The Food Network? Yesterday and today

I have seen some bad food handling on FN as well.. and it goes back a long time too! I started watching it back in the early 1990's when I knew that when I went back to work I would be going into the food industry and not back to my job in the social service field (I have a BA in Early Childhood Education as well as many post degree certificates that qualified me to work with special needs kids and adults) and even back then I saw some chefs do things that made my skin crawl!

Oh I forgot to mention when I said going back to work.. I left my job working with special needs kids to stay home and raise my own two kids.

http://www.cheftalk.com/forums/late-...rk-humour.html

That was funny. Giada may be hot, but she leaves herself wide open to a very basic ridicule

That was too funny!

Maybe Ina garten should consider some lip gloss... Is there a hamptons accent she could uber-culivate HeHe!

i am tired of giada and her hair in the food. the worst part is the annoying forced accent on certain words... relax kiddo.

They should do a reality show of local and state health departments inspecting the procedures and the kitchens of the food network.

lol, that would be awesome... i wonder who eats that food that is cross-contaminated and used for the shows?

The shows we love to hate

I'm resurrecting this thread because I just read in USA Today that Food TV currently has its highest ratings ever. And the Fine Living Network plans to go with 24 hours of cooking shows next year.

Food TV admits to looking less for "actual cooking" and more to "personality" and "competition" (evidently something some of you think is valuable). They've "found the secret" to ratings and that's their direction.

Obviously, none of us is their market audience.

Also fyi, Bravo's "Top Chef" is their highest rated show. They have a couple new pseudo-cooking shows that have just aired that are doing well.

The Fox network -- with several Gordon ramsay shows -- is auditioning now for a new show for next year "Master Chef", a challenge for amateurs (restaurant chefs need not apply). Hosted/Managed by Gordon Ramsay.

Does anyone watch the saturday morning "marathon" of cooking shows on PBS?

Joe

What the Food Network et al have discovered is the apparently permanent dumbing down of their TV audience and to appeal to the lowest common denominator translates to higher ratings...QED.
So what we're left with is programing designed for an audience with the attention span of a may fly who are living proof that the baseline for IQ has gone south at least 10 points and it ain't gonna change anytime soon.

Ya gotta really wonder, too, about that attention span.

Putting aside the formula they're now using, if you add it up there's probably not five hours of new programing in any particular week. It's all just repeats of repeats.

So not only is their audience not interested in real cooking, they, apparently, aren't aware of the shows they've just seen.

Does anyone watch the saturday morning "marathon" of cooking shows on PBS?

Joe, just FYI, there is no uniform programing on PBS, because each market is dependent on what the local affiliate chooses to purchase and air. F'rinstance, we only get Lidia and Jaques Pepin (and, on no particular schedule, America's Test Kitchen), which air Saturday afternoon. Saturday morning our "marathon" consists of shows dealing with needle arts.

"LOL and here we go with an early morning rant the day after Xmas!"

Just in case it matters, I did not say this even though someone "quoted" me as such. I'm not sure how that process works.

Speaking of PBS (thanks KYH for the reminder about programming; sorry), maybe that's the future of educational cooking programs, if they are to be at all.

Who's the next Julia Child or Jacques Pepin? What do "real" chefs/cooks want?

Joe

:rolleyes: The qualification for a food show today is: silly, fat, female,ridiculous and if you have all four you are a "shoe in" example : "Naughty Kitchen" the most ridiculous show ever aired,"Hells Kitchen" is a close "runner up" he is just ridiculous. The worst thing that has ever happened to Chefs profession was when they enrolled Julia Child in Le Cordon Bleu in Paris. We have been going downhill ever since. Even when PBS tried to right their wrong by airing her show with "The Great Chefs" series which was the only shows filmed in actual commericial kitchens it was too late. The ball started rolling and hasn't stopped yet. Jacques Pepin was the exception, I liked him but, how they ever paired him up with Julia is beyond me. As to the question "What do "real chefs watch?" Most of us don't get to watch the shows when they are aired,"we are working" we have to record them to watch later. I don't waste my time, the TV News reviews are bad enough. I believe "The Great Chefs Series" is still available on "youtube.com" I don't think the culinary schools teach what is needed. Oh, they teach plating, wine paring, recipe reading but basic cooking procedures like the importance of stocks, rouxs, basic sauces, time management and how to prep for 200 to 300 people is beyond their reach. That what we have to teach them once we get them.:thumb:

Cater,

You wrote, Wow. Wow twice. Wow squared.

You can't mean you find gender to be a handicap in the kitchen, or for a television cooking show host. But if not, what does it mean?

BDL

Simply & respectfully put, that statement is not true, nor fair to assume.

Also, Cater...I would think about your "wording" in your post. It can be seen as sexist and demeaning to woman & to folks who actually respect Julia Child's.

:rolleyes: I have been working with women in the commerical kitchen for over 50 years. And they have never asked to butcher my meat, fillet my fish or make my soups and sauces and I never asked to make their salads, desserts or sandwiches. The only female cooks that I ever saw in a kitchen that knew how to cook was my mother and grandmother and they never used mearuring cups or measuring spoons either.When ever I have had the misfortune of working with them behind the range, someone always had to lift their case of Prime Ribs, the 50#sack of onions, the 50# box or potatoes or take an 80 qt. pot off the range. My mother and grandmother was great cooks but they never had to cook for hundreds of people either. I just saying there is a place for everyone and everyone in their place. There is a lot of heavy lifting going on and if they don't do it, they have to ask someone else to do it that probably has other things to do.:thumb:

Not to go off on a tangent...

Paranthetically...

I had the honor to indirectly cook for Julia Child. Indirectly in the sense that the owner of the restaurant I worked at brought a "covered dish," chicken pot-pie, to a "pot-luck" party for Child given at a Sonoma winery in the seventies.

(I know all those quotation marks are annoying; but if you knew the people involved, the passion and intensity of the fight with the staff when we learned the owner was planning on bringing a salad, researching Child's food preferences, and how much last-minute assembly and hysteria was involved, you'd have a hard time wrapping your head around associating covered-dish, pot-luck, chicken pie with them. And I wasn't invited, so you can't count this as name dropping.)

I'm pretty sure that although Child was very good working at her own speed in dinner party quantities or less, she was not the greatest cook to ever hold a spoon.

Heck, (minority opinion warning) Mastering the Art isn't even at the top of my list for "learn to cook French" cookbooks. But it must be for most.

Whether or not Julia was the best author, she was certainly one of them. Whether or not she was the best TV cooking teacher, again she was certainly among the best. She was the first of the multimedia cooking superstars, and a pioneer in television generally and public television in particular.

I've never spoken with a professional chef doing top end French, International, Nouvelle, California, or New American cuisine who doesn't respect her contributions and acknowledge at least some debt.

People, pros among them, argue over whether she could or should be called "chef," since she never ran a restaurant kitchen. I've been around enough TV production to think that managing the kitchen staff for her show, working on the menus, and so on, was more than enough to qualify for her the title.

BDL

Well, no question about the wording in this post.

caterchef, just because something is outside the range of your direct experience doesn't mean that it does not exist. There are plenty of women in professional kitchens that hold their own and ask for no quarter. I've worked with plenty of them. Please refrain from from expressing the particular type of opinion you have been expressing thus far.

edited to add: If anyone, man or woman, thinks it's a good idea to take a full 80 qt stockpot off the range solo, I would say they are either more concerned with their macho image than they are about workplace safety, or they're flat-out stupid.

:rolleyes: You can call a Doctor a Doctor, that dosen't mean he/she is a good Doctor.
Malpractice Insurance is some of the highest there is. They just don't have Malpractice Insurance for Chefs. They put an apron or chefs hat on and people expect them to be what they represent and they tend to expect everyone to be in the same category. I have seen a lot of Chefs refuse to wear a Chefs hat, I think they were ashamed of their profession and the way it has been degraded over the past years, they don't even like for you to call them "Chef." :thumb:

Thank you Greg, your last paragraph said it well. Not to get any more arguement started, but I have worked several ships with 1-200+ passengers and one dinner house with 250 covers a night. In the dinner house, never thought about asking for help with 50# of onions, meats etc. I was almost 30 years younger then!

First moved to Alaska worked in mining and logging camps serving 30 or so to 100+, Frieght comes in during the day when everyone but me and possibly a helper is in the woods. All is placed on dock by float plane or boat,
If it is hot outdoors, melts frozen stuff, or cold, freezes lettuce etc. and/or raining--boxes start to melt. So got to get it moved.

Have been a merchant marine for thirty years now, am 67yo, 5'4", 125 pounds. To have just a document to be on a commerical vessel requires a series of balance (tough) and dexterity tests, and several strength tests--lifting and carrying 50#, lifting 70# to waist height and placing on table, pushing and pulling a heavy sled about 100 yards, can't remember weight?

Again when I get stores, up to 10 or more pallets, everyone is busy, so once they use the pass method to get thing to the general area, I am on my own.

Even so the 80qt. stock pot would be something I would approach carefully--put a 20qt. pot along side and use a really big dipper to lighten up the biggun??

The only dumb thing I do is lift a roasting pan with two 20+# turkeys--it's hot, not balanced, and something I have to start taking a safer approach to??

Tooooo Long, sorry guys,
Nan
Wish you all a Safe, Successful, and Peaceful New Year!!!!!

Careful with that, pal. Come walk a mile in my shoes.


Oh, and by the way, some of the most accomplished cooks and chefs I have worked with (and for!) were female and will kick it on a busy Saturday night! Blanket assumptions are a dangerous territory.

:rolleyes: I have had the misfortune of working with graduates and students and they all seem to be on an ego trip. They all want to do something like it shows them in the book or the way they did it at the last place they worked. And I have to tell them we don't use a book and their pay check isn't coming from the last place they worked. My father had a favorite saying" It's best to say you don't know than to open your mouth and prove it " or "to remove all doubt." If you have accomplished cooks and chefs from culinary schools up north male or female, they don't seem to migrate south. I learned more from Chefs that I respected by saying I didn't know so, I could find out how they did it and compare lt with the way I knew how. I couldn't do that if I were on a ego trip. "The Chef may not always be right but, he's always the Chef" or until he leaves. We have employers down south advertise " celebrity chefs need not apply" Who would you hire that is on the TV shows? I think I would hire Guy Fieri long enough to shave his head, stomp his sunglasses and drive his Camero in the bay before I fired him "ON-POINT. :thumb:

wow! Isn't that a blanket statement?! All? Everyone of them?!

Perhaps, then, they just sense your vibe.

Starting to get off topic, so time to lock this one up.