Daily Loaf

Alton Brown is an odd poster boy for the modern Food Network. His Good Eats cooking show, which debuted on the network in 1999, is quirky. Incredibly informative. Culinarily wonky, even. Not the kind of thing you’d expect from the sanitized, simplified, housewife-friendly cooking channel that counts Paula Deen, Rachael Ray and Giada DiLaurentis’ cleavage as its primary stars.

But, somehow, Brown has been able to carve out a home on the Food Network as the resident Mr. Wizard of food, perfect as the knowledgeable color-man on Iron Chef America, or whenever the honchos need to trot out someone with both credibility and charisma. Good Eats continues to garner solid ratings and the recently released Good Eats: The Early Years ($37.50), a collection of recipes spanning the first six seasons of the show, will likely be a holiday cookbook success.

Back in 2002, after three solid seasons of incredible recipes based on serious culinary and scientific principles, Read the rest of this entry »

C. Emerson Fine Arts’ annual showcase of genre defying photographic works, Film Lingual III, opens tonight with a one-night-only interactive video projection that puts visitors in the spotlight. (“We need your bodies,” tweets gallery owner Lori Johns.) This year’s roster of artists — David Audet, Nancy Cervenka, Brandon Dunlap, Corey George, Illuminations 33701, Jamie Jackson, Laszlo Horvath, Matthew Lindhardt, Austin Nelson, Leah Oates, Dana Plays and Joseph Walles — promises diversity in their creative explorations, alternately serving up documentary photography, digitally-crafted images and sculpture made from found movie film. Don’t miss an experimental film screening hosted and featuring films by Audet on Tuesday at Café Bohemia. (Pictured: Transitory Space, Beijing, China, by Leah Oates) June 5-20, with an opening reception 7-10 p.m. Fri., June 5, C. Emerson Fine Arts, 909 Central Ave., St. Petersburg, 727-898-6068, c-emersonfinearts.com; and Short Attention Span Theater, Tues., June 9, 9-11 p.m., Café Bohemia, 937 Central Ave., St. Petersburg, free, myspace.com/cafe_bohemia. (Megan Voeller)

The Next Food Network Star VIP viewing party features a sneak peek of the season five premiere of the Food Network’s most popular show. Meet one of the finalists, Florida’s own Jen Isham, who provides helpful hints in a cooking demonstration, and get a tour of the International Culinary School. Please call 1-866-703-3277 for reservations. 11 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Sat., June 6, The Art Institute of Tampa, 4401 N. Himes Ave., Suite 150, Tampa, free, artinstitutes.edu.

If you don’t want your weekend to suck, click here for more events: Read the rest of this entry »

The author furiously at work decorating cakes for class

 With the rise of all-things-cooking has come a slew of television shows, celebrity chefs, designer cookbooks, and yes, that one-time silly-frillyness formerly relegated to weddings and 3rd grade birthday parties: cake decorating. The cake decorating movement, in line with the new consciousness about cooking (see: slow food, organic food, food competitions, gourmet food, Top Chef, and more), is breaking boundaries and setting new artistic standards as the general public gets excited about everything food-related. Programs such as The Food Network’s Ace of Cakes highlight the possibilities (due in large parts to the liberal use of rolled icing, or fondant) that cake bakers, caterers, and decorators have these days. And possibilities are in abundance! The imagination is truly the only limiting factor as cakes take the shape of buildings, airplanes, dirt-bike racing courses, designer purses, and more. Read the rest of this entry »

I listened to chef Ming Tsai last week on NPR’s All Things Considered. As part of their “How Low Can You Go?” challenge (cook a meal for four for under $10), Tsai cooked a chicken fried rice dish.

He related how fried rice is close to his heart because it’s the first thing he cooked on his own, when he was 10 years old, in Dayton, Ohio. Family friends arrived from out of town when his parents weren’t home. He invited the travelers inside with the traditional Chinese greeting, “are you hungry?” They replied they were famished. He’d never cooked before, but having watched his parents and grandparents make fried rice countless times, that is what young Tsai prepared for the guests. They loved it, and Ming Tsai said that was the first time he experienced the gratification of making people happy with food.

I’ve always enjoyed watching Ming Tsai, and not only because he’s a strapping fellow–tall, dark and handsome: His enthusiasm seems genuine, he manages to sound unscripted, and he engages his audience without pandering to them. Educated at Phillips Andover, Yale (Mechanical Engineering) and Cornell (Master’s in Hotel Administration and Hospitality Marketing) before cooking in Paris and Osaka, Tsai is a third generation Chinese-American who nonetheless identifies himself as “very Chinese.” I love that he hasn’t severed his ethnic roots; nor does he rely upon them for shtick.

Tsai was one of Food Network’s early stars, and as I listened to him on the radio, I remembered a New Yorker piece from that period (10 or more years ago) about a food personality guru hired to help groom Tsai for television. To encourage him to look up often from his food preparation and smile into the camera, the guru taped a photo of Tsai’s golden retriever just beneath the camera lens. I love that he was compelled to smile whenever he looked at the image of his dog.

But as yesterday’s NPR segment concluded, I realized I love Ming Tsai most because of what he and I share: a delight in making people happy with food.

The St. Pete Times has a great rundown of Florida’s biggest wine and food events coming up in 2009. Writes John Bancroft:

Two of Europe’s remaining crowned heads, a platoon of celebrity chefs and a gaggle of gregarious winemakers headline food and wine festivals from Safety Harbor to Miami’s South Beach in the coming months.

Yep, their majesties King Carlos and Queen Sofia of Spain will be slumming it with the likes of Paula Deen and Anthony Bourdain at the Food Network South Beach Food & Wine Festival next month. Maybe the $1,000 price tag for their shindig means that “slumming it” isn’t terribly apt. Royalty!

Read the rest of the Times event rundown here.