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02/14/2000 Archived Entry: "Enough With Chefs: Home Cooks Unite!"

Some months ago, I was asked to write an opinion piece for the newsletter of the International Association of Culinary Professionals, Food Forum Quarterly, and this is it. It is in the current issue, 1st Quarter 2000. What a way to start the millennium.

I’m getting a very positive response to it. Associates are writing me notes saying that it’s about time someone said this. Next week, I’ll be on the Los Angeles National Public Radio food show hosted by Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger, who call themselves the Too Hot Tamales. I have no idea what their point of view is. They’re chefs. It should be interesting.

I should note that the IACP is not a chef’s association. Most members are cooking teachers, food writers and editors, food stylists, home economists who work in corporate test kitchens … those of us in the food professions whose audience is mainly home cooks.

The column is called “Personal Taste” and Food Forum Quarterly explains that “This column provides food and wine professionals with an opportunity to express opinions or write a personal essay about an aspect of our business. It does not necessarily reflect the position of the IACP.”

Home Cooks of the World: Unite!

I am sick of hearing and reading about what chefs cook. How imaginative they are. How artistic they are. How they, right out of culinary school, have reinterpreted age-old national cuisines with which they have only a week-long vacation acquaintance. How stunning, architectural or even naturalistic their presentations are. How seasonal their food is, even though they still serve asparagus in January and acorn squash in July. How they cultivate relationships with farmers. How their creations respect their locales, the earth, the solar system, the universe, the galaxy. Enough!
Chefs have become so eager for media exposure that they now appear less interested in sustaining agriculture than sustaining their egos, their spokesperson gigs, and their inflated cookbook and endorsement contracts.
What really gets me, however, is not so much that our culture is turning chefs into celebrities on a par with ballplayers and movie stars, but that their food -- restaurant food -- is being held up as something we all ought to emulate at home. Or that what we cook at home isn’t as worthy as what they do.
Oh, poor Mom! She started abdicating her place in the kitchen more than two decades ago and now the vacuum has been filled by concasse, coulis and confit--foods she can’t even pronounce.
It has come to this because we now take our culinary cues from chefs. There are many Americans who think they can’t cook only because they can’t duplicate what a chef does. Home food and restaurant food are and should be very different things. The first is for sustenance, daily pleasure, and family bonding. The other is for excitement, glamour, and feasting on foods you wouldn’t make at home. And rarely does one cuisine work well in the other kitchen.
For instance, I just saw a television commercial for Uncle Ben’s new “Chef’s Recipe” risotto mix. The voice-over said the product line is “inspired by great chefs,” a claim that first sent me into a fit of laughter, then a shudder of disgust. The message to Americans is that risotto is such a difficult, “fancy” dish that only a professional chef can make it--unless you buy this mix.
Anyone who makes risotto at home, which is where it belongs and tastes best, knows that restaurant risotto is almost invariably a compromise. Still, risotto “inspired by a great chef” is being held up as a paragon. Indeed, in all likelihood, a chef’s risotto is not very good risotto. To be a great dish, risotto must be made at the last minute, and with careful attention for 20 minutes. Most chefs half-cook it, then finish it when ordered. Or worse, they mix cooked rice with sauce instead of braising the rice with flavorings--even in Italy. I made the Uncle Ben’s mix. It doesn’t resemble risotto at all, not even a bad one made by a “great chef.”
Here’s an example from a recent New York Times story. “Great chefs” were asked how they roast chicken. One swore by his rotisserie, which is at least true roasting, and on a piece of equipment that home cooks can, in theory, own. Most of the chefs, however, did not truly roast their chickens. They used restaurant techniques that give a result approximating roast chicken. They browned the bird on top of the stove and finished it, cut up, in the oven. Things like that. I wondered: what did we learn from this? That roasting a chicken whole, nursing it by basting it and turning it, as a good home cook does, isn’t good enough?
I’m not saying home cooks can’t learn a thing or three from restaurant chefs, but that there is a limit. With his (or her) professional skills, restaurant resources, and many kitchen minions, the chef doesn’t exist in the same universe as the home cook. For the media to imply to budding home cooks that they should take their culinary cues from the pros does both groups a disservice. It diminishes what chefs do well – and, of course, that’s plenty – and it degrades the noble art of home cooking.

By the way, I received the IACP’s Excellence in Electronic Media award last year.