Tag: MasterChef

Sometimes Chef Ramsay is Wrong

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Food

I’d probably get thrown off his cooking shows by shouting back at him about some figurative flaw he perceives in my cooking.

  1. I do not think the default cooking time for steaks should be rare. Ramsay thinks it is. His guest chefs appearing as judges on shows like “Masterchef” also think rare is the only way to cook a steak. I can eat rare steak, but I don’t want to. Medium rare is my preferred choice.
  2. On one show, a chef from the South was cooking grits. Ramsay berated her for using water instead of stock. If that had been me, I would have said, “You’re damn right I’m using water because I don’t want my grits to have a chicken or beef stock flavor.” I live in the South. I eat grits a lot. Chef Ramsay comes from the U. K. where few people know how to cook, so he can keep his grits ideas to himself.
  3. Chef Ramsay hates dried herbs served raw. I love them. I prefer using herbs straight from our garden, and I admit that most of the herbs I use–whether fresh or dried–are cooked. And yet, I love raw dried herbs sprinkled on salads like salt and pepper.  Once Ramsay hit the ceiling when a cook topped off a dish with a leaf the size of a bay leaf. Hell, I don’t even do that. What struck me as funny was his warning that nobody likes dried herbs sprinkled on top of food. Ha!
  4. On one show, a pregnant woman ordered tuna and it arrived at her table raw. Ramsay went nuts, asking the chef how he could jeopardize a pregnant woman’s life by serving her raw fish. I would have agreed that the dish wasn’t what she expected, but would have added that pregnant women can eat sushi. So there was no health risk involved.
  5. Ramsay and other Food Network Chefs frequently claim a dish needs more salt. They’re probably right most of the time. I’d be kicked off these shows with the retort that there are saltshakers on restaurant tables for those who want to use more salt than dieticians recommend.
  6. I think my biggest complaint about many of the cooking shows is the chefs’ addiction to the blender. I have a blender. I can’t even remember the last time I used it. Chefs who are contestants on many shows think that a dish isn’t complete unless the primary item is placed on top of pureed something or other. Have these cooks been brainwashed? Why would anyone want a steak or pork chop served on top of pureed cauliflower? Or with a streak of pureed carrots filling up an empty part of the plate?

I’ll admit that I like rustic, earthy cooking. Even so, I think celebrity chefs often go too far out on the edge of nonsense.

–Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of magical realism novels set in the Florida Panhandle of the 1950s.

Masterchef-style cooking drives me nuts

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Food2 Comments

We watched the recent “Masterchef – Back to Win” TV series because it’s fun watching “home cooks” trying to create modern Gordon Ramsay-style meals in 45 minutes. Some of the meals looked interesting, even good enough that I would try them out if I had a chance and didn’t have to pay $200 for a meal at some fru-fru restaurant.

It comes down to this: my mother and grandmother cooked midwestern-style and southern-style food the way those dishes were prepared in the 1940s and 1950s in home economics courses or as presented in cookbooks like the Joy of Cooking.

  • Among other things, this means that a meal was composed of various elements that were placed separately on the plate rather than as something called a “dish” in which the elements are placed in an artistically assembled thing that’s viewed as one item–meaning stuff is piled top of each other.
  • I generally refuse to eat rare meat even though Ramsay and the other judges consider anything cooked longer than rare to be ruined. I don’t know when rare became the default cooking level when, to me, it’s basically still raw.
  • Whatever I order, I don’t want it placed on top of or next to some horrid-looking puree. This stuff looks (and tastes) like wallpaper paste and makes me want to pass a law that blenders cannot be used in food preparation.
  • If I order meat and asparagus, I don’t want the meat sitting on top of the asparagus. Why the hell would I want each bite of steak to include a piece of asparagus on the fork?
  • I love potatoes, grits, and other starchy stuff, but definitely don’t want it piled on top of the meat.
  • I also don’t want a handful of mixed greens thrown on top of the whole shebang and called a salad. Sautéd arugula is not a salad.
  • Random crap strewn around the plate (connected by colorful smears of puree) and called a garnish and/or an artistic presentation of the “dish” is horse hockey. Place the stuff in small serving dishes so those who want it can dump it on their entrées.
  • I believe that if chefs want to ruin food they should do it in the privacy of their own homes rather than serving it to others as something special for $200 a plate.

I know I’m out of sync with the kind of meals that TV’s Masterchef and Hell’s Kitchen promote, but I like what I like and would rather have a sack of Louisiana chicken and dirty rice from Popeye’s than the swill I see on these purported upper-crust cooking shows.

–Malcolm

Tonight’s Meal: Mac & Cheese out of a Box

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Food, writing2 Comments

I have no idea whether MasterChef and MasterChef Junior are what they seem or whether the contestants (especially the kids) are shown recipes when faced with cooking something they’ve never seen before. I suspect so, though that’s not talked about on the show. Whatever happens, I feel pretty inept in making meals like mac & cheese by dumping the ingredients out of a box with the word “Kraft on it.

My mother made it from scratch. My wife and I started out making a lot of stuff from scratch but slowly stopped doing that when it became apparent that buying all the ingredients for the scratch version costs more than the stuff in a box–like pre-made pie crusts, for example.

Somewhere around here, I probably still have a copy of my mother’s cookbook The Joy of Cooking. We do have cookbooks but seldom look at them because it’s easier to look up recipes on the Internet. Not that they’re certified by Gordon Ramsay and the other judges on MasterChef or Chopped.

Seems to me that as we get older, we get addicted to easy comfort food rather than spending the afternoon in the kitchen cooking something that would look good on an expensive restaurant’s menu.

I don’t think my wife and I are unique. I don’t know very many people who eat anything fancy unless it’s, say–their anniversary and they’ve gone out to eat. And usually, that means a place like Outback or Applebees rather than a place with any Michelin stars.

Perhaps the easy-to-find recipes on the Internet will keep all of us from becoming totally inept in the kitchen. Meanwhile, all I need are servants, We would eat a lot better. How about you?

–Malcolm

My Vietnam War novel “At Sea” will be free on Kindle from June 1 through June 5.