Diary of a Wannabe TV Chef Pt. 14
This is the latest installment in a continuing series that documents my personal quest to become the host of my own cooking show. Since this is a relatively new “career,” there are no vocational programs or community college courses to prepare me for it. From what I have seen, the two most important elements in securing such a position are passion for food and plain old dumb luck. Born with a passion for food, I set out to make my own luck.
New Chef in Town
Roughly a month after I am hired as the executive chef at Mars Hill the church that owns the cafe brings in a new general manager to oversee the operations. That’s a load off my shoulders. The FOH manager is a great guy who works hard but doesn’t have management in his blood. He’s not comfortable being the bad guy. The new GM is perfectly happy being the bad guy if needed. With a new management team in place we were ready to resurrect this noble enterprise.
My job was revamping the menu. I had to make flavorful food that was “wholesome and healthy” and have it out the window in 10 minutes. Well there is nothing healthy about pasta Alfredo plus it took way more than 10 minutes to prepare. Gone. The jerk yellow fin tuna wrap with mango salsa? Though delicious it was hardly ever ordered and therefore led to a lot of spoilage. Gone. The sweet potato hash brown – oh yeah, those were staying. Also gone was the nastiest potato salad ever. Not gone (but should have been) was the nastiest chicken salad ever; it was the one recipe I was forbade to alter.
In just a few weeks the word was out that the food was faster and tastier so people began to notice oft forgotten Mars Hill Cafe once again. Word of mouth is great stuff, press is even better. One day the general manager informed me that the local food editor was coming in to do a story on the cafe’s turnaround and mission. He also informed me that one of the local TV stations wanted me on to demonstrate a dish or two.
That’s right, I was being asked to cook on TV. And here it is, my first ever appearance as a TV chef:
Have you missed previous installments of the Diary of a Wannabe TV Chef? No worries, you can always click the button at the top right on the menu bar entitled “WannabeTVchef Diary.” Or just click HERE.
Review: Hungry Girl
I finally got a little more quality time with the Cooking Channel so I am attempting to review several of the shows I have not seen. This time around Hungry Girl.
Lisa Lillien has lived the food blogger’s dream as well as just about anyone. She has a popular web site, 1M+ news letter subscribers, a best selling book and now the crowning achievement we all strive for, her on TV show. Here’s a blurb from said web site:
Approximately 1,000,000 fans eagerly wait for Hungry Girl’s recipes, tips & tricks each weekday. What started as a daily email to friends and family has turned into a nationwide, multimedia phenomenon! In addition to the almost one million die-hard fans subscribed to her daily emails, Lisa also reaches millions more with weekly columns on WeightWatchers.com and Yahoo!, regular contributions to Redbook magazine and recurring appearances on the television shows like Rachael Ray and Extra.
Lillien’s focus is on low fat, low calorie fare that is easy for the home cook. Think of her as the love child of Rachael Ray and Ellie Krieger with a splash of Melissa D’Arabian. Her energy is understated not unlike Micheal Chiarello but with a definite soccer mom sensibility.
The show is shot in a style that is reminiscent of Food Network in the late 90’s. The set looks like a mash-up of shows such as Sara’s Secrets, Caprial’s Kitchen and the early years of 30 Minute Meals. The cinematography is quite good and each episode packs a lot of information into it. Lillien has a bevy of tips and substitutions that help lower fat and calories while still maintaining food that is appetizing. All though this may not be the kind of show to inspire professional chefs it is a great instructional series for the home cook. It’s the kind of show that sister Food Network was built on.
Lisa is currently doing a book tour in support of her newest release 300 Under 300: 300 Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner Dishes Under 300 Calories. To see if Lisa is headed your way check out the tour dates HERE.
Review: Chinese Food Made Easy
I finally got a little more quality time with the Cooking Channel so I am attempting to review several of the shows I have not seen. This time around Chinese Food Made Easy.
Cookbook author and host Chin-He Huang is a delightful guide through the world of traditional Chinese flavors. Unfortunately very few Americans have ever tasted real Chinese food as most of the things found on the buffets are actually American food with Chinese flavors, not the same thing. Huang does a wonderful job of explaining the nuances of Chinese cuisine.
Chin-He artfully explains the flavor profiles of the diverse and sometimes peculiar ingredients common to the cuisine. Her style is polished without being pretentious and she makes her food seem approachable. Her mastery of the wok is a pleasure to watch. Wok cooking is both simple and complex. I can have you churning out tasty stir-fry in just one 30 minute lesson but it takes years to actually perfect the style.
On the particular episode I watched entitled “Family and Friends” Chin-He packed a ton of show into just a small window of time. At one point she visited a farm specializing in Chinese vegetables only to find out the owner of the farm had never tasted anything he has grown. His first taste of his produce came in the form of a hot and cold salad.
The final segment she was showing a friend a few recipes in anticipation of some old friends dropping by for a visit. During the segment the old friends arrive only to be Chin-He’s parents who had been away in Taiwan for months. Huang broke into tears at the happy reunion. Then came another knock at the door and in walked Chin-He’s brother and his wife all the way from Saigon. It was very touching as homecomings often are.
Chinese Food Made Easy is another of the Cooking Channel’s BBC imports. Though I am not fond of Cooking Channel outsourcing their programming when there are ample wannabe TV chefs right here in America dying to share knowledge in an original way but I have to admit that most of the shows they have aired are pretty good. File Chinese Food Made Easy into that category. One thing I wish Cooking Channel would do with these imports is start subtitling the measurements. The metric system is never going to catch on here.
7 Questions with Alex Guarnaschelli
7 Questions is a series of interviews with the culinary movers and shakers you want or ought to know better.
Alex Guarnaschelli has long been a familiar face on the Food Network be it in her popular cooking shows The Cooking Loft and Alex’s Day Off or as a guest judge of Iron Chef America or Chopped and soon as a contestant on Next Iron Chef 4. She has been a polarizing figure to say the least. It seems she is as beloved as she is disliked. With Chopped: All Stars set to premiere in a few days perhaps we should get to know Chef Alex a little better.
After graduating from Barnard College in 1991, Guarnaschelli embarked on a lifelong culinary adventure beginning with a little time under the wing of the godfather of American cuisine, Larry Forgione. If the name sounds familiar it should as Larry is the father of the newest Iron Chef Marc Forgione.
With the elder Forgione’s blessing Guarnaschelli took her studies overseas where she matriculated at La Varenne Culinary School in Burgundy. From Burgundy she traveled France until landing in Paris for a four day study with famed French chef Guy Savoy. Four years later she was still with Savoy as sous chef at one of his properties, La Butte Chaillot. She would stay three more years before returning to America to work with the legendary Daniel Boulud at Daniel.
After moving up to sous chef with Boulud she then moved to the West Coast to work with Joachim Splichal’s Patina. In 2003 she returned to New York to become the executive chef at Butter. Since then she has made her reputation in the kitchen, as an instructor and even as a challenger on Iron Chef America before her keen palate was tapped as a judge both on ICA and Chopped.
In a fierce five-part tournament, 16 all star chefs battle head-to-head to win the crown as the champion of Chopped All Stars. Competing in this battle royal are NFNS alums Brad Sorenson, Debbie Lee, Lisa Garza and Michael Proietti, as well as Anne Burrell, Geoffrey Zakarian, Claire Robinson, Duff Goldman, Robert Irvine, Beau MacMillan, Jacques Torres, Nate Appleman and former NIC contestants Anita Lo, Aarón Sánchez, Maneet Chauhan and Amanda Freitag.
Whenever discussions of culinary cuties ensue I am always aghast that Guarnaschelli’s name does not immediately come up. She is clearly a beautiful woman but her descriptions of food are so sensual I swear they make me blush. When it comes to making food sexy she takes a back seat to no one.
Chef Alex will be a judge for this first of it’s kind event but first she answers 7 Questions.
Can you tell us what we can expect from Chopped All Stars?
It’s a week of all stars for charity where all the different celebrity chefs are competing for charities of their choice and the grand prize is a $50,000 donation to the winning chef’s charity. It’s certainly very dramatic.
A little about you, Alex, how would you best describe your style of cooking?
I would say that I’m in touch with the American classics. My parents were avid cooks when I was growing up; still are. It was a lot of the French-American, French techniques and American ingredients ranging from Oysters Rockefeller and Lobster Newburg definitely is a big part of my style of cooking. I love the green market mentality. Some one once said to me that’s not a cooking style it’s a shopping philosophy which I thought was a very interesting way of putting it. So I guess I would say French-American with seasonality being one of my favorite things.
Which chefs have influenced you along the way?
Many but probably the most influential definitely is Guy Savoy in Paris. He was definitely a big inspiration, still is, to me. Certainly Daniel Boulud is another big influence and inspiration. You know you have mentors of many kinds when you’re a chef. And certainly another big mentor to me is Bobby Flay who has just been very supportive of me and really helped me find my own voice as a chef on television as well as, you know, a cooking style. I think that’s certainly important to me too.
How important do you think improvisational skills are to being a chef especially in a setting like Chopped All Stars?
When you say improvisation to me it makes me think of many other words like solutions. As in somebody who can handle any crisis. You know like when somebody doesn’t show up to work at the restaurant or the grease trap explodes on a Friday night or you have to put together a dish from a basket of ingredients in 20 minutes flat. It’s all sort of that same idea of improvisation. So I think thinking quickly on your feet is critical. Which is why I think Chopped is such a natural extension of being a chef, being a cook. Only now you’re being filmed and all of America is watching you.
What was the experience of being a judge for Chopped All Stars like?
Yeah, it was amazing. Think about it. Just think about that list of names. Can you imagine? It was incredible. It was like watching the Super Bowl.
How would you describe the atmosphere in the Chopped kitchen?
The show is such a power, such a house of cards all the time. Sometimes I like to think there’s a little mystery on the ground floor of the house you know with the basics.
How do you balance being a judge while also being a colleague with the other chefs?
We’re all professionals. We all work together. We’re all sort of similar in that all of us are sometimes the competitors and all of us are sometimes the judges. And I think that playing that game of musical chairs as professionals you definitely have a tacit understanding of what that’s going to entail ahead of time. So it wasn’t really an issue. I don’t think any of us would have allowed it to be. It’s for charity.
Chopped All Stars premieres March 6th at 9PM ET on Food Network.
