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| Do you prefer clams or oyster (mushrooms)? - Photo by Wasabi Prime |
Showing posts with label butter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label butter. Show all posts
Monday, August 19, 2013
OMG a Recipe: Farmers Market Finds and Yes, Everything's Better With Butter
Farmers Market Fever is in full effect, yo. Which is to say, you may spend several trips to the market, fully bedazzled and bewildered by all the amazing fresh, local produce, and somewhat stymied over what the heck to do with a bouquet of baby artichokes, or a bag full of doughnut peaches. At least, that's how I roll when I visit the market: Dazed and Confused. Seriously, I can't decide what to get, because it all looks good and I know it always comes down to too much culinary potential, too little shelf-life freshness. But a recent trip caught me on an odd moment of laser-focus -- I picked two things, one favorite familiar and one exotic item, and it allowed me to come up with a most delicious, singular meal: penne and spinach in cream sauce, topped with herbed oyster mushrooms, toasted in butter. Ooh, la-lah, bitches.
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
UnRecipe: iStew and One-Pot Wonders
Baby, it's not just cold outside, it's kinda rainy and gross. The gloomy skies can be a bit of a downer, no thanks to the fact that despite Daylight Savings, it's still reeeeally dark out there. BLERG. The common complaint is that it's dark when you leave for work before 8am and dark by the time you get home after 5, making you wonder if the light of day ever made an appearance. DOUBLE BLERG. It's no wonder those annoying, sparkly Twilight vampires dig this place so much. But wait, there's a light at the end of the tunnel... and it's bubbling away in your stew pot.
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| Rich and hearty butter chicken, the cure for the Twilight Vampire Pacific Northwest - Photo by Wasabi Prime |
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
UnRecipe: Be My Valentine, Truffle Butter
It's no big secret that truffle butter is magic. Serious Hogwarts stuff. Rich, fatty butter that's whipped with bits of rare, earthy truffles -- it's a m-effing sorcerer. And it makes all food better, especially the simplest, most humble dishes. It's like a Cinderella fairy godmother. That you can eat. I daresay it even improves one's mood during the darkest, most depressing days of winter. So bibbity-bobbity-truffle butter, let's get it on with how truffle buttah makes everything bettah, plus what better way to surprise your sweetheart for Valentine's Day with something extra-rich and homemade?
It's a common mistake to assume women are the consummate shoppers and subscribers to Retail Therapy. Someone needs to take that saying off bedazzled pink t-shirts and figure out a way to emblazon that mantra onto manly canvas bags or bacon-scented cologne because dudes like to shop as much as the ladies. The retail yield may not be the same -- no boxes of shoes and twenty versions of the same blouse in multiple colors, but there's definitely an economy being stimulated. The Mister has steadily been upgrading and building his beermaking gear over the last couple of months with much unusual and customized equipment. Granted, no beer has actually been made over this time, but the regular UPS/FedEx deliveries of odd sized boxes are sure to make the neighbors thing we're slowly building a WMD, one part at a time, in our garage. But I know when he's online browsing, he's not immune to the odd impulse purchase. And it's not a pack of gum or a candy bar he's buying, he's getting duck fat and truffle butter.
I knew I was with my soulmate when he said as an aside, "Just so you know, I bought a bunch of duck fat and truffle butter, so make sure you're home to sign for that." No real intention or grand plan, it just sounded good. And of course, he's right -- it does sound good. Freakin' majestic, even. I can credit Woot for this purchase, their daily deals are the most wonderfully weird mix of random stuff that you never knew you'd need, and they inevitably tempt you and your credit card in unexpected ways. And that's how we wound up with a chilled box of duck fat and truffle butter set upon our doorstep like some marvelous food stork delivery.
I hadn't made any plans with the duck fat (posts to come on, that, worry not), but I had my sights set on the truffle butter. It's one of those ingredients that sound so luxurious you feel silly to buy it, but when you have it, it's a constant source of inspiration because you can't stop thinking about what it can get added to. I wouldn't drown anything in truffle butter, it's like a finishing salt, something added towards the end of a dish's preparation for an added layer of complex flavor. It blesses food with that distinctive earthy umami that truffles have -- slightly pungent and made all the more rich by being whipped into butter. Smearing a little pat on a prepared steak or a piece of fish, letting it melt and the flavor meld with the already cooked meat, or in my most recent makings: pasta.
Simple, simple, simple. That was how I wanted to test drive the truffle butter. Pasta is a neutral vehicle to carry its flavors, so I did a couple of quick pantry pasta dishes that were finished with a pat of this wizard-like butter. I made a basic bechamel and added the butter in the final stage of tossing the already-cooked noodles with the creamy sauce. A few shavings of Parmesan and it was thoroughly enjoyed on a cold midweek night. But pale as an albino -- if I had fresh parsley it would have perked it up for a photo-op. Maybe a chiffonade of fresh basil and a sprinkle of freshly toasted pine nuts. Meh -- mental notes for another time. The best use for the truffle butter so far, both in flavor and looks department was the classic pasta carbonara. A light, buttery rich sauce thickened with egg and flavored with pepper and garlic, the savoriness of bacon or some kind of pan-crisped fatty meat -- it holds up nicely with the truffle's distinctive unctuous quality. In this case, I had extra charcuterie of all sorts, so I fried those odds and ends up until crisp, set them aside and toasted some garlic and red pepper flakes in the oil before whipping up the quick pan sauce that lightly coats the noodles. Truffle butter goodness was added last, right as the cooked pasta was added. I like sprinkling the crispy meat over the top as a garnish, and reserving the egg yolk to top it. It makes for a very pretty presentation, that lovely golden yolk and browned meat crisps over a pile of lightly sauced pasta. Happy Valentine's Day to me.
The real magic behind truffle butter's sorcery is that it lessens the effects of the insufferable Seasonal Affective Disorder that hangs over our heads once fall kicks in and the sun Peaces-Out for the next five months. The fall leaves were beautiful, but there were days where the rain was so heavy and hard, you could barely see out your window -- and it tore that autumnal beauty to shreds. I saw skies that made me pretty sure the Deatheaters from Harry Potter were about to attack, they were so scary-dark and ominous. Dishes that are rich and comforting -- with just a touch of luxury -- make for a wonderful shelter from the winter storm. You almost look forward to the worst of the gloomy days, as it justifies your desire to bust out the truffle butter and flip Old Man Winter the bird. Count that as another plus in favor of having something as luxe as truffle butter being a staple in your refrigerator, and an easy indulgence to make every day (even Valentine's Day) a special one.
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| Pasta Carbonara alla Truffle Butter Badassery - Photo by Wasabi Prime |
I knew I was with my soulmate when he said as an aside, "Just so you know, I bought a bunch of duck fat and truffle butter, so make sure you're home to sign for that." No real intention or grand plan, it just sounded good. And of course, he's right -- it does sound good. Freakin' majestic, even. I can credit Woot for this purchase, their daily deals are the most wonderfully weird mix of random stuff that you never knew you'd need, and they inevitably tempt you and your credit card in unexpected ways. And that's how we wound up with a chilled box of duck fat and truffle butter set upon our doorstep like some marvelous food stork delivery.
 |
| Take that impulse-buy-chewing-gum! - Photos by Wasabi Prime |
Simple, simple, simple. That was how I wanted to test drive the truffle butter. Pasta is a neutral vehicle to carry its flavors, so I did a couple of quick pantry pasta dishes that were finished with a pat of this wizard-like butter. I made a basic bechamel and added the butter in the final stage of tossing the already-cooked noodles with the creamy sauce. A few shavings of Parmesan and it was thoroughly enjoyed on a cold midweek night. But pale as an albino -- if I had fresh parsley it would have perked it up for a photo-op. Maybe a chiffonade of fresh basil and a sprinkle of freshly toasted pine nuts. Meh -- mental notes for another time. The best use for the truffle butter so far, both in flavor and looks department was the classic pasta carbonara. A light, buttery rich sauce thickened with egg and flavored with pepper and garlic, the savoriness of bacon or some kind of pan-crisped fatty meat -- it holds up nicely with the truffle's distinctive unctuous quality. In this case, I had extra charcuterie of all sorts, so I fried those odds and ends up until crisp, set them aside and toasted some garlic and red pepper flakes in the oil before whipping up the quick pan sauce that lightly coats the noodles. Truffle butter goodness was added last, right as the cooked pasta was added. I like sprinkling the crispy meat over the top as a garnish, and reserving the egg yolk to top it. It makes for a very pretty presentation, that lovely golden yolk and browned meat crisps over a pile of lightly sauced pasta. Happy Valentine's Day to me.
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| Truffle butter makes you actually welcome cold, miserable days like this - Photos by Wasabi Prime |
Friday, August 17, 2012
Mixed Plate: Thanks for Keeping it Real, JC
I remember watching one of Martha Stewart's Christmas television specials as a youngster, where she had Julia Child on to help with a demonstration of making a traditional croquembouche, an incredibly festive party dessert of cream puffs, glued together with sugar syrup, built up to a towering size that reminds you why such a ridiculous pain-in-the-rear thing is made only for special occasions. St. Martha's dessert came out eerily perfect, as usual, an architectural wet dream of perfectly-placed, spiral formation dough puffs that, much like the Tower of Babel, would provoke the ire of God for making a dessert so haughty and self-righteous. Julia Child's version, however, was more croak than croquembouche, the puffs sort of haphazardly piled, nowhere near the pristine obelisk that Martha had done. Julia herself admitted in that perfect sing-songy warble, "I like yours!" But you know she didn't care because she wasn't there to compete, just to enjoy herself. Sure, JC's dessert didn't look as good, but it looked like what it should be, which is FOOD. I would be more likely to dig into that holiday sugar coma cone-of-shame than Martha's centerpiece-perfect version, which I'd be inclined to wonder if it was just there for show, like a garnish at a 1 Percent Holiday Soiree. I knew of Julia Child before that, but for whatever reason, the Croquembouche Incident solidified my love of JC.
I looked on YouTube for that Christmas special clip, but no dice. Most people have seen it or have heard of that bit, as it perfectly crystallizes the divide between the cooking/food personality pioneers with the new wave of media-savvy foodie-celebs. Julia Child would have turned 100 years old this week, August 15th, to be exact. It's sad to think that when she passed away in 2004, she was only two days away from celebrating her 92nd birthday, but when you think about it, she was one of the rare, treasured human beings who probably celebrated life every single day, and she was never short on love and appreciation. She exemplified True Happiness, not just because she enjoyed food, a healthy swig of sherry and had a stellar career as one of the most well-loved American chefs and cookbook authors. You got the sense that even if she never had her television programs or worked on Mastering the Art of French Cooking, she would have found what fulfilled her heart and just lived in that space forever.
All that fame and celebrity was just a byproduct of her effervescent personality -- people just liked being around her, and rightly so. I never met Julia Child; like everyone else, I got to know her through the TV screen, but she was approachable and funny, forever extolling the simple message of, "Yes, you can do this." I loved it when she'd drop things. Like a whole chicken. Just dust that baby off, the 10 second rule still applies in TV Land. She made mistakes but she never threw her hands up and got frustrated. It was just all a part of making stuff to eat, even the kitchen failures. The final dishes weren't dressed and styled the way present-day cooking programs gussy up their food. Granted, we expect that presentation now. It would seem unprofessional to have a simple, fluffy omelet not garnished with shreds of fresh parsley, sitting in the backdrop of a picturesque French country farm kitchen backlit by hidden studio lamps. When Julia Child made that omelet, it sure didn't look like that, but when you watch her old episodes of Julia Child and Company or Dinner at Julia's, you're reminded that this is what real food looks like. You saw it prepared from start to finish, no fancy editing or set dressers required. Don't fuss with photos, Twitter, or checking in on Foursquare, just effing eat and enjoy!
I wonder what Julia Child would think of the way food has become a part of pop culture and a social identity. I think she would appreciate the farm-to-table movement and the growing popularity of farmers markets across the country. I think she would roll her eyes at all the damn cupcake television series. Much like Martha's carefully constructed croquembouche, she would probably find molecular gastronomy tiresome and fussy. But I don't think she'd discourage any of it, because much like the path she took, she didn't do any of it because she wanted to be famous, she just wanted to be happy. So if you've found your bliss making five hundred red velvet cupcakes and playing with your food in a centrifuge, get down with your bad self.
Remembering Julia Child is a grounding experience. It centers you, like a really good hot yoga class and sometimes hits you in the face like a coffee mug full of bourbon. You think about the role food has in your life, and if you're being true to your own practice. I can only answer for myself, which is to say an active involvement in food is something I genuinely enjoy and it forces me to constantly learn new things. I'm not going to obsess over finding rare ingredients or filling my shelves with more gadgets to further separate myself from the part I love best, which is eating. But I do appreciate how meals are a means to engage in a dialogue that spans across professions, background and position. Whatever you do and wherever you are on the supposed social chain, everyone has to eat, and our resources all come from the same places, so we all have to do our part to be mindful. It behooves us to not be more educated over food preparation, and true to Julia Child's wisdom, it isn't difficult to cook a meal from scratch. There is no shame in having a simple omelet for dinner, and don't hold back on savoring every bite, because you know that's what JC would do. Don't forget the glass of sherry.
I looked on YouTube for that Christmas special clip, but no dice. Most people have seen it or have heard of that bit, as it perfectly crystallizes the divide between the cooking/food personality pioneers with the new wave of media-savvy foodie-celebs. Julia Child would have turned 100 years old this week, August 15th, to be exact. It's sad to think that when she passed away in 2004, she was only two days away from celebrating her 92nd birthday, but when you think about it, she was one of the rare, treasured human beings who probably celebrated life every single day, and she was never short on love and appreciation. She exemplified True Happiness, not just because she enjoyed food, a healthy swig of sherry and had a stellar career as one of the most well-loved American chefs and cookbook authors. You got the sense that even if she never had her television programs or worked on Mastering the Art of French Cooking, she would have found what fulfilled her heart and just lived in that space forever.
All that fame and celebrity was just a byproduct of her effervescent personality -- people just liked being around her, and rightly so. I never met Julia Child; like everyone else, I got to know her through the TV screen, but she was approachable and funny, forever extolling the simple message of, "Yes, you can do this." I loved it when she'd drop things. Like a whole chicken. Just dust that baby off, the 10 second rule still applies in TV Land. She made mistakes but she never threw her hands up and got frustrated. It was just all a part of making stuff to eat, even the kitchen failures. The final dishes weren't dressed and styled the way present-day cooking programs gussy up their food. Granted, we expect that presentation now. It would seem unprofessional to have a simple, fluffy omelet not garnished with shreds of fresh parsley, sitting in the backdrop of a picturesque French country farm kitchen backlit by hidden studio lamps. When Julia Child made that omelet, it sure didn't look like that, but when you watch her old episodes of Julia Child and Company or Dinner at Julia's, you're reminded that this is what real food looks like. You saw it prepared from start to finish, no fancy editing or set dressers required. Don't fuss with photos, Twitter, or checking in on Foursquare, just effing eat and enjoy!
I wonder what Julia Child would think of the way food has become a part of pop culture and a social identity. I think she would appreciate the farm-to-table movement and the growing popularity of farmers markets across the country. I think she would roll her eyes at all the damn cupcake television series. Much like Martha's carefully constructed croquembouche, she would probably find molecular gastronomy tiresome and fussy. But I don't think she'd discourage any of it, because much like the path she took, she didn't do any of it because she wanted to be famous, she just wanted to be happy. So if you've found your bliss making five hundred red velvet cupcakes and playing with your food in a centrifuge, get down with your bad self.
Remembering Julia Child is a grounding experience. It centers you, like a really good hot yoga class and sometimes hits you in the face like a coffee mug full of bourbon. You think about the role food has in your life, and if you're being true to your own practice. I can only answer for myself, which is to say an active involvement in food is something I genuinely enjoy and it forces me to constantly learn new things. I'm not going to obsess over finding rare ingredients or filling my shelves with more gadgets to further separate myself from the part I love best, which is eating. But I do appreciate how meals are a means to engage in a dialogue that spans across professions, background and position. Whatever you do and wherever you are on the supposed social chain, everyone has to eat, and our resources all come from the same places, so we all have to do our part to be mindful. It behooves us to not be more educated over food preparation, and true to Julia Child's wisdom, it isn't difficult to cook a meal from scratch. There is no shame in having a simple omelet for dinner, and don't hold back on savoring every bite, because you know that's what JC would do. Don't forget the glass of sherry.
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Mixed Plate: Put Down That Stick of Butter and Nobody Gets Hurt!
Paula Deen has diabetes. It wasn't so much the shot heard round the world but the self-satisfied guffaw of “I told you so's” and whispers of Food Karma from the Peanut Gallery that followed. As far as breaking news, it had as much impact as a big ol' "no duh," so why even bother to weigh in on this after so many armchair quarterbacks have snarked their way through this news? Because the only thing more troubling than the news of anyone getting dire word of one's health, is how the string of events following this news reveals our own food hangups and the true face of food-as-celebrity.
Surface jokes aside about the Queen of Butter being given a big red X on her bill of health, I truly feel for the gal. While I've never met Paula Deen, she seems a perfectly charming and well-intentioned soul, and this health verdict would come as unwelcome news to TV celebrity and average 99 Percenter alike. Type 2 diabetes isn't pleasant – it requires dilligent dietary upkeep, can mean a lifetime of medication, and if unchecked, heart attack, stroke, roll end credits. It's also one of the more common types of diabetes, often brought on by poor eating habits and smoking. Paula was guilty of both. She's never promoted her Southern comfort style cooking as healthy -- if anything, her blatant disregard for common nutritional sense warmed my heart in an anarchist sort of way. And really, is it any different than seeing Anthony Bourdain, one of her most vocal critics, wallowing in yet another food masturbatory soliloquy over pork fat and duck liver?
Paula Deen is not the enemy. If anything, she's the familiar food-frenemy we all have, the one who calls out “Cheesecake Break!” and encourages everyone to have just one more slice, or the one who brings bags of Oreos to the book club because Nicholas Sparks books are love story downers with a body count and everyone really showed up to get crunked on wine. She's the one who encourages indulgence and won't give you a scrap of guilt for any of it. And while one could argue she put the buttery gun in your hand, you're the one who ultimately decided to use it. Paula Deen is a symptom of a much larger problem America as a whole suffers from, its dysfunctional relationship with food. It's in our friends and family who take a pill every day for cholesterol or blood pressure, the school lunch systems that affect our children, and our kitchens stocked with preservative-filled conveniences we justify as timesavers for a life we are unwilling to ratchet back. And I consider myself guilty on all counts, but I know it's my responsibility to make changes, not rely on what the talking head on TV says. Paula Deen didn't cause this cycle of bad choices, and while she did nothing to aid in the remedy, she's a reflection of ourselves that we were comfortable with until the Ugly Truth showed up. And then she became the monster to chase out of town with torches, not because of what she did, but because she serves as a reminder of a fate many of us will share. For all the finger-wagging “shame on you” critics who are eager to tear Paula's buttery hide a new one, shake that finger right back at yourself. No one compels anyone to sprinkle crushed Ritz Crackers and bacon on everything, and just because someone's on television, it doesn't give them the credentials to be an expert, much less a role model. As Homer Simpson said: “It's not like I'm running for Jesus.”
I will say the thing that left me most unsettled was how calculated the whole affair seemed to be, and how carefully everything was positioned in her culinary empire before the D-Bomb was dropped. Deen waited several years to reveal this news, having already started on insulin medication. She's given full disclosure about becoming the new spokesperson for the medication she's on (her publicist has since quit), leading to new criticism that along with being hot for money, she's using the drugs as a crutch to continue eating maple bacon ice cream sundaes in the public eye. I'd like to use Bourdain as another comparative visual aid – he's admitted he's on cholesterol medication and continues to dine on fatty swine. I don't see anyone decrying his use of meds as a crutch, likely because it's less about nutrition and more of a high school popularity contest. Yes, Deen's sponsorhip is a ham-fisted (har-har) show of good ol' American Capitalism, which has made a lot of people upset, but really, for the longtime critics who find her actions reprehensible, she was already on their Nixon List and disappointed-er is not a real word. It would be like expecting more from Donald Trump, why he didn't marry a homely-looking girl with a nice personality. Chalk it up to chronic bad decision-making that the Queen of Butter is becoming the purveyor of pharm-fresh goods. The sponsorship was likely a move to mitigate the future financial losses of not being able to put out another cookbook dripping with butter and frosting. While that's all sorts of wrong, I think the shine needs to be thoroughly rubbed off all celebrity cooks in general. I have my personal favorites of famous food personalities, but I hold no illusions that the food is just window dressing, because at the end of the day, it's all Food Inc.
Over the weekend I watched the new cooking show, Not My Momma's Meals, by Bobby Deen, one of Paula's sons on the Cooking Channel, where he tries to health-up his Momma's recipes and reduce calorie and fat counts. Not a bad concept, but it was of course part of the planned effort to start the slow, eventual rebranding of Paula Deen's Kingdom of Butter, carving it down to more of a slim margarine tub. It seems unthinkable now, something calorie-conscious coming from the woman who makes Krispy Kreme bread pudding, but I think that's why it's her son hosting the series, acting as a buffer to initiate the ultimate goal, change a branded lifestyle of carbs, fat and sugar into something balanced and maybe someday, nutritionally sound. It's what anyone diagnosed with diabetes would do, the only difference is Deen is doing it in the public eye, and has million dollar sponsors to avoid alienating, as well as her minions who want her to continue to legitimize their own bad eating habits. And that's the shame – when the cameras are off, she may be on a lemon-chili-water juice diet for all we know, but because food fame is less about principle and more about moving product, there is a need to keep up appearances until polls are taken and demographics are realigned, to see if the public is poised to accept a more health conscious Paula Deen. Welcome to the industry of celebrity food, where TV networks and flashy products will always take the side of sales numbers. Yes, it's the choice of the individual to dance with the Devil in the pale moon light, and Deen continues to remain a cog in this Machiavelian food machine at the risk of personal health, it's just a sad state of affairs to see this kind of co-dependency. It speaks to our own media dependencies and how we rely on broadcasting to channel ideas and people into our lifestyles. The umbrage at Paula Deen is misdirected -- don't hate the player, hate the game.
This reshaping of a high profile cooking personality makes me think of Graham Kerr, the Galloping Gourmet. He started out in the 60s and 70s as a celebrity chef with cookbooks and a television show. His style was classic French cooking – full-fat butter, cream, the whole nine. And then his health started to fail and he had to make drastic changes which eventually led him to where he is today, being a well known healthy cook. It took time to reestablish himself, but that was probably twenty years ago, and it's nothing like how it is now, where as a food celeb, in order to truly “make it,” you have to give yourself over to sponsors who make you align yourself with their product. It's all well and good until that product is the enemy that's slowly hardening your arteries. The food-as-celeb factory that puts edibles into the spotlight is a devourer of its own young, ambivalent of the choices and risks people accept to keep themselves relevant, which continues my disdain over the notion of celebrity as a whole. But it also reiterates the idea of choice. People choose to do whatever it takes to get famous, even risking one's well-being, so that's a fate one walks into knowingly. And consumers can also choose what goes onto their plate, make smart choices on their own, including the best choice you'll ever make, to turn the Idiot Box off. Or as the movie Cable Guy put it best: Kill the Babysitter.
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| Buttah Makes it Bettah? Uh... not always - Photo by Wasabi Prime |
Paula Deen is not the enemy. If anything, she's the familiar food-frenemy we all have, the one who calls out “Cheesecake Break!” and encourages everyone to have just one more slice, or the one who brings bags of Oreos to the book club because Nicholas Sparks books are love story downers with a body count and everyone really showed up to get crunked on wine. She's the one who encourages indulgence and won't give you a scrap of guilt for any of it. And while one could argue she put the buttery gun in your hand, you're the one who ultimately decided to use it. Paula Deen is a symptom of a much larger problem America as a whole suffers from, its dysfunctional relationship with food. It's in our friends and family who take a pill every day for cholesterol or blood pressure, the school lunch systems that affect our children, and our kitchens stocked with preservative-filled conveniences we justify as timesavers for a life we are unwilling to ratchet back. And I consider myself guilty on all counts, but I know it's my responsibility to make changes, not rely on what the talking head on TV says. Paula Deen didn't cause this cycle of bad choices, and while she did nothing to aid in the remedy, she's a reflection of ourselves that we were comfortable with until the Ugly Truth showed up. And then she became the monster to chase out of town with torches, not because of what she did, but because she serves as a reminder of a fate many of us will share. For all the finger-wagging “shame on you” critics who are eager to tear Paula's buttery hide a new one, shake that finger right back at yourself. No one compels anyone to sprinkle crushed Ritz Crackers and bacon on everything, and just because someone's on television, it doesn't give them the credentials to be an expert, much less a role model. As Homer Simpson said: “It's not like I'm running for Jesus.”
I will say the thing that left me most unsettled was how calculated the whole affair seemed to be, and how carefully everything was positioned in her culinary empire before the D-Bomb was dropped. Deen waited several years to reveal this news, having already started on insulin medication. She's given full disclosure about becoming the new spokesperson for the medication she's on (her publicist has since quit), leading to new criticism that along with being hot for money, she's using the drugs as a crutch to continue eating maple bacon ice cream sundaes in the public eye. I'd like to use Bourdain as another comparative visual aid – he's admitted he's on cholesterol medication and continues to dine on fatty swine. I don't see anyone decrying his use of meds as a crutch, likely because it's less about nutrition and more of a high school popularity contest. Yes, Deen's sponsorhip is a ham-fisted (har-har) show of good ol' American Capitalism, which has made a lot of people upset, but really, for the longtime critics who find her actions reprehensible, she was already on their Nixon List and disappointed-er is not a real word. It would be like expecting more from Donald Trump, why he didn't marry a homely-looking girl with a nice personality. Chalk it up to chronic bad decision-making that the Queen of Butter is becoming the purveyor of pharm-fresh goods. The sponsorship was likely a move to mitigate the future financial losses of not being able to put out another cookbook dripping with butter and frosting. While that's all sorts of wrong, I think the shine needs to be thoroughly rubbed off all celebrity cooks in general. I have my personal favorites of famous food personalities, but I hold no illusions that the food is just window dressing, because at the end of the day, it's all Food Inc.
Over the weekend I watched the new cooking show, Not My Momma's Meals, by Bobby Deen, one of Paula's sons on the Cooking Channel, where he tries to health-up his Momma's recipes and reduce calorie and fat counts. Not a bad concept, but it was of course part of the planned effort to start the slow, eventual rebranding of Paula Deen's Kingdom of Butter, carving it down to more of a slim margarine tub. It seems unthinkable now, something calorie-conscious coming from the woman who makes Krispy Kreme bread pudding, but I think that's why it's her son hosting the series, acting as a buffer to initiate the ultimate goal, change a branded lifestyle of carbs, fat and sugar into something balanced and maybe someday, nutritionally sound. It's what anyone diagnosed with diabetes would do, the only difference is Deen is doing it in the public eye, and has million dollar sponsors to avoid alienating, as well as her minions who want her to continue to legitimize their own bad eating habits. And that's the shame – when the cameras are off, she may be on a lemon-chili-water juice diet for all we know, but because food fame is less about principle and more about moving product, there is a need to keep up appearances until polls are taken and demographics are realigned, to see if the public is poised to accept a more health conscious Paula Deen. Welcome to the industry of celebrity food, where TV networks and flashy products will always take the side of sales numbers. Yes, it's the choice of the individual to dance with the Devil in the pale moon light, and Deen continues to remain a cog in this Machiavelian food machine at the risk of personal health, it's just a sad state of affairs to see this kind of co-dependency. It speaks to our own media dependencies and how we rely on broadcasting to channel ideas and people into our lifestyles. The umbrage at Paula Deen is misdirected -- don't hate the player, hate the game.
This reshaping of a high profile cooking personality makes me think of Graham Kerr, the Galloping Gourmet. He started out in the 60s and 70s as a celebrity chef with cookbooks and a television show. His style was classic French cooking – full-fat butter, cream, the whole nine. And then his health started to fail and he had to make drastic changes which eventually led him to where he is today, being a well known healthy cook. It took time to reestablish himself, but that was probably twenty years ago, and it's nothing like how it is now, where as a food celeb, in order to truly “make it,” you have to give yourself over to sponsors who make you align yourself with their product. It's all well and good until that product is the enemy that's slowly hardening your arteries. The food-as-celeb factory that puts edibles into the spotlight is a devourer of its own young, ambivalent of the choices and risks people accept to keep themselves relevant, which continues my disdain over the notion of celebrity as a whole. But it also reiterates the idea of choice. People choose to do whatever it takes to get famous, even risking one's well-being, so that's a fate one walks into knowingly. And consumers can also choose what goes onto their plate, make smart choices on their own, including the best choice you'll ever make, to turn the Idiot Box off. Or as the movie Cable Guy put it best: Kill the Babysitter.
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