoured its rich story and am poised to hear what others think as well as listen to Ms. Tan field questions, share her writing experience, and inhale the intimacy of her responses.  I stare at the radio during the hour long show trying to conjure an image of the author as she describes her story's intention and her complex relationship with her mother.  

Fellow listeners/readers call in with questions.  I comment aloud to them.  It is more interactive than I could have imagined and ends much too swiftly.  This, I murmur, this is what I have been missing! This radio book club becomes my literary life raft as I navigate the world of adulting. 

Several years later a friend kindly invites me to join her book club.  Two decades after this sweet solicitation, this precious book club sustains the reader, writer, inquisitor alive within.  While we fellow readers navigate Life's relentless drumbeat of births, miscarriages, divorces, raising kids, jobs, second marriages, and the crushing death of a beloved friend/member, we hunker down for the essential purpose of gathering - to discuss the book.  

This is no wine club posing as a book club. We enthusiastically do a deep dive into the authors' efforts, parsing themes, imagery, plot, symbolism and character development as well as criticizing what failed to resonate.  We read passages aloud that have touched or deepened our understanding.    

Biographies, autobiographies, poetry, short stories collections, science, fantasy, classics;  all genres come calling each third Thursday as the host chooses that month's literary selection.  My preference for fiction has been forcibly pried open as some books take me to uncharted territory.  

I have learned to trust the diverse process because whether or not a book fully satisfies is secondary to what I will learn in conversation with my fellow Book Babes.  Discussion always ignites something my reading failed to consider. It is sweet reward, a jackpot moment where context broadens and interpretation sparkles. 

Visitors from the Netherlands, Poland, and Australia have enjoyed membership to our group adding rich worldviews.  Our Aussie friend, Vicki, travels to our town several times a year for work. She stays up to date on what we are reading so she can literally jump in on the discussion.  It is magnificent. 

We have met in the Poconos, at the shore, and on several patios by candlelight during  dreamy, warm summer nights.  We've enjoyed a poetry evening where everyone arrives with a memorized poem because, as our then 90 year old guest host, Mrs. Van Pelt, noted, "Everyone must have at least one poem ready to recite from memory in their lifetime!" She would regale us with her favorites: The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere and The Walrus and The Carpenter.  

Every so often a member hosts a couples night where our 'special someones' join in the conversation.  This gender mixed gathering consistently produces some of the richest discussions.  Even food sometimes plays a silent role in our discussion when we nosh on meals or morsels contained in that month's narrative. 

As a bonus to all this goodness, Joanie, an original member, consistently emails a discussion recap to the group so those who missed the evening can still share in the conversation. I am grateful for all of it! 

In the Fall, one of our members will see her original work published! This feat amazes. We will enjoy another first - the member/author of our monthly selection will be at the table to take questions and share her process.  Look for A Time Traveler's Theory of Relativity by the talented Nicole Valentine later this year! (published by Lerner/Carolrhoda Books)

Let me close this love letter to reading with conversation openers I've used for all these years. They are questions I love to ask and be asked.  I hope you'll reply: 

 "What have you read lately and what did you think?"  

Note: In 2014, we were featured in an on-air book club discussion of Karen Russell's Sleep Donation. Here is the link to the post I wrote about that experience: https://asubjectforconsideration.blogspot.com/2014/07/on-radio-whoaohhhhhoh.html

                                

                  Some recent book club selections

 

“Some books are tool kits you take up to fix things, from the most practical to the most mysterious, from your house to your heart, or to make things, from cakes to ships. Some books are wings… Some books are medicine, bitter but clarifying.”  Rebecca Solnit

Read more about Rebecca Solnit and how books saved her life on the always interesting brain pickings website:  “https://www.brainpickings.org/