Mind of Migg

Despite what some say, 30 Minute Meals is a good thing.  There’s a lot of Rachael Ray hate out there, but I don’t really see it as justified.  She’s not a chef, but she never claimed to be.  She is exactly who she says she is and simply because she’s built a food empire out of a personality rather than gourmet dishes doesn’t mean it’s ok to bash her as a fake or phony.  Unless you’re jealous and petty.

I’ve recently been taken with Anthony Bourdain.  Love his travel show, and love his books now.  After watching Julie and Julia, I’ve become inspired to learn French cooking.  I browsed through the classic Julia Child original French cookbook, but settled on the Bourdain book because it had a modern take on the same recipes and was an entertaining read.  I feel like I can learn a lot from it.

Back to Rachael Ray.  As I looked up more about Bourdain, I found an entertaining blog post http://blog.ruhlman.com/2007/02/guest_blogging_.html where he bashed many of the Food Network stars, and complimented a few (like my favorites, Emeril and Alton Brown).  His criticism of Rachel Ray was similar in tone to others I’ve heard: “Her recipes are crap.”  “She’s not even a chef.”  “She says things like EVOO.”  I suppose from the perspective of real chefs, she was dumbing down the general knowledge of her audience and teaching people to make lower quality meals.  To a certain degree they are right, if her viewers watched her and only her, and then proceeded to make nothing outside of her many cookbooks (which mostly repeat the same recipes over and over substituting a few small ingredients here and there to call it different).  But everyone has to start somewhere, right?

Enter me, circa 2005.  Violet and I had just moved in together and started learning to be domestic.  The dishes I knew how to cook included spaghetti, hamburger helper, chilidogs, and fish sticks.  I didn’t know how to make anything from scratch.  But I did enjoy the Food Network.  Her easy dishes and chipper attitude sucked me in.  Her black bean stoup was probably my first successful dish outside of my comfort zone. http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/rachael-ray/black-bean-stoup-and-southwestern-monte-cristo-sandwiches-recipe2/index.html After that, I was making marinara sauce from scratch instead of buying it from the can.  Then it was pork chops with homemade applesauce, meatballs, and fried rice.  I started learning that it was fun and easy to avoid pre-packaged foods.  It was healthier and tasted a whole lot better.

From there, my interest in cooking only grew.  I graduated to a Mexican cuisine cookbook and then Gordon Ramsey’s.  His mushroom risotto is probably my favorite dish.  My learning curve is growing more now that I’m trying some of the new French recipes in Anthony Bourdain’s book too.  I’m brave enough to try different things or tweak recipes I find online to my liking.  Recently, I looked up one of my old go-to’s, the fried rice recipe in Rachael Ray’s cookbook and thought, “I can do way more with this now.”  And I did.  I have to give credit where credit is due though.

Thanks to Rachael Ray, I’m a halfway decent home cook.  Her recipes were tasty and easy enough to give me the confidence to continue trying new things while cooking. And her show recipes still come in handy for when we’re in a hurry, but would like to avoid going out or making something processed.  I’ve gone from chilidogs to Beef Bourguignon in no time.  So I disagree with Anthony Bourdain’s statement that she’s “selling mediocrity”.  Some of her viewers were actually inspired to learn more.