It's been a while since my last post. That's because it has been a while since we tried a new North Country restaurant that we enjoyed enough to write about. Over the last week I have had the good fortune to spend more time on the water than at the office, mostly in New Brunswick, Canada. This weekend I intend to do more of the same – fly fishing for trout in North Central Pennsylvania.
I did check in on Twitter today and saw that we are still celebrating the annual James Beard Festivities. Is it just me or is this whole thing getting way out of hand? We were talking James Beard Awards three weeks ago! I'm not going to pop off on a Tony Bourdain rant about the organization, but puh~lease. Isn't a day or maybe two enough? Isn't it time for everyone to just go and cook something?
I'm sorry but this is not what cooking should be about. Yes, extraordinary meals should be remembered and celebrated. Outstanding practitioners of the culinary arts have always been and should always be recognized, but this has gotten crazy. We are talking about cooking. Remember cooking?
Remember the Food Channel before Iron Chef? When timers were used for the oven, not the cooks. I enjoyed the Food Channel when it was first introduced. It was a wonderful learning experience and it taught me much about technique and cuisines that I had never experienced. There were no contests. The programming was strictly educational, and the “instructors” were wonderful. David Rosengarten, Curtis Aiken, and the legendary Jacques Pepin were right there in your living room, showing you how to braise short ribs. Emeril, long before anybody knew him, was as close to anything that you would actually call “entertainment”. Then they they brought us Mario, freshly installed at his new bistro, Po, and long before anybody west of Hoboken knew who he was. Now I don't watch it at all. I haven't in years; not even Alton Brown, who I really enjoyed watching.
This whole cooking as entertainment thing has gotten way out of hand. Molecular gastronomy? Sorry, that's not cooking; it's playing with food. Remember what your mom said about playing with your food? Last month I was sitting at Witherbees Carriage House in Schroon Lake having dinner at the bar. The owner had the Food Channel on because she wanted to watch someone appearing on “Chopped”, which I had never seen. Within ten minutes of watching this chefs' “competition” I was so stressed out I couldn't even look at the TV. This is entertainment? Sorry, I just don't see the attraction.
Cooking is not a contest; or at least it shouldn't be. There are no losers in cooking. Cooking is social. Cooking is fun. Cooking is a medium to bring together friends and family. A good meal will make memories and remind you of more from the past. You can put any group of people in a kitchen filled with the aroma of freshly baked bread, a pot of sauce on the stove – any sauce – add a bottle of wine and I defy you not to have a good time. There is no stress, no winners, no losers, no second best and go home. Somehow we have gotten away from that. It's sad. “Celebrity chefs” have to raise literally millions of dollars to open entertainment venues masquerading as restaurants and if they don't serve hundreds of diners every night who are willing to pay hundreds of dollars for the privilege, they can't pay their backers. If they don't do that, they are deemed a failure. If you think about it, it really is sad.
Next week – what I think of professional bass tournaments.
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