Food Network Heaven

On Saturday night, I lived out my fantasy of setting foot in The Food Network Kitchen. No, I am not starring in a spin-off of "America's Worst Cooks."

To gain entry to the hallowed ground, all I had to do was fork over $50 for a good cause -- my kids' school, P.S. 107. The school's Wellness Committee, which is working to improve the school lunch program, held their first-ever cocktail party at The Food Network Kitchen in Chelsea Market.

Lucky guests got the chance to sample an assortment of appetizers created by local chefs from The Farm on Adderley, Egg, Palo Santo and Porchetta.

PS 107 parent Jill Novatt, who has the super-cool title of executive culinary producer at The Food Network, pitched the idea of the party to her boss, who gave her the thumb's up.

The evening wouldn't have happened without PR/event maven and P.S. 107 parent Jane Walsh, who helped secure vendor donations and NBC Universal's Randi Roberts, who helped pull the whole thing together.

Meanwhile, fellow P.S. 107 parents (and friends of mine) Melissa Vaughn, a recipe developer, and Carol Diuguid, an editor at Zagat, helped land the distinguished roster of chefs.

Along with her husband, GQ editor Brendan Vaughan, Melissa is writing "The New Brooklyn Cookbook," a collection of stories, recipes, and resources from Brooklyn's dining revolution (to be published by William Morrow in October 2010). Can't wait to read it!

I started tearing up when I took a bite of the delectable ceviche from Palo Santo.

“I should put up a warning sign on the green mango with pickled habenero,” said Chef Jacques Gautier.

"No problem. I'm crying because it's so good," I told him.

In fact, Gautier's pinto beans sopa with mole de Hongos was my favorite dish of the night.

Egg’s pimento cheese toast was also a big hit.

“It’s a no-lose proposition,” said Egg’s Chef George Weld.

Porchetta, the only Manhattan eatery represented served – what else? – porchetta, plus pizza from sister restaurant Veloce Pizzeria. I asked Porchetta chef Sara Jenkins what I should cook for my first-ever dinner party and she said “Keep it simple. Roast chicken, potatoes, and salad.”

Sounds good to me. Now if only she can come and help me out in the kitchen.

Worst Cook in Brooklyn?

It was my big shot at television stardom -- and I blew it.

About a year and a half ago, I got a call from a talent scout at Food Network who had heard through the grapevine that I was a notoriously terrible cook. She told me that the cable network was developing a show called "America's Worst Cooks" and she thought I might qualify.

"That sounds perfect for me!" I said.

They were looking for home cooks who were unable to produce an edible meal. At the time, I could barely prepare toast without putting the fire company down the block on alert.

"I'm your gal!"

But I quickly realized that I was not up for the challenge. While my culinary failures are legendary, I was not prepared to abandon my family and hole up for the long-term with a bunch of other bad cooks.

Last night I tuned in to a repeat of the show. Watching the contestants stumble through the kitchen, I realized that I've come a long way since that phone call. Not only can I now prepare toast (without setting off any alarms), but I can also whip up any number of other more complicated dishes.

Still, I could relate to so many of the contestants -- the young college grad who feared people's disgusted reaction to her cooking, the housewife who felt like a failure because she couldn't prepare a meal for her family, the woman who was afraid she'd cut or burn herself in the kitchen.

I'm not sure I would fare well in the competition since I don't cook well under pressure. But at least now I know how to properly hold a knife. I definitely don't regret my decision not to abandon my family for a shot at TV fame, but I wouldn't mind a Culinary Boot Camp for myself.

I definitely benefited from the quick knife skills lesson on last night's program. Here's a brief recap:

Chop - The most basic knife skill, which is used for foods that don't need to be cut in uniform shapes and sizes. To hold the knife properly, put your middle, ring and pinky fingers around the handle, and grip the blade with your index finger and thumb.

Julienne- To julienne, cut food into rectangular one-eighth-inch planks. Then stack the planks on top of each other and slice lengthwise into one-eighth-inch strips.

Chiffonade- A technique which is used to cut herbs and other leafy green vegetables into long, thin strips. Stack the leaves, roll them tightly, then cut across the rolled leaves with a sharp knife, producing fine ribbons.

Slice- You can make slices as thin or as thick as you want. Slice vegetables on the diagonal at 1/2-inch intervals with knife held at a 45 degree angle during slicing.

In all of these cases, make sure that your knife is sharp and watch out for those fingers!

You can bet I'll be tuning into "America's Worst Chef" next week to get some more pointers.

Why We Cook

In past generations, people learned how to cook by watching their elders in the kitchen. Nowadays, people learn how to cook by watching TV or listening to their ipod. Yes, you can now download countless free cooking shows to your ipod so you can learn how to flambe, saute, and broil while you commute to work.

I'm not pointing fingers or assigning blame for our country's poor eating habits. In fact, I'm addicted to The Next Iron Chef. And my good friend Muffy recently turned me on to "Why We Cook," a weekly radio show and podcast (on the Heritage Radio Network) featuring Chef Erica Wides (see photo), who teaches at the Institute for Culinary Education in Manhattan.

In thoughtful, conversational segments, Wides, who is down-to-earth and informative, answers the basic question "Why do we seek out interesting foods?"

The half-hour show isn't for anyone looking for quick and easy tips about how to get dinner on the table. Rather, it's for people who enjoy asking questions about why we cook the way we do and contemplating the sociological, historical, and cultural issues related to cooking.

Wides bills "Why We Cook" as a virtual cooking school on the radio, focusing on techniques, seasonal dish how-to’s, ingredients, and philosophical musings about the industry. Each show Wides features a different style and technique of cooking and answers listeners' questions about food. Occasionally, she interviews special guests from the culinary world.

When I type "How to cook" into the itunes search engine, I am amazed at how many free cooking podcasts are available, including "Food Done Right," "Bluewater TV" from the Bluewater Grill, and "Under the Tuscan Gun," featuring gum-cracking New York actress Debi Mazar and her Tuscan born hubby Gabriele Corcos.

The only problem with all of these options is that if I get hooked, I may not have anytime to actually cook.

We Like to Watch

Why is it that Americans are so keen on watching Food Network, but so reluctant to cook for themselves?

As a devotee of Food Network's primetime line-up, I fall into this category. But, with the launch of Undomesticated Me, I have been striving to not only be a couch potato, but to cook potatoes (and other stuff) as well!

When it comes down to it, we all have good excuses about why, as a nation, we're not cooking as much as we used to -- we're busy, we're lazy, and there are more easy, cheap mass-produced alternatives.

In Michael Pollan's excellent article in this week's New York Times Magazine, he explores this issue in depth.

According to Pollan, the decline of every day home cooking has several causes:

women working outside the home; food companies persuading Americans to let them do the cooking; and advances in technology that made it easier for them to do so. Cooking is no longer obligatory, and for many people, women especially, that has been a blessing. But perhaps a mixed blessing, to judge by the culture’s continuing, if not deepening, fascination with the subject. It has been easier for us to give up cooking than it has been to give up talking about it — and watching it.

Today the average American spends a mere 27 minutes a day on food preparation (another four minutes cleaning up); that’s less than half the time that we spent cooking and cleaning up when Julia [Child] arrived on our television screens [in 1963]. It’s also less than half the time it takes to watch a single episode of “Top Chef” or “Chopped” or “The Next Food Network Star.” What this suggests is that a great many Americans are spending considerably more time watching images of cooking on television than they are cooking themselves — an increasingly archaic activity they will tell you they no longer have the time for.

Not surprisingly, Pollan comes to the conclusion that something is lost when we rely on fast, cheap mass-produced food to nourish us.

When we let corporations do the cooking, they’re bound to go heavy on sugar, fat and salt; these are three tastes we’re hard-wired to like, which happen to be dirt cheap to add and do a good job masking the shortcomings of processed food. And if you make special-occasion foods cheap and easy enough to eat every day, we will eat them every day. The time and work involved in cooking, as well as the delay in gratification built into the process, served as an important check on our appetite. Now that check is gone, and we’re struggling to deal with the consequences.

The consequences, of course, are that we are heavier as a nation than we were back in Julia Child's time. The irony is that we are also more fitness-crazed and diet-obsessed. Pollan suggests that perhaps the best diet is to "Eat anything you want — just as long as you’re willing to cook it yourself.”

It's a provocative and somewhat far-fetched notion (what if I just "cook" myself homemade ice cream sundaes?), but, as Pollan acknowledges, it's unlikely that the age of home cooking will ever return.

Luckily, it's not an all-or-nothing deal. We can all do our little part in trying to reclaim the kitchen. I, for one, won't be ordering in and nuking a frozen dinner in the microwave tonight. I don't know we'll have for dinner, but I know that Avo or I will cook it ourselves.