As if the show were not enough, now we have to contend with the cookbook.  Who needs a Top Chef sitting in your kitchen?  After all aren't we each the top chef's of our own kitchens? What about on your coffee table? Oh my god shades of Sandra Lee--theme decorating.  Throne reading?  What ever would would Thom Filicia say?

Bring it on.  When? In March they say.  But what will they say?  Aren't all of the recipes already on the web site?  Well supposedly the book will dish up 100 recipes from earlier seasons, information about the divas I mean chefs, judges and crew as well as about who develops the challenges and how the some of the show's well known tag lines originated.  I thought all of this behind-the-scenes stuff was already shared in those brilliant blogs? Oh....could they have been holding back some really juicy information for the brilliant book?

And as if the cookbook wasn't enough, look for a game and of course knives to appear on the scene too.

Okay Hattie, Ida and Anne Russ have a t-shirt....I guess we can give Top Chef a cookbook!

Look for that signing at your local bookstore soon enough......

I was going to wait until the end of the season to go to town on the Bravo cooking show Top Chef, but I'm so astounded...no, apoplectic that I have to start now.  And I really like this show.   Tonight's challenge is to create a frozen FAST FOOD item based on Bertolli's Mediterranean Style Frozen Dinners.  Okay, so already there are at least three things wrong with this right off the top.

And I want you to know that I interrupted the drafting of another post about chopped chicken liver in order to publish this one immediately!

First, product placement.  Enough already because I'm beginning to think that something is really stale with this show and I'm not apologizing for the cheesy kitchen metaphors.  Who is claiming ownership here?  Is it the creative cooking minds who want their 15 minutes of fame and a good push into their own business or corporate minds cooking up ways to further subvert Americans and their hard earned dollars?  Or maybe the producers have somehow managed to run out of ideas for challenges.  If that's the case, then I've got plenty of local ideas. And I don't buy the whole food science aspect of this challenge.  Of course food science is critical, but you demonstrate this by asking the chef's to create frozen FAST food while selling us stuff? First freezing meals is a whole other level of food science expertise that most chefs do not possess and please, stop using us and all of these poor young chefs.  What's the next challenge going to entail...an infomercial or guest spots on QVC?

Secondly, tonight's episode includes Chef Rocco DiSpirito as a guest judge who has the temerity to introduce the challenge by saying that this placed product gives people the sense that they are cooking a meal themselves.  Excuse me?  What is the consumer cooking? Isn't it more like heating something up? And this coming from a chef who gained some measure of fame by showing how he ran a restaurant.  We won't say where he actually ran it into, but that too could be the result of a producer's poetic license.

All of this brings us to the real kicker which is the prize of a trip to Italy for the winner of the challenge.  So let's break this down.  Chefs are demonstrating their expertise in making a Mediterranean inspired meal using modern day frozen food technology and the winner's prize is a trip to Italy, the home of the Slow Food movement?  Huh? The irony here is too much.  Carlo Petrini, the founder of Slow Food in none other than Italy, created the movement in an effort to protest the opening of a McDonald's in Rome.  Slow Food is a celebration of local, homegrown foods lovingly prepared in your own kitchen (from scratch) and eaten leisurely at the family table.  It is meant to remind us where our food comes from and to instill an appreciation for the land.  Farm to table in simple, time-honored steps. So, in the end the winner of a FAST food challenge gets to go visit the home of SLOW Food?  Carlo Petrini, please meet the winners at Fiumicino and take them in hand.

Top Chefs, NBC bottom feeder producers...whomever are the brains behind this--we really are smarter than you're treating us.  And no, I don't think that the producers are imbedding an in joke.  Leave the frozen foods, product placements, gastriques, foams and amuses-bouche alone already and embrace Slow Food and Go Local.

Celebrating the land is cooking with a 21st century mind.

To learn more click Slow Food International, Slow Food USA and Slow Food NYC.

I love watching really good cooking shows where I can learn about technique, food science or even new foods.  I do have to say, however, I have noticed a few things that could be explored further on the current lot of shows.  And I still love em'.

First I am a devoted fan of Top Chef, the reality television show on the Bravo cable channel, where 15 relatively unknown working chefs compete in elimination rounds. I also enjoy watching Anthony Bourdain's quirky No Reservations on The Travel Channel.  Both these shows satisfy my thirst for knowledge about food and its marriage with exploration behind the line and on the road.  As a result of watching these shows I have noticed an untapped potential for which eager chefs all over the universe might like to crucify me.

This evening was the first episode of Top Chef's second season and it got me to thinking.  And let's just say right up front
Chef Bourdainthat it is all Harold Dieterle's fault....and well Anthony Bourdain's too.  For the uninitiated, Harold Dieterle is last season's Top Chef winner who was a guest judge on this evening's episode.  During an evaluation of the contestant chefs' efforts in the first round, Chef Dieterle made an offhand comment about local ingredients and acknowledged one of the contestants for including them in his dish.  I believe the Chef even said something like "...and I really dig it."  Anthony Bourdain for his part made the supreme mistake during a trip to India of filming a vegetarian feast.  He went on to compound his error by saying that he can now really appreciate vegetarian cooking.  What have these chef's done? They have opened up a door and created a spectacular opportunity.  There is no going back....

In a country with a wealth of food (good, bad and ugly), a plethora of television shows and their accompanying advertisements and unabated obesity and dis-ease, wouldn't it be phenomenal if television chefs helped lead the way? So let's just have this discussion without someone saying "but our advertisers.....but no one wants to go out and eat healthy food."  Let's have this conversation in the perfect world we all want America to be.  Why can't chefs on television pick up where local elected officials and inner city farmer's markets have left off?  Why couldn't a Top Chef episode include a competition about shopping at a local farmer's market first, talking to the farmers as they choose
Chef Dieterlelocal ingredients and then prepare their dish?  Why couldn't they include a competition where the most creatively, healthy children's meal is the winner?  How about a competition where the winner offers the most creative idea for a healthy eating campaign? What about including people like Alice Waters as a judge?  How about an entire season devoted to local foods?  For example, Top Chef: Hudson Valley or Top Chef: Oregon or better still Top Chef: Slow Food!  Any one of these ideas or similar would help reinforce the educational campaigns that some cities have already initiated.  Are you listening Sam Talbot?

Chef Bourdain isn't off the hook either.  What about including a show that demonstrates what American chefs are doing with local vegetables? What the Chef's comment about vegetarian cooking really infers is that American Chefs haven't a clue about how to prepare vegetables.  When was the last time you ate okra cooked by an American outside of the deep south?  I never eat American prepared okra.  Okra (or bhindi) prepared in an Indian kitchen....I'm all over it.  For those who have travelled to southern France, Italy, southern Germany, southern India and beyond, you know their amazing vegetable dishes and their tremendous respect for the land.

So Bravo and The Travel Channel (and dare I say Food Network) why not take a leap and enable your chefs to lead? I'm not saying abandon your current programming and convert everyone to carrot wielding robots.  Just incorporate the message of healthy eating and exciting food shopping into your shows so that Americans are receiving a consistent message.

Thank you.