Jacques Pepin, the master chef who helped popularize French cooking in the U.S., was apprenticed to a chef at age 14. Apprenticed. Cooking has always been a blue-collar job - at its best, a craft. It's a craft that was well-regarded in France, where people have long taken their food seriously, but nevertheless it held a position in the social framework not different in kind from such jobs as seamstress or automobile mechanic.
You can read the complete article at Spot-On.
Kevin Weeks is a Gather food correspondent (Paisano), personal chef, cooking teacher, and writer in Knoxville, Tennessee who spends too many hours on his feet, cooking. "Paisano" is a column focused on peasant dishes from around the world. To read more of Kevin's writings or connect to him click here. His blog, Seriously Good, is read by 75,000 cooks a month.
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Comments: 23
Thanks.
Not everyone can be a Food Network "star" but if whatever you do embraces creativity, I would say you'd be a star in my eyes. Just my two cents.
"Many "foodies" look at an outstanding chef as a God among men. Blue collar would hardly describe them."
I realize that's the case (and thank you for the complement) but the point is cooking is ultimately about feeding people just as making dresses is ultimately about clothing people. When we lose sight of this essential fact we are, in a sense, trivializing food, not celebrating it.
I certainly agree with your sentiments.
As a side note, I made your potato salad today. I'll let you know how it turned out after we eat it tonight :).
It seems obvious that loving the craft must come first, but when it comes to professional cooking it must also come second and third. Too many young people are getting into the business without realizing that.
And please let me know about the potato salad, I'm still searching for my first negative reaction (and will, frankly, be happier when I finally hear one).
Celebrity my ass. I'm just a cook. I don't begrudge the celebrities their status, I just think it's often pointless and sometimes a bad idea to have celebrity chefs because then the issue becomes status and money and not food or cooking.
" I've learned that planning classes with a focus on teaching is a guarantee the class will be canceled for lack of interest, so I plan classes for their entertainment value. "
How well I can relate to that!!!
I started teaching cooking classes back in 1982 and it all started as a fluke........found out I loved to do it and taught them - still do occasionaly - for over 20 years!
I didn't take it for the entertainment value as much as learning to cook something new from scratch (and who doesn't love pasta?). It's kind of sad that people always need to be entertained and can't entertain themselves.
I've also learned from the Food Network, but it's moving deliberately away from teaching to entertaining. which, in point of fact, doesn't do the Cult of the Chef much good. Rachel Ray is a prime example of that. But it doesn't help cooking either.
There are certainly folks who cook for it's own sake such as yourself and many of the others here who read what I write. And there's nothing wrong with cooking (or writing) for entertainment (or Paisano wouldn't exist). What concerns me isn't what but why.
I would think it wise to listen to those already in the field, especially those who have been there for a while, such as yourself. We all have our philosophies, but what good are they if they're clouding the truth? What was the movie . . . ah, yes: "Reality Bites."
I stopped watching the Food Network about two years ago, when Ms. Ray was handed her third (or was it fourth?) show. Bless her heart, but there's only such much goofy "charm" I can handle. Entertainment is the coin of the realm, as that's what sells the real TV audience - advertisers. (Off topic, but I've become disappointed in HGTV for the same reason - what happened to the "G" of Home & Garden Television?)
I am just a cook with a blog. No more.
And as a friend of mine commented, "What do I need Rachel Ray for? I can read the back of the box too."
Just thought I'd chime in on that "food is for eating" thought, as I have before. Frankly, the whole concept of "celebrity" is lost on me. I have met some, and dealt with them just as I would the postman, or a kid walking home from school. I never noticed a celeb having a problem with that, quite the opposite. Your comment about trivializing food, could be extended to the people that many alienate by the silly treatment of them as different, cause many people recognise their face or name. It's disrespectful, just as any form of dehumanization is.
Always good to stop by.
"Frankly, the whole concept of "celebrity" is lost on me."
The desire for celebrity is about affirmation. If you can't provide your own affirmation, you need someone else's. Some folks want to be greater than human. An impossible goal, by definition, if one is human.
Yeah, I've gotten so I almost always make it a day in advance.