TV CHEFS

“He who distinguishes the true savor of his food can never be a glutton; he who does not cannot be otherwise.” - Henry David Thoreau

Today is World Television Day and seeing as it is also Food Friday, I’ll combine the two and talk about TV chefs and TV food programs. Any channel worth its salt has one or two of these programs around and it is not unusual for TV chefs to become national or international celebrities as a direct result of these programs. Julia Child, Jeff Smith (a.k.a. The Frugal Gourmet), Justin Wilson (a.k.a. The Cajun Cook), James Beard (a.k.a The Father of American Cooking), Jamie Oliver (a.k.a The Naked Chef), Gordon Ramsay (a.k.a The Chef of Hell’s Kitchen), Nigella Lawson, Madhur Jaffrey, Kylie Kwong, Stefano de Pieri, Iain Hewitson, Vefa Alexiadou, Ilias Mamalakis, Gabriel Gaté, etc, etc, etc.

They come from all places, cook in an amazing array of styles, national idioms, have mind-boggling variety of approaches, employ different gimmicks and have hundreds of thousands (some millions!) of loyal followers that often extend beyond the confines of their own nation. Their programs can be quite straight-forward and to the point “how-to-cook-xyz”, brief and no-nonsense, but many of them have themed extravaganzas that pull out all stops and besides the obvious primary theme of food, have secondary themes including travel, culture, nutrition, self-sufficiency, etc.

The term “celebrity chef” is often applied to these TV chefs in a derogatory way. They are often seen by the serious foodie as charlatans who prostitute their art and who are peddling their craft to the marketplace in a virtual world where the products of their toil in the kitchen are not enjoyed as they would be if they worked in a restaurant. A real chef working in a real restaurant, producing real food for real people is what a foodie would describe as an ideal situation. If that real chef is consummate in his art, then his fame will be well earned and surely his celebrity status is deserved.

I personally don’t like the TV chef. Especially so if they are gimmicky and rely on heir notoriety more than their skill to attract viewers. I abhor the tactics of Gordon Ramsay and find his manner odious, in fact I doubt whether I’d even taste any of his food (remember the finger incident?). Jamie Oliver is similarly distasteful. The ones I like tend to be low key and rather boring for general consumption. They tend to be more pedestrian in their approach and they see themselves as teachers of their craft. There is much science in food – chemistry, physics, thermodynamics. One must understand the processes in order to be successful and some TV chefs are happy to share their knowledge.

The celebrity chef is not a new discovery. The first such chef to attain this status was Antoine Carême (1784-1833) who was called “The king of chefs and chef of kings”. He built on the “haute cuisine” style of French cooking, full of elaborate, complicated and grandiose dishes. Although born in poverty and abandoned by his parents as a child, he managed to be apprenticed in a cheap Parisian eatery and gradually worked his way to the top in a fashionable patisserie. He progressed to being the chef of many a crowned head and many an influential person in Europe.

Carême is credited with creating the standard chef's hat (the toque), with the invention of new sauces and dishes, and the establishment of the haute cuisine. He published a classification of all sauces into groups, based on four basic sauces. He is also credited with replacing the practice of service à la française (serving all dishes at once) with service à la russe (serving each dish in the order of courses). He wrote several cookery books, above all L' Art de la Cuisine Française (5 volumes, 1833–34), which included, aside from hundreds of recipes, plans for menus and opulent table settings, a history of French cookery, and instructions for organising kitchens – a veritable encyclopaedia of cooking. He died at the age of 48 in Germany, possibly from the effects of inhaling toxic gases from the burning coal of the kitchen fires he was constantly exposed to.