Cooking For Show ... And Dough

I love watching the Food Network. Among my favorite cooking show hosts are Paula Deen (Paula's Home Cooking) and Ina Garten (Barefoot Contessa). The Gregory is partial to Emeril Lagasse (Emeril Live!) but I have to be out of stuff to do if I'm going to sit and watch that. Rachael Ray (30-Minute Meals) is talented and shrewd but for some reason she has a tendency to get on my nerves. Sandra Lee (Semi-Homemade) is also pretty clever and she has some good ideas but she's too perfect for my taste. Makes me cringe. Alton Brown (Good Eats) is interestingly cool. Oh, and I like that new show, Ace of Cakes.

I plan to watch the premiere of Down Home With the Neelys on February 2 ... looks cute. In the promo spot Gina Neely says, real saucy-like, as Pat walks away: "He keeps stealin' mah sugar!" Makes me laugh and that's a good sign. The only show I really can't handle is Anthony Bourdain's A Cook's Tour. Any guy who would consume still-beating cobra hearts on national television does not require my support. That's just showing off.

Ina Garten technically doesn't need my support either (she has homes in East Hampton, New York, and Southport, Connecticut; her husband, Jeffrey, teaches at Yale University's School of Management, where he used to be the Dean ... I'm not sure which of them is the bigger cash cow) ... but I give it to her anyway. A stellar cook, somehow she always makes me believe I could do what she does. Sort of. She and Jeffrey are so cute the way they bill and coo at one another every time he comes home. Ina will be cooking away in her spacious pure-white kitchen with acres of gardens growing outside its sparkling windows. Cut to Jeffrey in his late-model Beamer, top down, wending his way toward their rustically elegant manse, checking his watch often because he knows Ina's punctual about serving her fabulous (but oh-so-easy) dinners.

Cut back to Ina, who has just done a rough chop on some fresh (as in, it was growing in her yard just minutes before filming) basil and added it to a made-from-scratch tex-mex corn pudding, rich and cheesy and now nestled in a cosseting water bath, bubbling away in her commercial-grade oven. She is busy assembling a mouth-watering tequila-lime marinade for chicken breasts so plump and fresh, you can still hear the cackle. Somehow I doubt she got them for $1.99 per pound at Kroger. She pops the marinating poultry into her immaculate 85-cubic-foot fridge and immediately begins working on a key lime pie. Before you can say "lime zest" that's done and she has deposited a delectable homemade dessert into her gleaming freezer, which has a putting-green-sized shelf all cleaned off and waiting for it. (My pie would decompose ... and so would my mood ... while I shifted ice cream cartons, half-used bags of frozen broccoli, and assorted other cryogenically-preserved foodstuffs in order to free up a level surface.)

When I was a bride-to-be I was the guest of honor at several showers given by kind friends of my mother's. One gift with which I was especially smitten was the most darling little cut-crystal ice bucket, complete with sterling silver tongs. What did the wife of a schoolteacher need with such a useless item? I did not ask that question and neither should you. It was aesthetically pleasing, spoke of culture and an appreciation for finer things, and I couldn't wait to use it. We lived in an apartment and there wasn't much money and I knew practically nothing about cooking. I shudder to think what I might have been serving the night The Gregory came home and I had the table all set, including the tiny crystal bucket replete with ice, tongs resting glamorously atop the (melting) cubes. He took one look and laughed out loud ... but not at my cooking. Later he would tell it thus: "There were two glasses ... mine and hers. There was ice in my glass and ice in her glass ... and this ridiculous little bucket in the middle of the table, full of ice cubes nobody needed!"

Ahem. Let's just say, The Gregory has learned a great deal in the ensuing twenty-eight and a half years. Ironically however, now that he's sufficiently reformed to know better than to make fun of anything on my table, a crystal ice bucket would be the last thing I'd think of putting there. C'est la vie, y'all. The operative sentiment in my kitchen is and shall remain, "You've got two choices: take it or leave it."

Cut back to Ina and Jeffrey. He arrives home and they start hugging and kissing even before he gets in the house. They're giggling and she's promising him "the best weekend of your life." It's always the weekend at Ina and Jeffrey's. My invitation must have gotten lost in the mail. Ina sends Jeffrey outside to fire up the barbie while she sets the table. Because limes feature largely in the meal, she starts with a tablecloth that is just the right shade of green. She adds a huge bowl of limes to the center, offset by two vasefuls of hot-hued Gerbera daisies. She checks on Jeffrey, who has set the bag of charcoal briquets on fire. She apparently thinks this is adorable and titters at him flirtily, making sweet eyes. In the same situation with The Gregory, I doubt that would be my reaction.

Soon Ina and Jeffrey are chowing down on perfectly-grilled chicken breasts, sinfully rich corn pudding, and key lime pie with freshly-whipped cream and real lime wedges on top. And of course, the proper wine. The feast, as always, is a triumph. Ina can't stop blushing and Jeffrey promises to love her forever. The food fairies dance off into the night, sprinkling spoofle dust.

Like Jeffrey, The Gregory does not disappoint when it comes to appreciating my cooking (such as it is). He always makes noises of excited anticipation when he comes in the door at the end of the day and encounters either visual or olfactory evidence that I have been preparing something for him to eat. Even if all I've done is open a few cans or mash up a potato or scramble a couple of eggs, he comes up with positive comments and seems to relish every bite. Sometimes he adds a little ketchup where in my view none is needed, but he does not do it snidely. He's the classic easy-to-please type.

And also like Jeffrey, TG is as liberal with his kisses and whispered sweet-everythings as he is with his praise for my limited culinary accomplishments. As Ina would say: How good is that?

Comments

[Deppfest]

The shackled one is always delighted that I DON'T cook for him - not what he married me for, he says, which is just as well or he would have starved, bless him!

These sound like very strange cookery shows - we don't have anything like that on the UK!

[Jennifer]

The Shackled One will cook spag bol for me when I eventually come across the puddle, right?