Emeril Lagasse leaves Food Network

[Evo]

The guy never did know how to cook, but I have to admit, being home sick, I actually started enjoying some of the recipes that his chefs prepared that he pretended to cook. His show sure beat the 3 "Food Challenge" shows that they have been repeating every evening in his time slot.

Can we get rid of Susan Lee now? PLEASE? Oh and Ace of Cakes, have we all had enough of those comic book cakes yet? I wouldn't mind watching really intricately artful cakes being made, but these are not on that level.

I also enjoyed "Dinner: Impossible" with Robert Irvine, who has just been fired for lying on his resume. Who cares? His show was fun and he was a great cook. Now they've got that new Iron Chef guy in his place and I can't imagine how that is going to be. I think the first episode will be tonight.

Guy Fieri's "Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives" has got to be the best show on Food Network right now. I love that guy. I'm even warming up to Paula Dean since she told that Romulan contestant on their "Next Food Network Star" show that she absolutely hated her goat cheese and macaroni. Go Paula!

Is there any hope for the Food Network? The Travel Channel has Andrew Zimmern and Anthony Bourdain, two shows I just love. I tend to watch more food shows on the Travel Channel now than on the Food Network.

 

[LowlyPion]

Emeril is ok. It was for its time a novelty turning food preparation into a variety show. I was never wild for his seasonings and the whole flamboyant use of garlic was silly, but hey that's show biz.

He's really loaded on the weight though over the years, a common trend for all the food shows except maybe Rachel Ray. I saw him doing a show the other day from a Whole Foods store on another network and he looked like he needed the shopping cart as a walker. Not in the best of shape apparently.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

YAHOO Emeril is the biggest hack in the world!

 

[turbo]

Lagasse is only marginally better than Raye, who is abysmal! I know at least a dozen people (myself included) that could put these fakes on the run. I would love to see the Iron Chef concept be refined: Drop several chefs into a location that they are unaware of, make them select all their ingredients (except for olive oil, butter, and cheeses perhaps) from locally-available produce and see if they can cook. I would expect to easily out-class Lagasse and Raye, based on their crap shows. Child, Graham and others who had cooking shows before they became popular would pound these posers into the dirt.

 

[LowlyPion]

... I would love to see the Iron Chef concept be refined: ...

You'd probably have some suggestions for WWE too. That's all that is. Staged faux wrestling contests. Like you think the "surprise" ingredient is really a surprise and the outcome isn't in the script? You tink the losing chefs would participate if they didn't agree to losing before the show in exchange for exposure?

The original Japanese version at least benefited from the humor of having them ooh and ahh over sea urchin spines and cow stomach linings or fish lungs like they were fabulous delicacies.

 

[LowlyPion]

Child, Graham and others who had cooking shows before they became popular would pound these posers into the dirt.

Certainly Julia Child was a very capable cook. No fakery there. But by "Graham" if you mean Graham Kerr you should catch some of his old Galloping Gourmets today. His cooking is coarse and inept to my taste in comparison to what is available now.

 

[turbo]

You'd probably have some suggestions for WWE too. That's all that is. Staged faux wrestling contests. Like you think the "surprise" ingredient is really a surprise and the outcome isn't in the script? You tink the losing chefs would participate if they didn't agree to losing before the show in exchange for exposure?

The original Japanese version at least benefited from the humor of having them ooh and ahh over sea urchin spines and cow stomach linings or fish lungs like they were fabulous delicacies.

Yeah! Pretty much crap on TV. If Bobby Flay showed up here for a throw-down, I'd send him home with his a$$ in a satchel. I may not be a more accomplished cook than some of these people in some regards, but in a quickly-changing harvest when vegetables and herbs peak at different times, I'd kick their asses and show 'em the door. My mother and I gardened even when I was a little kid, and I have a better idea about when vegetables are "perfect" than the produce manager at your local supermarket.

 

[turbo]

Certainly Julia Child was a very capable cook. No fakery there. But by "Graham" if you mean Graham Kerr you should catch some of his old Galloping Gourmets today. His cooking is coarse and inept to my taste in comparison to what is available now.

Graham's cooking (yes, Graham Kerr) was a call to a meld of English cuisine (oxymoron alert!) and continental culinary arts. Childs' show was FAR superior, but Graham Kerr's contribution was entertaining and instructive. Delightful dishes ensued.

 

[lisab]

BAM! ...and he's gone.

 

[BryanP]

I'm glad.

Just like you Evo, I also watch Bourdain and Zimmer. I love their shows. The travel channel has better cooking shows than Food Network IMO.

 

[Moonbear]

BAM! ...and he's gone.

Hey, he OWNS good restaurants.

Hopefully I'll still get Food Network at all by next month. The cable company sent notice they're shuffling around channels to move more to the digital line up (trying to persuade people to buy the digital package, which they can stuff...bad enough they keep charging more for basic cable when they are taking channels away and force you to buy the basic package to get internet ). I think Food Network was on the list of channels being shuffled. Then again, I haven't watched it in a while. Too many hacks on and not enough interesting shows in a long time. Instead, I've been watching Verminators on the Discovery Channel (amazing how people can live in such filth as you see on that show, though I love laughing at the animal rights nuts who realize they can no longer live with rats and mice trying to come to grips with the fact that live traps don't work ).

Do they have someone else lined up to fill the slot, or are they just rerunning episodes of something else during that time?

 

[Evo]

You'd probably have some suggestions for WWE too. That's all that is. Staged faux wrestling contests. Like you think the "surprise" ingredient is really a surprise and the outcome isn't in the script? You tink the losing chefs would participate if they didn't agree to losing before the show in exchange for exposure?

The original Japanese version at least benefited from the humor of having them ooh and ahh over sea urchin spines and cow stomach linings or fish lungs like they were fabulous delicacies.

In the "real" Japanese Iron Chef I had read that the chefs were told the "secret" ingredient would be one of two items so that they coulfd have recipes in mind for each. The main difference in why the Japanese version is so much better is the guest hosts and the judges were of such a higher caliber and had so much more class and sophistication.

Although Andrew Knowlton is hot. Jeffrey Steingarten on the other hand is a classless pig and has no reason for being on tv.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

I never liked Emeril. Rachel Raye would be pretty hot if she were able to keep her mouth shut.

 

[Evo]

Do they have someone else lined up to fill the slot, or are they just rerunning episodes of something else during that time?

They're showing reruns of old "food challenge" shows, I've seen the macaroni one 5 times, the cupcake one 3 times, it appears there were only 5 different challenges and they keep playing them over and over.

 

[LowlyPion]

The main difference in why the Japanese version is so much better is the guest hosts and the judges were of such a higher caliber and had so much more class and sophistication.

Sorry I can't speak to the hotness of the US hosts, but the Japanese ring master is pretty camp. The dramatic bite out of the pepper always made me laugh. And the total hokey seriousness that they announce the results of these so called cooking death matches is a little too preposterous.

The recipes they construct are inevitably not useful, because who's seriously going to dump a bottle of champaign in a pot of muscles to steam them and throw away the broth, or grab a 4 oz truffle and start shaving and grating it like its parmesan, or wrap daikon radish in a strip of kobe beef? Clearly they don't cook on a budget.

 

[Evo]

The recipes they construct are inevitably not useful, because who's seriously going to dump a bottle of champaign in a pot of muscles to steam them and throw away the broth, or grab a 4 oz truffle and start shaving and grating it like its parmesan, or wrap daikon radish in a strip of kobe beef? Clearly they don't cook on a budget.

The extravagant ingredients were one of the key attractions of the original Iron Chef, they would comment on "that's $5,000 worth of caviar he's just put in there. He just made a broth of rare lobsters that are $200 a piece just for poaching and threw them away.

It was the fact that they were preparing things that you would never see in real life that made it interesting. It was a chef's dream to have access to the finest ingredients in the world and no limits.

I was always wishing I could have had access to their garbage.

 

[lisab]

Sorry I can't speak to the hotness of the US hosts, but the Japanese ring master is pretty camp. The dramatic bite out of the pepper always made me laugh. And the total hokey seriousness that they announce the results of these so called cooking death matches is a little too preposterous.

The recipes they construct are inevitably not useful, because who's seriously going to dump a bottle of champaign in a pot of muscles to steam them and throw away the broth, or grab a 4 oz truffle and start shaving and grating it like its parmesan, or wrap daikon radish in a strip of kobe beef? Clearly they don't cook on a budget.

LowlyPion, are you in Japan? I didn't know the show was on there!

 

[LowlyPion]

You're right there is a great deal of excess to it.

They spend thousands on ingredients and end up with just a handful of tapas.

 

[turbo]

Sorry I can't speak to the hotness of the US hosts, but the Japanese ring master is pretty camp. The dramatic bite out of the pepper always made me laugh. And the total hokey seriousness that they announce the results of these so called cooking death matches is a little too preposterous.

The recipes they construct are inevitably not useful, because who's seriously going to dump a bottle of champaign in a pot of muscles to steam them and throw away the broth, or grab a 4 oz truffle and start shaving and grating it like its parmesan, or wrap daikon radish in a strip of kobe beef? Clearly they don't cook on a budget.

You think? It's made for TV. Bring those idiots into a real kitchen with real limitations on their ingredients and let's see what they can do. Shows like this are entertainment for idiots who are so brain-dead that they need the cooking equivalent of car-crashes to hold their attention. Those shows are pathetic.

I could hold a summer-long cooking camp in which the "campers" could learn how to tend, harvest, and process fresh vegetables, and learn how produce wonderful gourmet meals on the fly using those vegetables. We could mix things up by bringing wild berries and fruits into the mix. They could learn how to raise and preserve herbs for use year-round and learn how to make delicious broths from poultry carcasses, etc, to serve as a base for soups later on.

To be fair, all this is just Cooking 101, and I would be charging people to learn what they should already know if they had more than a couple of brain cells to rub together. The food industry has a vested interest in promoting public dependence on their products. Indeed, 40 years ago, my wife's Home Economics class taught the girls how to make cakes from cake mixes, despite the fact that she and other farm-girls had already been baking breads, biscuits, etc, for some time. In my formative years, it would have been inconceivable that Rachael Raye could eat up TV time pretending to cook. Pathetic...

 

[LowlyPion]

LowlyPion, are you in Japan? I didn't know the show was on there!

The Japanese version has been on for years in the states. The US version is the knock-off that Food Network has copied - almost too literally.

The latest knock-off from Japan is that silly thing where teams try to run across 10 large rollers over a sea of mud to get to the other side or dodge big plastic boulders rolling down a ramp. The Japanese version has racy English voice overs. I saw ads for the US version the other day. It must have been on by now.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

You think? It's made for TV. Bring those idiots into a real kitchen with real limitations on their ingredients and let's see what they can do. Shows like this are entertainment for idiots who are so brain-dead that they need the cooking equivalent of car-crashes to hold their attention. Those shows are pathetic.

Have you seen Top Chef? What do you think of them? I think a lot of the chefs are pretty crappy but they definitely also have some that are pretty damn good in my opinion.

 

[Moonbear]

You think? It's made for TV. Bring those idiots into a real kitchen with real limitations on their ingredients and let's see what they can do. Shows like this are entertainment for idiots who are so brain-dead that they need the cooking equivalent of car-crashes to hold their attention. Those shows are pathetic.

I disagree. I already know how to cook in a real kitchen, and find shows about cooking in real kitchens are incredibly boring to watch. I can just buy the recipe book if they have some good recipes to share. The fun is to watch people cook things that are completely extravagant and well beyond what I could do in an ordinary kitchen.

But, I won't be watching Food Network anymore. Poof! It's gone today (just got the notice yesterday that they were changing the lineup). There are a bunch of empty channels now. If Discovery Channel disappears to the digital lineup, I'm looking into alternate internet providers, because I'm not going to keep paying higher and higher cable prices for less and less channels just so I can have internet.

 

[LowlyPion]

Have you seen Top Chef? ...

I think competitive cooking is about as interesting as competitive eating.

What would you think about a show that pitted physicists in an arena death match being tossed a problem over the top of the cage and then get timed to solve it? Call it Iron Physicist?

Loosen the rules and have pity on them and give them each 1 Physics Forum Lifeline to spice it up?

 

[DaveC426913]

My fave is Jamie Oliver. Divinity in simplicity. I am inspired to cook when watching his show.

 

[LowlyPion]

My fave is Jamie Oliver. Divinity in simplicity. I am inspired to cook when watching his show.

Some of his dishes look real pucker to be sure. I think he has a good sense of seasoning. Same with Gordon Ramsay and Curtis Stone.

 

[LowlyPion]

This got me thinking about other past on-air chefs and I remember fondly Justin Wilson and his gauraaanteeeees about what would taste good as he would dump his tub of crayfish into a giant kettle or stir his rueues until they were chocolaty colored.

Then there was Jeff Smith the Frugal Gourmet who I thought had some good ideas about putting food together. Unfortunately he ran afoul of a personality defect. http://www.current.org/people/peop813s.html"

 

[turbo]

I disagree. I already know how to cook in a real kitchen, and find shows about cooking in real kitchens are incredibly boring to watch. I can just buy the recipe book if they have some good recipes to share. The fun is to watch people cook things that are completely extravagant and well beyond what I could do in an ordinary kitchen.

I don't know about that, Moonie. You may be too young to have had much exposure to them, but Graham Kerr and Julia Child could put on entertaining and educational shows about cooking (including ingredient selection, preparation, cooking techniques, etc) without resorting to sensationalism and staged "excitement" and "enthusiasm". And they would get down to the details. For instance, if a recipe called for high-heat sauteing in clarified butter, they'd explain and demonstrate how to produce clarified butter. Alton Brown's show is probably the closest approximation that the Food Channel has to Kerr and Child's shows.

 

[vincentm]

I never liked Emeril. Rachel Raye would be pretty hot if she were able to keep her mouth shut.

They both suck at cooking. And Rachel clearly has mental issues, she's scary one day she might just turn on the audience and start whacking them all with a roller.

 

[vincentm]

I still enjoy watching Yan Can Cook when i come across his show

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

I still enjoy watching Yan Can Cook when i come across his show

I haven't seen him in years. He apparently endorsed the brand of rice cooker I own, his picture is on the box and it came with a booklet with 'his' recipes in it.