In What Strange World Does This Make Sense?

I'm curious why this was posted in the wine forum and not the kitchen? Or friends & fun?

(Having no television, I've never seen any of the people mentioned in any of these posts..... except Julia once back when I was a child.)

Because I could eat or drink wine with any of these young women. There is a thin line between eating and drinking and this swings both ways.
Walt

I'm curious why this was posted in the wine forum and not the kitchen? Or friends & fun?

(Having no television, I've never seen any of the people mentioned in any of these posts..... except Julia once back when I was a child.)

Because I could eat or drink wine with any of these young women. There is a thin line between eating and drinking and this swings both ways.
Walt

Swinger!!

[Jenise]

If you want to draw attention, dress up (!) your postings.

Okay!!!

Clive.jpg

This thread suddenly got very interesting!

Now Jenise, no male cheesecake unless it is related to cooking (the original thread was, after all, about rating cooks and how some media personalities didn't fit any reasonable conception of a chef - although it did get opened in Wine when I thought I was posting in Food - mea culpa).

Feel free to post any male chefs' pictures for your own edification or enjoyment, but just picking any old male pictures smacks of self-indulgence....

Can't think of any male chef cheesecake offhand - unless you are into cradle robbing - Jamie Oliver, I suppose.

Here is a top chef poll with Nigella at the top, Jamie second and Keith Floyd next (please, no Floyd pics....) The rest are unknown to me - must all be on BBC series.

http://www.londoneats.com/news/poll.asp?PollID=4

Another question. Clearly a chef who works a kitchen can be judged by normal standards as a chef. One that starts there and then branches out into the entertainment industry like Ramsay should also get a lot of respect - even if in the end he ceased to have a connection with any restaurant and went entirely show biz.

But what about the exclusively media chefs that haven't ever served their time in a good kitchen - should they get any respect? That's where people like Rachel Ray come in....

I'll bet Clive knows how to heat up a kitchen. That should count for something.

I'll bet Clive knows how to heat up a kitchen. That should count for something.

Well yeah, but these ladies can supposedly cook......

But what about the exclusively media chefs that haven't ever served their time in a good kitchen - should they get any respect? That's where people like Rachel Ray come in....

I'd beg to differ, Bill. I they haven't put time into running a restaurant kitchen, they are not IMO entitled to the title of chef. Instead, they are cooks, by no means a derogatory title in its own right*.

Ramsay, Bourdain, Flay, Puck and even Legasse the Interminable are chefs
RR and even my beloved Nigella are not. Giada OTOH is.

So there!
Mark Lipton

*Added in edit: this is basically the same point Max was making about Julia Child.

Yeah, I can't disagree with that. If they haven't 'put in their time' they aren't chefs.

That leaves us with a bunch of media cooks that need further subdivision into those that can cook and those that just look nice in front of a lens. I'll bet if you televised a show that was nothing more than a deep frying contest in the nude you'd get record ratings, but it wouldn't make the participants cooks.

One that I have a sentimental attachment for was Graham Kerr. By no means a chef, he became a celebrity when his show on New Zealand TV (no offence to Kiwis, but that is a pretty limited market unless a show goes international) The Galloping Gourmet hit the screens in North America (and 37 other countries, according to his site) BTW, Jenise, he is a neighbour in Mt. Vernon WA.

He turned himself into a pretty decent cook and I still have all of the cookbooks from his series. As it was aired around 1970, I guess I may be alone in that unless anyone else remembers him. He was never as much fun after he found God and lost butter and other rich foods and went healthy.



Another TV cook that was fun was Jeff Smith, The Frugal Gourmet, who actually knew a lot about food and wine, but was trained as a minister, not a cook.

I remember them!

Graham Kerr was really fun to watch. I liked The Frugal Gourmet, but I remember thinking there wasn't anything very frugal about his cooking. At least at the time.

You do have a target on you.

[Jenise]

Bill, as a child, when other kids were watching cartoons, I was watching reruns of Graham Kerr. I wanted to marry him when I grew up. He was charming, funny and affectionate, traits decidedly lacking in all the grown men in my world. And his food! I had never heard of nor eaten the kinds of things he made--quenelles, crepes, terrines--he was, to my little eyes, a magician.

I never cared for Jeff Smith. Immoral proclivities aside, he never cooked, he just assembled and displayed. His assistant seemed to do all the real cooking.

[Jenise]

Now Jenise, no male cheesecake unless it is related to cooking

I can fix that: when Clive Owen looks at me, I melt like a grilled cheese sandwich. Now it's food-related.


Male chef cheesecake: Todd English's swarthy George Clooneyesque good looks would have gotten my vote a long time ago, but I've since seen two episodes of a cooking show he did and he's now completely off my radar. He calls everyone 'babe'. Male, female, the viewers--everyone's 'babe'. Slick and insincere--nothing sexy about that. Michael Ruhlmann comes to mind, though, and call me nuts but I adore Tom Colicchio.

Bill, as a child, when other kids were watching cartoons, I was watching reruns of Graham Kerr. I wanted to marry him when I grew up. He was charming, funny and affectionate, traits decidedly lacking in all the grown men in my world. And his food! I had never heard of nor eaten the kinds of things he made--quenelles, crepes, terrines--he was, to my little eyes, a magician.

I am going to have to dig out his cook books again and browse through them. Maybe we could do an 'all Galloping' dinner some time. I believe that I got my favourite recipe for abalone (Abalone Victoria) from him, but it is academic now since they halted the local fishery

and call me nuts but I adore Tom Colicchio.

Oh you're not nuts Jenise. I feel the same.

And after reading the sweet story of how he and his wife met...sigh.