What's up with all of these unimaginative mediocre writers picking up some celeb(rated) Chef's cookbook and devoting a blog to cooking everything in it? I saw Julie and Julia too guys. It's a good thing they're just blogs and you haven't quit your god damned day jobs to pursue a creative life or anhything. For fuck's sake Mario Batali's Babbo cookbook? The French Laundry cookbook? Momofuku at home. You guys are killing me. It's the pursuit of sameness that I despise most. Someone picks up a cookbook and does it and now every hack who fancies himself a writer is salivating about how Universal is going to option his blog. Then someone much better looking will take on the mantle of being a better you than you could ever be. So you'll meet all your food gods and jerk yourself off with duck fat onto the napkin Grant Achatz used at the dinner you were invited to. Meanwhile the movie comes out and everyone yawns. Your life story staring Topher Grace as a struggling design intern trying to write the great American novel but struggling with debilitating writer's block fell flat. That big montage about how you dug yourself out of it by cooking every single recipe from the one and only cookbook you owned only garnered an 11% on Rotten Tomatoes. Big Surprise.
It's an epidemic. Food Blogs are an epidemic. But cooking the book? That's should Sacrilegious. It's not some book review you're writing. Learn something, find a good recipe that interests you and move on. There is not one cookbook on the planet that would hold my attention for every recipe. I don't like Chicken mousse so I guess I can't cook through White Heat. Keller's French Laundry cookbook? I want to have time to drink and get laid in my life. Those recipes require lots of prep work. That's not a task for the home chef to be taken lightly let alone in some self-congratulatory blog devoted to cooking through it. There are so many amazing cook books that contain recipes that I would destroy because the technique and style of the subject is so different from my own. I'm the first to admit that I'm good with a few things and I'll stick to it. Practice it. Get better. Hone that shit til its straight. Ya feel me dawg?
I can't imagine devoting myself like that to one cookbook. let's just get this out of the way now: I use at least two different cookbooks at a time. You might walk into my kitchen wave yourself through a mushroom cloud of flour and trip over 3 or 4 cookbooks. I want to take bits and pieces from the different styles and techniques and make them mine. I am not a recipe guy. A recipe is a nice guideline to follow when dealing with something new. Once I'm savvy to the basics I'll improvise and make it mine. That's what I'm about. That's why the recipe collecting cookbook following hordes annoy me. It's blasphemy. Really.
Unless it's Paula Deen's cookbook. Take a Year and cook through all of Paula Deen's recipes and I'll option your blog and finance a movie about some squeamish geek that we put into a slowly inflating fat suit and watch it inflate. Really. Do it. It'd be like Supersize me on crack. . Shit, nevermind. I'll start the screenplay later tonight I already know how that story and it ends with gastric bypass surgery and therapy. Bam.
So for the love of god and all things that are holy, man the fuck up. Do something original. Strive for something other than the lard-covered blanket of numbing mediocrity and sameness...
love,
your friendly neighborhood Bastard Chef
No comments:
Post a Comment