Kitchen Gadgets, Fake Foodies, Immersion Blenders, Rachael Ray

“America has spoken. Put my food in a fucking bowl”–Patton Oswalt

I’m not a gadget cook. If I were to stock my kitchen with tools, I think I could get by pretty well with the following, provided they’re all high quality:

Knives: 8 inch chef knife, 6 inch boning knife, 8.75 inch slicer, 5.5 inch paring knife.

Cookware: a Le Creuset 7.25 qt. dutch oven, a stockpot, a few sauce pans of varying sizes, a 6qt. saute pan, a 1o-inch fry pan, an omelette pan and a cast iron skillet.

Misc.: a blender, a heavy wood chopping block, a chinois, and a collander.

And that’s it. I’m not counting the little things I’d use frequently like kitchen twine and cheesecloth. Just the everyday cookware.

I’m thinking about this because I got an immersion blender for Christmas. It’s something I wanted, and I had mentioned it in passing to my mother-in-law a month ago. She was thoughtful enough to pick one up for me for the holiday, and I put it to use last night for the first time to make a carrot-thyme soup. Maybe my immersion blender skills are not quite up to snuff, but I’ve made this soup twenty times if I’ve made it once, and it didn’t come out with the same smooth quality that it’s had when I’ve run it through my stand-up blender. (The recipe is very easy. Saute a little minced onion and garlic in a dutch oven, add 1.5 lbs carrots and 4c chicken stock, cover and simmer for 30 minutes. Blend until smooth, return to pan, stir in 1/4 c orange juice, then stir in 1/3 c half and half, then stir in the leaves of about 10 sprigs of thyme and serve.)

The only advantage to using the hand blender is clean up. Just pop off the end and wash in warm water. Much easier than taking apart a countertop blender and cleaning it. Otherwise I was not impressed. However, I am looking forward to trying it out for other tasks, like foaming and making smoothies, and I will try it on soup again before I shove it in the back of a cabinet.

This also got me thinking about the way kitchen items are packaged and sold, particularly now that we have rock star chefs, cooking on television 24 hours/day, and probably four times more people who would describe themselves as “foodies” than there were 10 years ago.

I think you could take the entire kitchen section of a Bed Bath And Beyond, toss out all the needless stuff and save a couple thousand sqare feet. Of all the espresso makers they have, there are only a couple that have the potential to brew a cup of espresso that truly tastes like real espresso. They also have the cheap ones, and all the in-betweens. They could toss all the in-betweens, sell the cheap ones to people who just want something basic that makes them feel like they’re baristas-for-a-day, and the nice ones to the people who know the difference. But the rub is that people buy the in-betweeners, which are neither cheap enough to carry any value to the budget-minded buyer, or good enough for the gourmand. Yet people tell BB&B every day that they’re willing to pay a premium for something that gives them the appearance that they’re buying something better than just a cheap old espresso maker. I find this both humorous and sad, but not surprising.

The same goes for crap like electric knives. There is a certain joy to taking a very sharp slicing knife and cutting into a well-roasted piece of meat. Yet people will pay for an electric kife, which upon use will bastardize an otherwise nice pice of meat on contact. And this is why that spike in people who would describe themselves as foodies is comprised of a lot of people who are not true foodies, but people enjoying a recent fad.

To see the best display of bad opinions amongst the people who now think they know a ton about food, one need look no further than www.yelp.com. Users can review their experiences at local businesses, and the most passionate, most opinionated posts are typically for restaurants. It’s there that you can read “Som T.”’s 3-star review of Alinea, calling it “pretentious” and deriding it for not being vegetarian-friendly. Um, Som, it’s the best restaurant in America right now, and if Grant Achatz doesn’t want to be veg-friendly, he doesn’t have to be. Call ahead and ask. Same for “Brad B” who gave Gary Danko, a San Francisco temple of gastronomy, one star, saying “My partner took me here for my birthday. Big mistake, neither of use (sic) consulted the menu in advance and they weren’t wlling (sic) to acomodate (sic) me who is vegan.” So it’s a one-star restaurant because someone with extreme dietary restrictions isn’t pleased? There’s “Serene C.” of Seattle, who said about Rover’s: “If there is ever a time to go baller style on a meal, it’s a birthday. With this in mind, I rolled up with my swerviest of pimp strolls and loved laughing at all the poor minions eating their sad meals at Chinoise Cafe across the street. ” Thanks Serene, real helpful. Most of the reviews on yelp.com have adjectives like “delicious”, “great”, “wonderful”. But you’d be hard pressed to find on yelp, among the new generation of self-proclaimed Foodies with a capital F, someone with anything truly informed to say about the food. There are few comments about flavor combinations in dishes, or how the chef’s choice of preparation method brought out any certain qualities. I blame this all on the recent food and cooking fad. If you go to a restaurant, sure, you’re entitled to your opinion. It does not, however, make you an expert. Sadly, a lot of people now take their opinions from the uninformed of yelp.com, rather than from restaurant reviewers with years of experience and culinary school training. In the age of the Internet and blogs, the cumulative opinions of the uninformed masses are outweighing the practiced, thoughtful knowledge of the real experts. And while everyone has an opinion to which they are entitled, everyone is certainly not an expert. Although many now seem to claim to be.

The Food Network recently decided not to renew “Emeril Live”, Emeril Lagasse’s show that was highly responsible for the Food TV boom that began in the past decade. Mario Batali, another of the major Food Network stars of the boom, now appears only as one of their “iron” chefs. Of all the chefs to have appeared on the Food Network, they are unquestionably the two with the best chef pedigree. Say what you will about Emeril’s stagey showmanship, his “BAM”s, his “aw, yeah, babeee”s, he is a well-trained chef highly respected by other chefs for his talent and his creativity in a kitchen. And Batali’s Babbo is one of the best restaurants in New York. Instead, viewers will be treated to more Rachael Ray This is not a chef who is going to broaden the understanding of ingredients and technique among the viewing audience. Ray is a TV personality and a woman who has endorsed Burger King, which tells us plenty about the balance between her deisre to make money and her desire to promote good food and nutrition.

What this means is that Ray is pretty much the electric knife of televised cooking shows. She’s not good for us. But just like BB&B sells the electric knife because there is a buyer, Food Network throws tons of money and broadcast hours at Ray because we, as a nation, will buy.

So here we are with more people thinking they know more about food, who really know how to pop open a couple cans from the pantry and toss together something edible in under 30 minutes. These are not foodies. These are folks who have tricked themselves into believeing they are. These are people with busy lives, perhaps with kids to feed, who don’t have the most time in the world. What Ray has tought them through her 30 Minute Meals, is how to be more efficient. And that’s what America seems to be telling the Food Network: don’t bother us with chef/personalities like Batali and Lagasse, people who are going to ask that we roast something for hours or make our own stock. Oh no, show us how to throw something together fast and cheap. Rachael Ray is not going to give anyone a better understanding of food or food science or cooking technique.

I was in Barnes & Noble at Webster Place a month ago, and headed toward the cookbook section. They have a display wall that highlights a select 20 or so cookbooks. About half the space was taken up with Rachael Ray books. So the Food Network is not entirely responsible for the promotion of Ray and the promotion of quick eats over good food.

I don’t blame Ray, she’s making a buck. I don’t blame the Food Network, they’re making a buck. Same with Barnes & Noble. Same with Bed Bath & Beyond. Give the people what they want. And what we seem to want now is to be involved in the fads of food and cooking, not to learn how to cook great meals. We want electric knives, overpriced espresso machines and 30 minute meals full of preservatives from a series of tin cans. We want 700 options at Bed Bath & Beyond. We think we’re getting smarter, when we’re just getting to be better consumers. I also find this a little humorous and a little sad, and not the least surprising.