According to its Wiki, the Food Network was founded in 1993, though food television as a genre had been around far longer and was actually a very memorable part of my TV laden childhood, right alongside Bob Ross’s happy trees.
As a child I had a few cartoons that I liked, maybe the Smurfs and a few others, but what I remember watching was the Frugal Gourmet, Wok with Yan, and of course Julia and Jacques. I remember scrambling for a note pad to copy down recipes from Regis and Kathy Lee’s cooking segments while home sick and remember my first cookbook being the result of something I saw on a morning show segment. How to cook popcorn 100 ways, I remember it was a book I just had to have.
I ended up studying art in undergrad, but while attending school got my first food job at a small pasta shop. I worked the cash register but also learned a little in the kitchen, bringing me one step closer to cooking the food.
I ended up switching schools mid-way through undergrad. The move from small town Santa Barbara to San Francisco came with a desire to make more cash. I interviewed for a position as a cook and sold myself based off the fact that I had been watching the food channel for two years straight! The cook, eight months pregnant and needing someone to help her assistant pick up the slack, bought what I was selling, and I got the job.
The rest is a long and winding road I will save for another post another day but for now I will say thanks, and give blame to the food channel for getting my tong in the door… Salon ran this with interview with one of my professors on food TV this week,
http://www.salon.com/food/feature/2010/02/26/food_network_krishnendu_ray/index.html
and I agree with much of his observations. We don’t know enough to say whether food TV is driving people to cook more or less. Considering that food TV had such a role in my involvement with food today, could it be playing that same role in many other peoples lives? My mother didn’t cook much but her mother did. I learned to cook a bit from my dad but also from TV. If kids don’t know what vegetables look like anymore, because the food they eat comes prepackaged, and prepackaged food is certainly not running the risk of disappearing, is it then safe to say the more food TV the better? At least real food and cooking does not run the risk of becoming a lost art if it is in our faces every day.
While shows that highlight enormous portions or novelty food items seem to dominate, Alton Brown is still up in there, and I’m sure there are a few others that at least show people the right way to hold a knife, breakdown an onion, roast a whole chicken, make a fresh sauce. These are important things to learn to do. Maybe it’s not boeuf bourguignon, but maybe that’s ok too.
Personally, I dont watch much Food TV, I find it painful and overly cheery. I find Martha Stewart’s cooking segments enjoyable still, she tends to be informative and technical. Anthony Bourdain is fun to follow around the world but every once in a while I land on some off channel cooking show with chefs from other countries really cooking. They are always a bit more droll than American food shows, which is what I prefer, and they are cooking, really cooking . I’ve never met a chef with a perma-grin that I liked, andIf I liked them I’d probably doubt their culinary skills.
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