Vegetables for lunch

I started watching food television heavily around the early 2000s. I'll forgo the old food curmudgeon rants, and just state that I enjoyed the Food Network more when it was more instructional. Bobby, Giada, the Barefoot Contessa, Mario, the whole gang. Emeril had the whole talk show entertainer vibe, but essentially he was teaching you how to cook something. 

As I got better at cooking (or at least as I thought I was getting better at cooking), I started to look down on using recipes from my former food heroes. I hopped on the anti-Rachael bandwagon. 

I have really softened up since those days. Perhaps it's just that I've reached a level of confidence that I don't feel the need to put down those shows to prove my cred or whatever. 

Perhaps it's sort of like bike snobbery--in the end, isn't riding a bike a good thing, no matter who is riding or what they are riding? If someone is cooking a hamburger impregnated with bits of hot dog (a real Rachael creation), at a basic level, at least they were inspired to try to cook for themselves, right? 

Where my food television sweet spot has revealed itself is with two very different people--Jacques Pepin and Guy Fieri. 

Guy gets savaged in every corner. But "Triple D" is absolutely mesmerizing television. Quibble with whatever you want, but the man has an unarguable knack for television. He is good at what he does. And the food at these places sort of speaks for itself. Sure it can lean toward the ludicrously heavy turducken-level end of the scale, but at a lot of places all I see is largely scratch-cooked meals made with care and respect for ingredients. 

But Jacques is my one true food television personality. I just love to watch him work. The way his hands move, the gentle but fussless way he handles ingredients. His fondness for simple combinations that work well because they are rooted in French ideals that have been tested over hundreds of years. He cooks how people should eat. 

For example, take the above plate of endive and olives. The video of how to make it is only two unedited minutes long. Water, salt, pepper, endive, olives, garlic, chives (I didn't have any so I used shallots), vinegar, soy sauce. Place it all I a pan, cover, and 10 minutes later you have a wonderful lite lunch, perfectly healthy and satisfying. 

There's a demystifying quality to Mr. Pepin' dishes that I like. Some chefs I think get carried away with ingredient lists and overly complicated recipes. It's almost like Jacques realizes people have to buy all those expensive spices, or more importantly, he realizes that people have to load dishwashers! At any rate, everything the guy makes looks delicious and I have proven it several times by trying his recipes.