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The coincident intersection of food and sex is hardly surprising, each satisfying a certain hunger, which is easily explained by naturalists but has been studied and ruminated (as cows do) to inconclusion for centuries by psychologists and artists. That these carnal cravings, then, sometimes overlap, producing heightened senses is merely a matter of cosmic timing... a perfect storm, if you will, of Want. Of Need. Of Desire.
Among the cultural norms I have refused to participate in (except during stays in hotels) is the vast entertainment desert popularly known as cable, although cable itself is a rather archaic term, supplanted, it seems, by vibrations from outer space captured by unsightly dishes screwed to your house or by filaments of glass buried in the ground, the latter of which could, I suppose, still be called a cable. Still, gifts are nonetheless bestowed upon misfits and outcasts. My gift, upon acquiring a digital box which allowed me to continue watching tv after the demise rabbit-ear tv (the digital box produces tv programming that looks suspiciously like the evil cable but uses an antenna, liberating the tinfoil hat crowd from the tether of the arbitrary and vicious cable company) was the discovery of, lo, FIVE tv stations known as PBS, one of which was more or less devoted to shows of cooking.
Look, I am not the brightest person in the room but I am also not a naïf. I KNOW there is a cable channel that is about cooking.... I have SEEN it at the aforementioned hotels and friends' homes. But I was never drawn to it because each so-called chef on that channel feels like they are trying to SELL me something, while the PBS group (with exceptions, of course) try to TEACH me something. At least, that is my take on it.
Not to mention that there is just too much air time given to the arrogant (and largely incompetent) Emeril, that the rich and pretty cook (whose name escapes me but she's married to someone richer and famouser) has arms which are way too short, and that the popular one (Rachel Ray?) has a grating voice and makes food look pedestrian, and Iron Chef, like all the knockoffs now on network, is just plain goofy, especially with the comments by the pseudo-sophisticated jurists trying to describe the delicate nuance of glazed onion and pork snout mucus in voiced-over Asian-accented English.
And I have to interject here that my PET PEEVE of any cooking show is when the chef describes ingredients or utensils in the possessive case: my food processor, my saute pan, my coarsely-ground kosher salt. Food Channel guys always speak that way and thus merit my disdain.
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It's also not that PBS is without its flaws: the vegetarian cook (Christina Somebody) who gives bogus health claims about mushrooms and turnips and is herself a rather unappealing person in perfect harmony with her rather unappealing dishes, or her counterpart, the oddly anglo-named Daisy... odd because she presents her Mexican cuisine in a heavy accent and tight sweaters, displaying hard-to-ignore breasts, but spends an inordinate amount of time talking rather than cooking and all of her offerings are filmed in a manner that makes all the food look gray. Her saving element is that she has such a pretty face and a really great hairstyle and shows genuine enthusiasm for her cuisine.
The best cooking shows on PBS, sex aside, are the defunct Gourmet Magazine thing and America's Test Kitchen. Gourmet, whose show actually morphed into something queasy called Diary of a Foodie, used to be hosted by the erstwhile editor Ruth Reichl... and while Ruth is a very approachable, likable, uh, SOUL, I would not exactly put her into the sex symbol category, even disregarding the fact that she looks (and talks) exactly like the wife of my favorite and life-long professor-friend from grad school.
America's Test Kitchen is hosted by this guy who looks disturbingly like my childhood friend all grown up in a red apron, but the real stars of the show are three cooks who deftly show how it is done. All three are rather stout, with Bridget leading the face time category because, in fact, she has the nicest face. And, I have to say, her no-nonsense, stern demeanor also oddly has its appeal. Get the job done and get the hell out of here... if it were pornography, there would be, I am sure, a name for her approach.
By far, the prettiest cook on PBS is Tina Nordstrom (with umlauts on the o), a lithe, blonde, energetic chef on an equally-oddly-named show called Perfect Day. Because this article is about sex, I'm not going to go into the format of the show, but suffice it to say that the combination of Scandinavian scenery (for some reason all cooking is done outdoors) and Ms. Nordstrom's enormous appeal barely balance out the fact that she is not a very good cook (watching her vigorously grinding pepper must be TV's most curious moment) and that the food is, after all, Scandinavian.
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No. Hands down, my favorite sexy chef on TV is Joanna Weir, and my only reason for writing this down at all is not for you to read but for ME to try to figure out once and for all why I am so drawn to her. You may not know her... I barely do, having only seen four of her programs because PBS, in its marketing wisdom, chose to discontinue her show (called Cooking School) and run instead endless episodes of Lydia (which I LIKE, by the way....but Lydia is way not sexy) or that idiot barbecue grill guy who talks like he is reading a cookbook (and how many ways, actually, can you grill a slab of meat?).
No. I have only seen her four times which makes my constant musing all the more puzzling, and I have tendered the notion to actually buy her book along with the prized 4 DVD set of all her shows with which I would then lock myself in a room and learn cooking the old-fashioned way. By staring.
Let me start by saying that Ms. Weir is not a slim person. She is, after all, a cook and as my friend who teaches at a culinary institute tells me, a cook has to taste. And taste. And there are no thin chefs (with the possible exception of Ms. Nordstrom, mentioned above). Ms. Weir is not slim, but I am suddenly enlightened by the term Reubenesque and the so-far singular example of its appeal to me. Then there is the issue of the hair. Weir has this tree crown of flaming red hair in full bloom, in various styles, but the FIRST time I saw her, it was kind of tied up in a messy bunch on top of her head (you will note that I have no knowledge of hair styles and therefore lack the nomenclature) and I saw that and said: Whoa.
But it is the orchestration of the body-type, the color and mass of her hair (and accompanying pale complexion), and a certain manner she has while bantering with the camera and with her single student assistant and with me, and her dress and the way that she strategically places the high counter between her and the camera such that I cannot tell what her physique really is and her voice and a funny half-smile she has at the end of each pronouncement ("This is what I like to do....") that, I am here to tell you, makes me feel all warm and gooey inside.
Oh. And her food looks very passable. Edible even.
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End of Part One
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