I’ll admit it. My guilty pleasure used to be reality TV. Then I realized that some programs aren’t based on any reality I’m familiar with.
I’m not talking about the Real Housewives shows or Bare Naked and alone in the jungle except for the camera crew or tag-team wrestling. I know that’s all real.
But what I’m whining about are those pure fiction cooking shows cleverly disguised as reality television. With a nod to Martha, Ina, and Bobby Flay, one person who led the charge when it comes to cooking shows was perky Rachel Ray with her famous 30-minute meals.
I was such a devoted fan I actually took notes while I watched. Unfortunately, even her less complicated 30-minute extravaganzas routinely took me two hours. Sometimes three. Then another hour to clean the kitchen.
And there was the time when the cleanup required a ladder and took a week because it included scraping green stalactites off the ceiling. I forgot to put the top on the blender of pea soup before I hit purée, so technically, it wasn’t Rachel’s fault.
However, I do blame her for making me believe I could whip up her eight-veggie soup and triple-decker hammy sammy in a half-hour.
First you gather
Rachel opened her show with a little chatter, then grabbed ingredients from her cupboard and fridge. We 30-minute wannabe chefs never got to look inside that fridge because chirpy, chatty Rachel blocked the view while she yacked and gathered.
Magicians do the same thing. It’s a distraction. That way, nobody notices the person inside the fridge.
I’m positive someone was in there filling her arms with Vidalia onions, a pint of heavy cream, a stick of unsalted butter, two green peppers, capers, iceberg lettuce, a stalk of celery, some radishes, sweet pickles, and leftover kalamata olives from the previous 30-minute meal.
Oh yeah, and bacon. Because bacon makes “any hammy sammy super duper yummy.”
Just that part of the meal preparation alone — the gathering — would take me an hour. Rachel opened the fridge once and backed out with a half-dozen items. I’d open the fridge a half-dozen times and back out with the leftover olives, which I eat while I’m looking again for my scribbled ingredient list.
But then, I don’t have a hidden fridge helper hissing at me, “Here, take the peppers! Take the cheese! Take the bacon!”
That Southern charm got me
Eventually, I gave up on Rachel and switched my allegiance to Paula Deen. She’s a sparkly ol’ country gal who laughs a lot, drops “y’all” and “bless your heart” on a regular basis.
In the beginning, I wasn’t watching her videos for the recipes; I just liked to hear her talk.
“Y’all don’t mind my hair today. I reckon I look like I been rode hard and put up wet!”
Then she’d laugh, and it made me laugh. Her southern charm just won me over, and before long, I started taking notes. Paula did not gather ingredients. Hers were already there, laid out in front of her in a half-dozen bowls and measuring cups, ready to be assembled into gumbo or jambalaya or her famous dessert, “Not Yo’ Mama’s Puddin’.”
“It takes just a couple of minutes to put this dish together, y’all,” she’d say, and then to prove her point, in two minutes, she would dump all the laid-out ingredients: chopped peppers, diced onion, minced garlic, shredded cheddar, the crumbled bacon (‘cause first you had to fry you some bacon) and the cooked rice (‘cause first you had to boil you some rice).
There! Put it in a pot with some chicken stock (‘cause first you got to cook you up a chicken) and let it simmer for a little, and y’all are done!
She’d look straight into the camera and say, “Mmm, mmm good! Ready lickety-split. And I promise y’all; it don’t get any easier than that!”
Do the math
I bought it, never even questioning the “prep” time it took to chop, mince, shred, dice, fry, and boil. That Southern charm can be very disarming. So, just last week, when I saw a recipe for Paula Deen’s Crawfish Étouffée, a recipe that clearly promised “Prep time 10 minutes. Cook time: 10 minutes.” I decided to give it a try.
I don’t fully understand crawfish, so I bought shrimp instead. I kid you not, this is the first line in the directions, and I quote: “In a heavy bottom pan melt butter and add flour to make a roux. Stir constantly over a low heat until it takes on a beige color … about 30 minutes.”
Ummm. I know they do things differently down South, but wait a dadgum second — the first step in a 10-minute recipe is “stir constantly for 30 minutes”?
Hey, y’all, what kind of math is that? In whose universe does that even make sense?
Not mine! So I boiled me up some shrimp (3 minutes) and ate it while I watched a Columbo rerun.
