I’d never be able to realistically claim to be a Big Deal in the kitchen. I’m an okay cook, I can keep us alive and on the chubby side, but I’m not a cook that is fancy about things. I use ingredients that I’ve used before in other dishes, and I stick to recipes that I have either already tested or that make my mouth water when I read them. I love nothing more than crawling into bed with a cooking magazine and reading recipes until I’m satisfied that I will be drifting off into a night of contented sleep.
Mind you, food is pretty much the only thing that I never seem to dream about.
Pity.
Another thing that is a guilty (not guilty) pleasure for me is to watch a cooking show on TV. I’ll watch pretty much any professional prepare pretty much any dish during a regular ol’ how-to show. I don’t get that same inspiration from watching Joe-Normal-Guy whip up a smoothie on Tik Tok while referring to himself as an undiscovered culinary genius. If I wanted to watch regular home cooks cook, I’d just set up a mirror in my kitchen and watch myself. The chefs on TV know so much more than I do and they exhibit such confidence in their skills that it’s more like watching choreography than culinary efforts.
And, you can keep your reality cooking shows—the ones that pit chef/cook against chef/cook in any number of manufactured situations—because they hold no interest for me. I think that the intense pressure of being judged on a single meal is just too realistic for my sensitive nature. Anyone whose mother-in-law is an amazing cook will understand what I’m not saying. But there is a lovely spell that is woven while watching a confident cook/chef prepare a dish in front of your very eyes. The way they talk knowledgeably and with passion about different ingredients, dropping their own personal (Ed: really?) insights, showing techniques that might be tricky to pull off if one only read the written directions, and watching their eyes beam with pride and accomplishment when the dish is at long last plated, warms my heart. The Hallmark ending we’d all hoped for!
The earliest incarnation of TV cooking shows was 1937’s “Cook’s Night Out”, a 5-episode show filmed live for BBC viewers in the UK. The show was hosted, and the 5 dishes assembled, by a French guy named Marcel Boulestin. He had moved to London England when he was 29 years old to open up an interior design business which ultimately ended up failing when he tried to reopen it after World War I. To keep himself afloat, he would write. Usually about food and art. As a writer he was both prolific and successful. By 1923, he had somehow been contracted to write a how-to cookbook about French cooking. It was called “Simple French Cooking for English Homes” and was a huge success.
Two years later, riding on the coat-tails of his cookbook success, he was able to open a restaurant. Two years after that, he opened another one and this one became known as the pinnacle for French food. It was also known as the most expensive restaurant in all of London.
Even so, Marcel was not able to make money from running the restaurant (so, NOTHING has changed after all these years?), and he soldiered on with his writing in order to make an income.
In 1937, because of Marcel’s accumulated fame as a well-known authority on French cooking (in Britain–no word on how he was seen in France!), and one assumes also because of his availability, he was tapped to become the first chef to demonstrate cooking for a live in-studio TV audience. His segments were each 15 minutes long and the very first thing ever cooked in front of a television viewing audience was an omelette.
Since live TV wasn’t to the point where it was able to be recorded and saved for posterity, there is only one still photograph preserved to document those early shows. If it is to be believed, Marcel Boulestin wore a smart looking suit, a plaid tie and a generous pocket square while he cooked. Snappy!
Canada has had its own string of memorable cooking show hosts and the first one who springs to mind (literally) is Graham Kerr during his “The Galloping Gourmet” phase from 1968 – 1971. Although Graham (now 92 years old and, one presumes, limiting his galloping) was English born to a couple of Scots and got his start in the TV business in Australia, his arrival in Ottawa was the birth of his Galloping Gourmet persona and celebrity. He would move to the States eventually and evolve his brand through different phases as time went along.
Martin Yan of “Yan Can Cook”, based out of Calgary, filmed an impressive 250 episodes between 1978 and 1982 before he got syndicated and headed to the States for even more success.
Stephen Yan of “Wok With Yan” started his TV cooking career around 1978 out here in British Columbia, and continued to film until 1995.
From 1992 – 2000, James Barber hosted his “The Urban Peasant”, also out of Vancouver, for CBC and was able to squeeze in almost 600 episodes.
By the time we moved into the 21st century, the field of cooking shows had really opened up to include local programs and audiences, as well as several national series. Canadians, it seems, loved their cooking shows.
These days it is a mixed bag of actual cooking programs vying for space with the competitive cooking races, so the field has continued to expand. But we all have our own little preferences.
For me, I’ll take settling into the couch with a cocktail in hand, to watch someone skillfully throw together a healthy main, veg, and carb, with the dexterity of a magician. Or salivate my way through the casual cobbling together of a fruit pie that turns out to be a work of art.
THAT is what I am content to call a clever and luxurious squandering of Me-time.
