I'm sorry if I have been very bad in updating this lovely blog, readers, but I wanted to put up recipes that I invented or discovered, and so far I am coming up dry. Sorry, I'll try to update this blog more often in the future. But for now, I have a nice little rant to whet your appetites...
WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY????!
You know these two? No, well, if you watch Food Network recently, you probably do now. Anne Burrell(I screwed up her name on my LiveJournal rant as it's sounds like 'Amberelle' when you hear it), host of "Secrets of a Restaurant Chef' on the FN, and Beau MacMillian(who I have never heard of before but I think he's been on Challenge a couple of times) battle each other to see which of them can do the impossible - turn someone who can't cook to save their life into someone as good as they are.
Yep, another reality competition. It's bad enough we're going to get a SIXTH season of "The Next Food Network Star" this August(with blurbs to send in your tapes for Season 7!) and a possible 3rd "Next Iron Chef"(they are probably taping the episodes as we speak - Jose Garces will be having his first battle in the Stadium this Sunday and was given another lame black coat. Did Ecko make it, because I wish there was more color variation - like a green or red chef's coat) but this... oh my lordie...
Instead of saying what's so wrong with this, I will first quote an adage which had been disproven by the Mythbusters recently: "You can't polish a turd."
Well, you can, but the type of dung used can either support the adage or bust it. Lion manure is impossible to polish as it crumbles to bits on the slightest tough. Human feces - well, maybe if they were hardened dry.
The same thing goes for this sort of thing too; I admire these two chefs and their attempt to overcome the obstacles of their subjects lack of skill, but this is what I would have done:
(1) Don't make it a competition.
I know, $25000 is a big sum and even I'd go crazy if I was offered it in exchange for taking harsh training and learning how to become a super chef. However, if you fail, you get slapped so hard in the face you may never recover. I'm sure Hamed will be a better man for it, but after seeing Wilhelmina's face on the site, my heart shattered.
She said she was going to keep making that dish for her family and friends. I feel so bad for her because I know she'll be disowned by all she loved. Not to be pessimistic, but sometimes you just have to give up and admit that you are absolutely hopeless there, then go onto something you can excel in it. Wilhelmina, don't cook anymore - get married to a nice young man who will do all the cooking for you and find your way elsewhere. Don't end up like Julie Powell, who went crazy after trying to cook all 534 recipes in Julia Child's book, because you will never have her skill.
(Sorry to be such a downer, but I'm an optimist-turned-realist.)
If that was me, I would have foregone the competition and tried to help those worst-or-the-worst as much as I could. I won't clog this blog with my plans on how to make a good cooking course show, but I don't like competitions without some sort of compensation for the losers., that's me.
(2) Don't put them over your expectations.
Even if I didn't follow (1), I wouldn't force my 'students' to make shrimp soup(both of the chefs showed a dish that was technically shrimp soup); I'm not telling you to teach them how to make mac-and-cheese! Alton Brown taught his 'nephew Elton' how to make gazepacho, which is complex but not frustratingly so.
Start with the basics first. The way I see it, the reason these people are so horrible that they'd make Akane Tendo (read the first sentence in the History part) look like Julia Child is because they didn't learn anything from their parents - either because their mom is dead(like Akane Tendo's mom died) or because their parents were lazy or (like my parents towards me learning to drive) they didn't trust their kids to be in the kitchen.
(Luckily, Alton Brown and many others are campaigning to fix the latter by making books, episodes of their shows, and what not to teach kids to cook.)
Because of this, I would never try to make a potential culinary student learn how to make something like gumbo or Baked Alaska. That's a big no-no as they'll always mess it up. Wilhelmia proved this by adding too much soy sauce and turning the broth into the Dead Sea.
(3) They are students, not computers.
One of the contestants whined that "Beau was doing three things at once." This is a bad move, you two. I mean, I know these people aren't ten years old, but as I stated above, they never learned to cook in their youth, so they should be treated as ten-year old children and go slowly. If I were up there, scratching out notes like mad, I'd just throw the dang thing down and walk out for pizza at a pizzeria, which tastes great and I never had to do any work.
This is why so many food companies are making big bucks, readers - why waste your time "LEARNING TO COOK" when you can have instant ramen in a snap! Just boil water or pop in the microwave for a few minutes. I admit I am in the web of processed foods, but I am slowly breaking free. This is because I had the love of a good mother and a great home ec class in middle school. I want to be a home ec teacher someday, they have wonderful jobs. ^_^
But I know for a fact that teaching is a long labor of love and trying to teach someone to cook is ten weeks, let alone days, is nigh impossible. That's not to say you won't succeed, it's just that you have a tough path ahead of you, and kicking out people who fail is just wrong because you didn't take a few minutes to slowly go over what you're doing.
I'm aiming this at Beau, not Anne, because she was much more user-friendly and went over the details. "This is saffron, it is very expensive." Miriam felt bad when she screwed up by throwing a pack of saffron in the trash and Anne bit her head off for that, but she deserved it because she didn't listen. Teaching is a two-way street, folks. The students are also as fault if they do not listen and recall what to do.
(conclusion)
All in all, I'm not saying I am going to boycott this show. First off, I can't - it's like those other shows I ranted about, I say I hate them but I watch anyways because it's like watching 9/11 - you can't look away even though you hate it. Second, I want to see if these two chefs will eat their words when their finalist gets panned and their rep is smeared all over the ground like dog manure. Oh yeah, the fourth thing...
(4) NEVER PUT YOUR REP ON THE LINE!
Come on, I'd never do something as insane as that. These two are cocky and one of them will regret doing this. Nuff said.
