Mark Bittman joins the Guardian today in criticizing TV cooking shows. Bittman calls them “a) baffling and intimidating, and b) a charade,” because they don’t exist in real time with real consequences. “I was at a taping of a Food Network star a couple of years ago when he put a piece of meat on a stovetop grill over obviously way-too-high a flame, and the thing immediately caught fire,” he writes. “[A]n assistant came on and grilled a new piece of meat properly. After which time the chef returned, took it off the grill, and said ‘There you have it.’” A better program would keep Julia Child in mind, Bittman suggests: “The grand thing about cooking is you can eat your mistakes.” You can, but you may not always want to.
TV Cooking vs. Real Cooking [Bitten/NYT]
