dre in the morning

FoodTV personality Alton Brown will celebrate 10 years of his popular Good Eats program tomorrow night with a live episode broadcast from Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre, Atlanta GA. Brown, a cinematographer, was disappointed with the quality of most TV cooking shows, so he decided to produce his own. He enrolled in the New England Culinary Institute and graduated in 1997.

The pilot for Good Eats first aired on the Chicago, Illinois, PBS member station WTTW-TV in July 1998. Food Network picked up the show in July 1999, and continues (as of 2009) to air new episodes. Brown seems to take particular delight in making tongue-in-cheek references to pop culture, such as when he lectured an actor dressed as cartoon character Wimpy during an episode on hamburgers. (For trademark reasons, the surname was changed to “Whimpy.”) He has made numerous references to Fight Club in reference to the cooking processes of lye, such as an episode in which he discussed the process of curing olives. Episode titles themselves include references, such as “Mission: Poachable”, “It’s a Wonderful Cake”, and “My Big Fat Greek Sandwich.” A Good Eats episode takes about three days to produce, according to the special episode “Behind the Eats.” (wikipedia)

I’ve been a fan since that first episode, and owe Brown big-time for turning me on to John Thorne in his first book, I’m Just Here for the Food: Food + Heat = Cooking. Alton is the patron saint of all cooking geeks, as he closely follows the science and history of food as he presents recipes and techniques, a la Harold McGee. He’s a devout Apple fanboy, collects Spyderco knives, and has been interviewed by numerous uber-geek websites, from slashdot.org to gizmodo.com.

Heck, I even bought the original “Alton Salt Cellar,” actually a parmesan cheese holder from William Sonoma, made popular during the first few seasons of Good Eats. Unfortunately, the original design is no longer available, but Alton peddles a modern version at his web site.

Even though he’s a self-proclaimed geek, Brown avoids most kitchen gadgets and much of the time prefers to build his own cooking apparatus out of things found around the house.

You know the deal: Alton hates single-purpose kitchen gadgets. So I read him a list of unitaskers that I thought might make the cut. Here’s what did—and what didn’t—meet the maestro’s approval, along with his color commentary:

Dehydrator
• Useless. Why should I get that when I can get a box fan, bungie cords and cellulose furnace filters from the hardware store. I used it twice on Good Eats for herbs and all kinds of jerky.

Electric Knife Sharpener
• If I had any knives I hated that bad, sure. No. There’s not a good one made. I like my knives and use them too much to use a sharpener—maybe I’d use it on garden tools.

Margarita Machine
• What’s that? Oh, you mean blenders with stickers on them? I believe in having a really good blender. I have a Vitamix blender, which I believe to be the finest on the planet. I suspect people who would buy a “margarita machine” have already been drinking heavily. (gizmodo)

Back in 2002 (or was it 2003?) Brown appeared locally and I got to see him cook in person. He was exactly as he appears on his show; irreverent, witty, relaxed. It’s this familiar charm that makes his work so engaging. Alton never resorts to the crowd-pumping that’s a staple among many FoodTV personalities. Nor does he talk down to his audience. His monologues have that quality of sharing only attained between old friends.

During his presentation, he set off the fire alarm in the auditorium, and the entire audience had to evacuate the theater and wait for the firemen to arrive (New York State policy). During this unscheduled intermission, Brown quipped, “Now would be a good time to have a cigar, if you’ve got one handy.”

Important links

Ten Years of Good Eats @ AltonBrown.com
Alton’s newest book: Good Eats: The Early Years
Good Eats Fan Page

My favorite TV show, back when I used to watch TV (now I just watch Hulu, but “watching computer” doesn’t have the same ring to it as “watching TV”), was Connections, a show on TLC (back when that stood for the The Learning Channel, and they used to have actual educational shows).

Connections was a British export from Channel 4 hosted by James Burke, who also wrote the book Connections. The premise of the show was simple: everything that’s ever been thought or said or invented, especially ideas (which are called memes these days), are connected to one another. Mr. Burke would start out with ice cube trays and end up with the Saturn IV rocket. At least that’s how I remember it.

I was reminded of Connections by this fascinating article on Fiji Water in Mother Jones. You know, the stuff that comes in square bottles. Here’s an excerpt:

I sat down and sent out a few emails—filling friends in on my visit to the Fiji Water bottling plant, forwarding a story about foreign journalists being kicked off the island. Then my connection died. “It will just be a few minutes,” one of the clerks said.

Moments later, a pair of police officers walked in. They headed for a woman at another terminal; I turned to my screen to compose a note about how cops were even showing up in the Internet cafés. Then I saw them coming toward me. “We’re going to take you in for questioning about the emails you’ve been writing,” they said.

Pretty harrowing for the opening of a story on bottled water. Go ahead and read the whole thing. It’ll make you never want to drink Fiji water ever again.

Anyway, the piece quotes businesswoman Lynda Resnick, who owns Fiji. Resnick is quite the character, profiled here in The New Yorker. She’s not only a bottled water magnate, but she’s also single-handedly responsible for the explosion in popularity of the pomegranate. Yeah, you read that right.

And, to top it off, she not only started her own ad agency at 19, but she was the person who loaned Daniel Ellsberg her Xerox machine so he could run off a few copies of some important government papers.

The one Resnick quote from The New Yorker that stuck in my head was this:

She insists that being a great marketer is synonymous with being a great friend. “You don’t have to be a genius. You have to read the pop culture…You have to listen to conversations. You have to pay attention.”

The article prefaces this quote with the statement, “She collects people as avidly as she collects objets d’art, and she believes that her wide social network played a crucial role in (her) success.”

Frankly, after reading about Fiji, pomegranates, and The Franklin Mint (yeah, she owned that too), I was feeling a little depressed. Luckily, the web (like James Burke) is all about connections, and seeing a plug for a David Sedaris essay on The New Yorkers page, I clicked through for some patented Sedaris humor.

Mistake. Sedaris describes a trip to Australia, and a business woman there who relates this bit of corporate balloon juice:

Pat was driving, and as we passed the turnoff for a shopping center she invited us to picture a four-burner stove.

“Gas or electric?” Hugh asked, and she said that it didn’t matter.

This was not a real stove but a symbolic one, used to prove a point at a management seminar she’d once attended. “One burner represents your family, one is your friends, the third is your health, and the fourth is your work.” The gist, she said, was that in order to be successful you have to cut off one of your burners. And in order to be really successful you have to cut off two.

Pat has her own business, a good one that’s allowing her to retire at fifty-five. She owns three houses, and two cars, but, even without the stuff, she seems like a genuinely happy person. And that alone constitutes success.

I asked which two burners she had cut off, and she said that the first to go had been family. After that, she switched off her health. “How about you?”

This kind of philosophy probably fits right in with Resnick’s world view. And the really depressing part is it’s probably all too true. At least that’s been my experience with Corporate America.

So which two burners would you switch off? And why?

I’d like to think that guys like James Burke keep ‘em all on high, all the time. But I know that’s probably not true.

BRB, gotta go to Burger King.

IMPORTANT LINKS
I found the Fiji article on Metafilter, one of my all time favorite sites. The New Yorker piece was referenced in the comments on the original post.