I loved the Food Network in the early days. They had no budget, so all they could afford to shoot was people cooking.
This thread inspired me to create a Wikipedia entry for David Rosengarten. I was suprised to discover that Taste was on for eight years, and that he was on more than 2500 TV episodes. I remember that he was fairly ubiquitous on the early Food Network, but didn’t realize it was that extensive.
Now there’s a concept!
I’ve seen Paula Deen a few times. She has that sweet grandma/dynamo vibe going, and that mag-know-ya accent. Seems like every time I tune in, she’s cooking the same thing.
Healthy Eating with Elie Kreiger is pretty good. I just made her recipe for Chicken Pepian and it killed.
Sara Moulton is on PBS as well.
I imagine it was also a response to Top Chef doing so well. And they’re probably hoping to stumble on the next Duff at one of those challenges.
Yeah, I actually watched him win the thing. I just meant when he applied to be on that show (I think contestants had to send in a video tape).
Upon closer look, he doesn’t even have the restaurant experience I gave him credit for. Prior to opening Johnny Garlic’s, which is perhaps the most bland & ordinary chain restaurant you could imagine, he worked for other chain restaurants. His degree in in hospitality management, but I have no idea how much culinary training that entails (if any).
You’re right, he is a big personality, which those folks are looking for. I would bet they knew he would be a finalist in that competition when they viewed his tape.
Perhaps I should give him another look, since there are two people in this thread giving him the thumbs-up.
Not to mention the color-coordinated KitchenAid stand mixer. Which, by the way, I’ve only seen her use once to whip up some kind of dessert. Occasionally I watch for the same reason that people slow down to look at accidents - you feel bad yet just can’t help but gape at the horror. She spends so much time turning the dinner table into a “craft store threw up” nightmare; she could spend that time (and money) on making real food instead.
There was a thread recently where a Doper related that she had prepared a chicken dish for her mother, the only spice used was fresh cracked pepper. Her mom wouldn’t eat it because she was used to only old,stale pepper in a box. Many years ago, at a church potluck (Methodist), one of the dishes was “chili”, hamburger, tomato sauce and kidney beans. No hint of spice whatsoever.
I think this is Sandra Lee’s demographic. There are large areas of this country where bland is the ideal.
This is their idea of gourmet cooking.
Good Lord, I’m defending Sandra Lee. :eek::smack:
I just stumbled across a funny bit about the early days of the Food Network by Sara Moulton
The Food Network was not rolling in dough back then and it showed. For roughly two and a half years they shot my show, Cooking Live, on the set of the live food news show hosted by David Rosengarten and Donna Hanover. It was a tiny set with no oven and no pantry. What it did have was a counter so high that I could barely see over it. There was no question of modifying the counter— too expensive. Instead, the budget-minded execs built a narrow riser for me. Balanced precariously on this thing, I spent much of my time worrying about whether I would fall off. I never did, but one night my guest chef, Philippe Chin, did tumble off, disappearing right in the middle of a sentence.
In those days I was assisted by Rob Bleifer and an exceedingly random bunch of unpaid cooking school externs, one of whom was so outstandingly useless that Rob dubbed him the Human Paperweight. With no one else to rely on, Rob spent many a show crouched below my counter like a troll, furtively slipping me things—a spatula, a stick of butter, a plate of fish fillets—that the hapless externs had forgotten. The two of us prayed that no one at home would catch sight of his disembodied hand.
Sounds like cutting the budget would improve things.
She should be on a cable access show in Minnesota then, except she’s got too much competition from the ‘Ladies of the ________ Lutheran Church’ annual cookbooks. 
Maybe that’s where she gets her recipes and then she tablescapes it up a notch.
It just feels like forever. I bet she doesn’t eat any of the crap she cooks. As soon as the show’s over, she’s off to a restaurant for a real meal.
During one of the “Next Food Network Star” challenges, the competitors had to make a dish that current hosts would judge. With one of the dishes, the current hosts were “it was bland” “did she forget the spices?” “bland,” “needed flavor.” And Sandra Lee piped up “I loved it!” I nearly died laughing.
I like the food network, even as it is today; but I don’t actually cook. I’m probably exactly their demographic, “people who have no interest in ever doing anything we show them on screen on screen, but have disposable income and probably can be convinced to buy a microplane if they see it often enough”
I like some of the current crop of hosts; I like the challenges (the disasters are entertaining). It isn’t appointment television, but it is “have on in the background while I’m really doing something else” television
Boy, I used to make Hitler Channel cracks but I didn’t know back then how good I had it.
I might have appreciated those WWII documenteries more if I knew that later it’d become the “Quest for the Lost Mysteries of Chupacabra as Foretold By Druids When a UFO Visited Them” Channel.
What pisses me off is that he can’t even fucking PRONOUNCE it. It’s not “Fietti.” Learn to roll your rrrrrs, douchenozzle.
Joe
And why some conventional steps were NOT taken. Less food porn and more “This works, and why, but that doesn’t work, and why.”
PBS also has Jacques Pepin, who takes three simple ingredients and makes magic in ten seconds. Of course, one of the ingredients is always lots of olive oil. (looking at his wikipedia entry) Dude turned down a chance to be JFK’s chef to spend a decade at HoJo’s! I wonder how he is with fried clam strips. Probably magical.
OTOH, PBS also carries “Caprial and John’s Kitchen,” in which she is an idiot and he’s a professional chef without a personality. Ignore her and watch him.
I learned how to dice an onion from one of Jacques Pepin’s shows. I really appreciate the old-fashioned shows like his that actually showed how to cook. And as someone with no clue, I prefer cooking shows that are explicit. Like don’t tell me to cook the chicken until it’s done. Tell me an objective way to determine that it’s done.
Actually, a couple of weeks ago, I wanted to make an omelet but wasn’t sure how to do it. So I found a video on Youtube of Julia Child demonstrating the classic method. So perhaps the easy availability of online videos has rendered the tradtional cooking shows obsolete.
How does he do it? I slice them in half, then cut a grid onto the flat part. When I slice, I get nice little onion bits. I subsequently saw my former roommate (now in culinary school) and a TV chef doing it that way.
I can’t remember the show, but I saw one (cooking shows just make me hungry, but my kids like them) in which the star visited a French farmhouse to show how to make an omelet. The old lady who lived there was obviously disgusted because the way she made an omelet was not light and fluffy, but something her husband could stuff in his pocket to eat hours later.
Me, I don’t like fluffy omelets. Nor do I like ones with staying power. I ignored both recipes, but was amused by the difference between French cooking and TV-French cooking.
I can’t figure out how to describe his method, but it’s the same one I’ve since seen others demonstrate, so I believe it’s the standard technique. But my point was that he was and is good at demonstrating this sort of basic technique. It’s far more useful than the sort of cooking competitions and food tourism that the Food Network seems to concentrate on.