A TASTE FOR TELEVISION

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BULLETIN Château du Feÿ, 89300 Villecien, France. (0)3- 86-63-18-34/ Fax (0)3-86-63-01-33 P.O. Box 25574, Washington, DC 202-337-0073 / 800-537-6486 / Fax: 703-823-5438 E-mail:mail@lavarenne.comor visit our website at www.lavarenne.com A TASTE FOR TELEVISION By Carolyn O 9Neil W hen at their best, television programs give food lovers a glimpse into the cuisines of many countries.

They even offer viewers authentic recipes so the food can be recreated at home. Flip through several channels and you 9ll soon see the food flies off the screen in a variety of programs including chef how-to shows, news stories on diet and health, travel programs sampling local specialties. A torrent of infomercials demonstrate recipes designed to sell kitchen gadgets and appliances.

Julia Child was among the first to whet our appetite for food programming on television. The French Chef was aired on WGBH Public Broadcasting in Boston from 1963 through 1973. Wielding a cleaver and a clever wit, Julia captivated American audiences while demonstrating the art of French cooking to an audience composed mostly of home cooks.

Today 9s TV food fans might be surprised to know that she chose cSweetbreads and Brains d for a series that first aired in 1965. Spring 2002 1 continued on page ... more. less.

2 The pleasures of a classic French menu were explored by Julia Child, Michael McCarty and Anne Willan at a recent fund-raiser in Los Angeles for Human Rights Watch. Anne will be seeing much more of California as she and her husband have moved their US base from the east coast to Santa Monica. The La Varenne office remains in Washington DC. Patricia Williams Photo Julia ignited our taste for home cooking at a time when processed foods were galloping into the marketplace. And she performed in black and white for the first three years! Julia has maintained her role as the Grand Dame of television cooks to this day. Graham Kerr caught the attention of television viewers, lighting up the small screen as The Galloping Gourmet. He taped hundreds of shows, entertaining us with his electric enthusiasm for cooking. His appeal is palpable. He closes his eyes to savor a sublime taste of one of his creations and slowly reacts with a long pronunciation of cWonderrrrrrrrrrr- ful! d Now, he is embracing the wonders of healthful cooking. Look for Kerr 9s programs on PBS. Jacques Pépin is a food television classic too. Whether as co-host with Julia or with his daughter Claudine, he has produced hundreds of PBS programs. He is an inspiring teacher who demystifies the techniques of cooking and knows how to use the visual medium of television to showcase his art and his craft. Fans might be surprised to learn Jacques was popular on the talk show circuit in the 1970 9s. He entertained audiences with cooking demonstrations and showed considerable charisma as a guest on The Mike Douglas Show and The Merv Griffin Show. Pepin 9s most recent program Jacques Pepin Celebrates airs on PBS, and is accompanied by a companion cookbook with the same title. Martin Yan is another celebrated food television icon. His PBS series Yan Can Cook delivers Chinese food to our kitchen door. Martin is largely responsible for America 9s culinary evolution from the crock-pot to the wok. He performs like a magician, deboning chickens in seconds and chopping onions in the wink of an eye. Even if we thought we 9d never be able to make an egg roll on our own, Martin convinced us to try. Soon we 9ll be tackling Peking Duck once Martin Yan 9s Chinatown appears on PBS. Martha Stewart has been astronomically successful in bringing cooking shows to syndicated television. Martha Stewart Living has become the ultimate home economics teacher advising viewers to prioritize life skills that include home cooking, gardening and housekeeping. Other chefs, cooking school teachers and cookbook authors have inspired us with their prowess in the kitchen too. The most successful have established themselves by claiming a unique niche that showcases their expertise in a specialty that ranges from barbecue to blintzes. Lately Italian food seems to have the lead. My personal favorite is Lidia 9s Italian Table on PBS with the warm and welcoming host Lidia Bastianich. Cooking shows may have begun on educational television, but today they are part of entertainment television. Ratings rule so cooking programs are about food, in the same way Charlie 9s Angels 2 continued from page 1 was about law enforcement. Cooking is a vehicle for entertainment 4 the cook performs. This doesn 9t mean the recipes aren 9t accurate. It just means the pressure to keep viewers from clicking away is greater than when there were only a handful of channels. Could that be why we now have The Naked Chef and Nigella Bites? Both are British imports. Listen carefully and you 9ll hear caubergine d instead of eggplant; cooking temperatures are given in centigrade. Not lost in translation are the edgy production techniques that are more about music video than cooking classes. Nigella Lawson, host of Nigella Bites on Style Network, is sexy. No white chef jackets here. She 9s dressed as a domestic goddess (which is the title of one of her books.) She dips her fingers into cake batter at one moment and the next minute she 9s skillfully slicing a grilled steak as her dark tresses glisten in the kitchen light. No discussion of food on TV today can take place without Emeril 9s name popping up. Like Cher and Elvis, Emeril Lagasse doesn 9t need a last name anymore. A long time New Orleans star chef, Emeril was famous for his cooking at Commander 9s Palace. He loved to give cooking classes that promoted the restaurant and he continues to convey his joy of cooking when he performs before a studio audience crowd on the set of the Food Networks 9s Emeril Live . Emeril has opened his own restaurants in New Orleans, Orlando and Las Vegas. Meanwhile, his TV persona has risen beyond mere cooking show status. He is a celebrity even to those who never go into the kitchen to cook dinner. When Emeril and I were doing a fund raiser for the Foundation of the International Association of Culinary Professionals last year in Minneapolis, he told me that it is hard for him to walk down the street anymore. I said, cOh, all those girls! d He corrected me quickly and his famous eyebrows shot up, cNo! It 9s the men and the kids! They are my biggest fans! d Emeril has opened the kitchen door to millions of new food fans. Outstanding in Their Fields For 17 years, I hosted and produced a CNN show called On The Menu . CNN executives told us it was too expensive to build a studio kitchen so we always had to shoot on location. What 9s funny is now most cooking shows are filmed in studios, because it is far less costly than going on location. Apparently CNN was using a different kind of calculator. Our programs operated on a shoe- string and we didn 9t know there was another way of doing things. So off we went producing food stories encompassing everything from Boston seafood to Bemidji wild rice. My long time television cameraman Ric Blackburn joked dYou are outstanding in your field d because I was always standing in a field of something: corn, cabbages, even the taro fields of Hawaii. 3 4 This brings me to the entirely new concept of food on location today. Ming Tsai, on his Food Network show, takes viewers on Ming 9s Quest. He 9s food gatherer, hunter and farmer. He takes us along with him on a tour of bogs and swamps, then cooks all the ingredients he has gathered in these natural settings. This is my kind of camping. It looks as though every scene is styled by an editor at Gourmet magazine. Food discovery programs are in fashion today. PBS serves up food on location with programs from Mexico like One Plate at a Time with Rick Bayless and Culinary Travels with Dave Eckert. The Food Network travels all over the world with shows that include Mario Batali 9s Mario Eats Italy , Bobby Flay 9s Food Nation, and there 9s a wonderful new series called My Country, My Kitchen in which international chefs take us on a tour of their home cuisines. We journey from local markets to the cook 9s own dining room. The Food Network has just begun to promote the adventure aspect of culinary programs. There is a program called Appetite for Adventure in which the hosts go hot air ballooning. Even Keith Famie, the chef who was a contestant on one of the Survivor series, has his own Food Network cooking show. Meanwhile, Back in the Kitchen The jury is still out though on what really drives viewers to tune in and keep watching cooking shows. Some say that too much canoeing and not enough cooking can confuse and then lose the audience. They muse, cI thought this was a cooking show? Where are the pots and pans? Where are the recipes? d Sara Moulton 9s Cooking Live on the Food Network remains true to the kitchen-based recipe demonstration philosophy. She shares countless tips while keeping the pots bubbling on the stove. And now that I think of it, she is one of very few women on the Food Network. Why is that? OK, there are a few co-host types. There is a diet guru on Cooking Thin and of course reruns of Martha Stewart, but that 9s about it for women on the Food Network. The best news today is that most television food programs have their own websites. We no longer need to scribble down the recipe while keeping an eye on the chef 9s demo or send in a self-addressed-stamped envelope for the recipe. Just click on the program 9s web site and you 9ll find all of the information you need, including a promo asking you to ctune in again next time. d We don 9t need to be told. We 9ll be there on time and ready to go. V Carolyn O 9Neil is an award winning television food journalist at work on her own PBS television series, The Dish with Carolyn O dNeil. She reported on food and nutrition at CNN for nearly 20 years. 5 The new Guide Rouge 2002 (aka Guide Michelin) is surprisingly conservative. Cries of revolution were heard when Englishman Derek Brown was appointed editor last year. He displaced over 100 years of French dominance but judging by the first edition under his leadership, using a guillotine doesn 9t come easily to a Brit. After waiting for nearly 20 years, Guy Savoy has at last been awarded his third star. Popular as this restaurant is with its American fans, my local spies report toffee-nosed service and a disappointing blandness to the cuisine. Ledoyen, one of the grand pavilions on the Champs Elysees, has achieved three stars for its Breton-inspired cuisine, and there 9s a flip-flop between two of the top establishments in Alsace. Brown declares he wants to open the Guide to more international cuisines 3 let 9s hope so. Conferring a first star on two Indian restaurants is an admirable start. A more transparent approach to the Guide Rouge ratings is promised. Sounds good, but with masterly British reticence Brown recently talked to Wine Spectator for more than two hours without making a single comment on individual listings or the criteria used for the Guide 9s stars. cI will not give away state secrets, d he declared. Looking more closely at actual plates, I see color at all costs, from the glow of saffron, the world 9s most expensive spice, to plain baby beet, with its depressing tendency to weep all over everything. Brilliant green emulsions and extractions of herb are everywhere 4 arugula, watercress, and the exoticism (for the French) of cilantro or Thai basil. Lobster comes in an ink-colored broth of black trumpet mushrooms that is both eye-catching and palate pleasing. We 9re invited to play a game of guess the ingredient, with puzzles like a coffee reduction sauce with beef, lamb with a liquorice glaze, or a lemon-grass sorbet. Most intriguing of all is a nutty, smoke-tinged cup of ccappuccino d flavored with toasted and finely ground whole wheat bread at Astrance in Paris 4 a place to watch. ON FRENCHTABLES by Anne Willan 6 ANNE WILLAN ON THE MOVE At the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival, Anne Willan is twinned with Australian winemaker James Halliday in classes and tastings on the theme of Cooking with Wine (March 21-22). She is also featured at several other Festival events in the Melbourne area and will be teaching at the Strathlynn Winery in Tasmania. She winds up in Sydney at the Accoutrement Cooking School. After completing her end-of-season classes at The Greenbrier (April 21-26) followed by engagements in Washington DC at the Smithsonian and in New York at Macy 9s, Anne returns to France for La Varenne in Burgundy programs. They are scheduled this year from June 9 to July 5 (a few spaces remain, please contact La Varenne 9s U.S. office for details). For the weekend of August 2, Anne will be at COPIA in Napa, California where she will accompany Julia Child in celebrations marking Julia 9s 90th birthday. ALUMNI NEWS Robert Carmack 9s newest book, Thai Home Cooking has been released in Australia (Lansdowne) and the US (Periplus). V The Harvard Common Press has published Judith Fertig 9s Prairie Home Breads: 150 Splendid Recipes from America 9s Breadbasket. V Gale Gand 9s new book, Gale Gand 9s Just a Bite: 125 Luscious, Little Desserts (co-written with Julia Moskin) was recently published by Clarkson Potter. V Stuart Gregor is drinks editor for Australian Good Taste and wine writer for the Sunday Herald Sun. His first book is called Don 9t Buy Wine Without Me. V Amanda Hesser was presented with Food & Wine 9s cTastemaker Award d in the March 2002 issue. V Kate Krader is the features editor of Taste Magazine, published by Williams-Sonoma. V Cynthia Nims and Kathy Casey have co-authored Best Places, Seattle Cookbook (Sasquatch, 2001). V Gay Outlaw creates sculptures using food materials. An imaginative work suggestive of a set of coffee- tables, their solid surface in thick caramel, is on show at COPIA: The American Center for Wine, Food and the Arts, in Napa, CA. V Jill Prescott is host of the nationally syndicated PBS cooking show (and accompanying book) 4 Jill Prescott 9s Ecole de Cuisine: Professional Cooking for the Home Chef . V Caroline Ross has been appointed executive chef of La

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