Who are your favorite Chefs or Cooks?

Who excites you when you read a recipe in their cookbook or watch their TV show? Who inspired you to develop your cooking skills? It does not have to be someone famous either.

I was introduced to cooking by my dad. He was of Polish decent and cooked sauerkraut, keilbasa, etc. My favorite food as a kid was SOS, an Army concoction that was described in mixed company as "Chipped Beef on Toast". I didn't really start cooking until I was married. I bought a Betty Crocker Cookbook and my family suffered many failures along the years.

I'm a bit obsessive/compulsive so when I get interested in something I research it and study it and then tackle it with gusto. Michael Rhulman introduced me to curing meats and making sausages. For Christmas, my family each received a care package of applesmoked bacon, pancetta, Hot Italian Sausages, etc, etc.

Julia Child is a Goddess in my book. I have learned much from her. I reach for the CIA Manual and the Joy of Cooking when I don't know how to perform a task. Thomas Keller also makes me want to try most of his recipes.

:D

Around home it was my mother and my dad's mother.

They both taught me canning and pickling and freezing, how to preserve the goodness of summer for the winter. Grandma was a real baker though. Cakes were her specialty especially Martha Washington Cake and something she called a Lady Baltimore cake. She also liked coconut (as did my dad) so made coconut cakes w/ coconut frosting and coconut pies. She also made a to die for chocolate frosting w/ black walnuts which to this day I can't replicate. :P and she was definitely the biscuit queen, light and flaky rules! :D

My mom because, like all of her parenting, she modeling what we were supposed to do, then let us do it (as best we could. ;-) ) I learned to make salad first. set the table, plate up and pass out dessert. Eventually I moved on to making brownies and fudge and making my own eggs for breakfast. (I was allowed to use the stove as long as someone was home with me.)

Professionally, I've admired over the years:

Julia Child

I used to watch her show in the very early PBS years when I was a wee tot. Even then I could grasp the idea that some food was better quality than others and better quality ingredients = better food at the table (and in some cases easier prep and cooking). So I always paid attention when she would pick up two seemingly like things in a store and say why one was better than the other. And that you could save money by adding noodles and sauce with a small piece of meat for example. Plus, she was just fall down funny and entertaining, even to a three and four year old. :D


Graham Kerr

The Galloping Gourmet was part cooking show, part travelogue, so it was a twofer! He would usually show some trip that he and his TREENA took and then try to replicate on the show what they ate on vacation. Even though the early 70s was the era of unfortunate food like fish mousse, he was and is very funny. His enthusiasm for good food and all things table related is infectious. Even if he was half sloshed by the end of the show, I never missed it when I was 8 and 9. :P


Jacques Pepin

:loveya: What can I say? I think he was my first ever TV crush. :loveya: He 's a 1000 different kinds of adorable, and a primo chef to boot. This is when I first started really concentrating on cooking technique: words like braise and saute first entered my vocabulary. And he's so easily talented, it looks like he just waves his hand and everything is finished.


Lately, I've really liked Alice Waters, Rick Bayless, and Sara Moulton.



My favorite cookbook is and always will be:

Ladies Home Companion Cookbook (1943)

I have my mother's 1943 Ladies Home Companion Cookbook, a fat, 2000-page food bible. It is my first go to book for just about everything. Its my cooking brain. I'd be lost without it! Actually, I think it was my mother's dad's cookbook and he gave it to her when mom and dad got married.

Ladies Home Companion Cookbook is a veritable encyclopedia of food and cooking. It was the Joy of Cooking of its day. Since it was published during the war, a lot of the recipes are geared toward what to do if you are on rations or on a shoestring, without it sounding the least bit yucky or like you are on rations to start with. The editors of this edition definitely knew how to get the most out of a very little. They take great pains to explain proper nutrition, balanced meals, and optimal cooking and storage techniques so that you don't waste nutrients and food, or make yourself sick. :P

Amazingly, even though this was way before the era of food tourism, a lot of the basics of European cuisine are in this book. Bouillabaisse? Check. Hollandaise and Bearnaise? Check. Puff pastry? Check. Beef Wellington? Check. Home-made sauerkraut? Check. Home-made pickles? Check. There's even a recipe for how to make your own phyllo dough for your own spanakopita or baklava.

The editors are also free with variations and substitutions, so they don't come across as if the recipe on the page is the only way to do it. I really like that. It gave me the freedom and the confidence to experiment over the years.

So, if I'm thinking about a particular recipe or have a "how do I ... ," I look in the LHCC first to see what they say.

Lastly I love it so much since it is written on and stuffed to the gills with recipes torn out from other places from Mom, granddad, grandma, So they are there with me too. :-)


Wow, thanks for reading. Didn't realize I could carry on so about cooking influences. :-)

Sadly, most of those grand old cakes are unknown to most people. I wonder how many have ever tasted a Lane cake, or a Lady Baltimore, or even a homemade chiffon or upside down cake. I recall the first time I made boiled icing. Ha! I was making a Lane cake for my mother's birthday, and it all looked fine until the cake had been finished for about an hour. The frosting had slid down off the cake and onto the plate all 'round, and onto the table itself. And I was an experienced cook by then!

So keep baking and sharing the results so that some people can taste a first rate homemade cake.

That's a new one on me.

:D

Supposedly this was the concoction of a woman named Emma Lane who won a prize at the fair with it. Often, the filling has coconut and some brandy in it.

1 c. butter (softened)
2 c. sugar
3 c. sifted cake flour
1 tbsp. plus 1 tsp. baking powder
3/4 c. milk
1 tsp. vanilla extract
8 egg whites

Cream butter, gradually add sugar, beating well at medium speed of an electric mixer. Combine flour and baking powder; add to creamed mixture alternately with milk; beginning and ending with flour mixture. Mix after each addition. Stir in vanilla.
Beat egg whites (eggs should be at room temperature) until stiff peaks form; fold into batter.

Pour batter into 4 greased and floured 9 inch round cake pans. Bake at 325 degrees for 18 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in canter comes out clean. Cool in pans 10 minutes; remove from pans, and let cool completely on wire racks. (Layers are very tender and fragile, so handle them carefully.)

Spread Lane Cake filling between layers and on top of cake. Spread Seven-Minute Frosting on sides. Garnish with pecan halves, if desired. Yield: one 4-layer cake.


LANE CAKE FILLING:

8 egg yolks
2 c. sugar
1 c. butter
2 c. chopped pecans
1 c. chopped raisins
1 (20 oz.) can crushed pineapple (well drained)

Combine egg yolks, sugar and butter in a heavy saucepan. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until thickened (about 20 minutes). Remove from heat, and stir in the remaining ingredients. Cool filling completely. Yield: 3 3/4 cups.

SEVEN-MINUTE FROSTING:

1/2 c. sugar
1/4 c. plus 1 tbsp. cold water
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2 egg whites
1 tbsp. light corn syrup

Combine all ingredients except vanilla in top of a large double boiler. Beat at low speed of an electric mixer 30 seconds or just until blended. Place over boiling water; beat constantly on high speed 7 minutes or until stiff peaks form. Remove from heat. Add vanilla, beat 2 minutes or until frosting is thick enough to spread. Yield 4 1/2 cups

Fanny Farmer's Cookbook. The original began with how to boil water. Really! Described the difference between a simmer and a rolling boil. The cover and binding on that one has long since fallen apart. The latest edition has come into modern times with doneness described only as temp on an instant read thermometer. I miss the time per pound method because it helps novice cooks plan timing. I think a good cookbook should have both.

It's only $95. Guess I'll stick with Fanny Farmer and Joy of Cooking.

:rofl: Unbelievable.

I don't think granddaddy paid that much for it in the 40s. :D

the Household Searchlite Magazine cookbook (circa 1930)

Ladies Home Journal (1973) (worst food pics EVER!)

Joy of Cooking (1979)

Julia Child's Kitchen (1980)

the Searchlite book has canning, pickling, salad dressings, you name it.....

The ones from before the 1950s. They are just fascinating to me.

My mother had an early summer ritual. On a fine warm June day, she would go out to the U-pick strawberry patch and load up on those delicious Marshall variety berries. The same day, she would make strawberry jam AND loaves of homemade bread. The smell of the two cooking at once was just divine, as if a bit of heaven had condensed into fragrance. Then she and I would eat the heels of the hot loaves, spread with butter and the skimmings from the boiling jam. I'll never forget it. And I wonder how many people remember seeing a jelly bag hanging from a kitchen cupboard doorknob.

There were memories of her Connecticut childhood that influenced her work in the kitchen. She would make picallili and chow chow relishes and the whole neighborhood would hope for a jar. A few times I recall her making blanc mange and Indian pudding -- strange dishes out west!

In her mid life, she worked as a camp cook and a college cook and adored being in the midst of busy people. Thousands upon thousands of pancakes and cinnamon rolls, unknowable amounts of grilled cheese and chili, and so much more. There was no mystery to food for me. When I was a girl, she would take me along to camp and I can recall the smell of the big kitchen in the early morning. Pine breezes coming in the window; oatmeal on the back burner, crispy cornmeal mush frying, and the pancakes, pancakes, pancakes.

Her mother, my Connecticut grandmother, was a Yankee through and through, transplanted to the Pacific Northwest. Her baked beans, hot rolls, and pies were legendary. No one in the family can replicate her beans, for some strange reason. Looking out the window where I am right now seated at the computer, I can see the back of the great big house that was hers, and wish I could smell the aromas of her kitchen today!

One of my great memories of her kitchen is watching her make raisin filled cookies, rolling out the dough on a board on an oilcloth covered kitchen table. My grandfather, also a Yankee, was making candles in the kitchen as she made the cookies. I have no idea why he made candles -- it must have been a throwback to his own memories.

So much for food memories. I always was a blissfully fearless cook, but have had some memorable moments when something didn't turn out as expected! Tempura for thirty? No problem. Picnic for fifty with the power out? Okay. Multi-course fancy cultural Chinese banquet for two hundred, with the Chinese consul from Seattle as honored guest? Done. (Although I was sick for a week after that one.)

I have a couple hundred cookbooks and way tooooo many cooking magazines. I really love cookbooks. Favorites over the years have been the American Heritage cookbook, which has historic menus and recipes; Martha Stewart's Entertaining (ah, the lemon mousse); the Silver Palate books; Larousse Gastronomique -- I think that was my first cookbook; Good Housekeeping (prize winning pie crust); the Sunset Magazine books for everyday family cooking; and many others. I adored David Rosengarten's television teaching, and I like Sara Moulton very much although I never see either of them anymore. Paula Deen and Rachael Ray? Pfffffffffft.

Now I feed teenagers who unfortunately weren't exposed to much variety in their formative years. One is still quite rigid and picky. The other prefers meat to anything else. So the family table is still a challenge.

More than anyone wanted to know, I'm sure......

The Food of the God!

:9 :9 :9 :9 :9

I loved making my toast with it too. I couldn't wait to get at the saucer Momma kept by the stove while she was making jelly.

:loveya:

everyone who showed up. Nothing fancy and mostly fried and/or overcooked but filling nonetheless. Raised our own meat and grew our own produce. Had to, although I didn't know it we were sorta' poor.

Wasn't until I was almost 40 that I learned cooking was more than just sustenance. My wife went back to school to get her MBA while she was working full time and after having chips and picante sauce for breakfast I decided to take on the chore of feeding our family. I made her a tuna salad with apples, pickle relish and mayo served on a leaf of lettuce (cause that's what I found in the fridge) and she praised me for it. After that all was lost. Anything worth doing is worth doing to excess and here I am, playing around with a cookbook of my own (once the elections and campaigns are over).

Julia Child and PBS brought me into the world of really good eating. Love the old black and white PBS episodes from the '50s. Oops! dropped the chicken on the floor, oh well just rince it off and continue. The joys of live TV!

Jacques Pepin did a great series on country rustic french cooking.

Cooking at the Academy and Secrets of the CIA taught me a lot.

Still, I think Child and Pepin influenced me most.

If you bake, follow the recipe. If you cook, follow your heart.

words to live by!

:applause:

and it was a wonderful story. All about how she grew to really love cooking.

It really made me re-think how we go about cooking and eating.

After that, a high school classmate who attended the CIA right after graduation.

Then a cook in the Navy who had served with my high school friend! While I never saw this high school friend again after graduation (to this day) he made me at least think about a career I had never considered.

After I graduated from the CIA, I have to say that hundreds of people influenced me .....

My favorites? Hard to say. I like so many of them and have new 'favorites' every few years. Back when i got out of the CIA, I recall there being so much anti Julia snobbery among the faculty and echoed by the students. I'm sure that was because of her voice, her style, and her having a teevee show (a pioneering teevee show - imagine .... cooking on teevee). I found her influential in that she was passionate about what she did.

If you ask me today, its Batali. There's no doubt that will change, but right now, i like his style with Italian food. It isn't really classic Italian so much as done with a true Italian culinary sensibility. I think that's pretty much my own cooking style.

Besides, I have a son who looks very much like Batali ... red hair ..... pony tail ..... girth ...... and just a few years younger.

Luckily, the family budget stretched to a lot of cheap cafeteria meals. Peanut butter and Mother Campbell filled in the void.

I learned how to cook from Julia Child and all the cookbooks I've read over the years the way sane people read novels.

I learned how to cook Chinese food from a gaggle of visiting scientists. I taught them Julia's stuff.

I'm picking up Mexican as I go along, real Mexican not Tex Mex.

Ruhlman. Although, I am sure that if I ever got to eat food prepared for me by Thomas Keller, I might (probably) will change my mind. It is actually a wish of mine.

Giada I like because her food is really not pretentious, and it is good and quick. Ina Garten comes in a close second on cook for the same reasons. Nigella Lawson kills me with her food..I love her but cannot give her my vote because I would put on 400 pounds. And can I say I am LOVING Ingrid Hoffman on the weekends on da FoodTV.

Maybe we should also start a bad chef/cook thread as well...I think I have a good idea who the winner would be.

except Warpy, my first influence was my mom. She was/is a good cook but her tastes tended towards country cooking...beans, fried potatoes, chicken livers, cornbread, etc. Not my favorites. Meat always had to be cooked well done. Blech. I was in my thirties before I found out meat could actually taste good without having to drown it in A1! But man she could make some really outstanding things, my favorite being city chicken in pan gravy. Food was good but not adventurous. We had lots of kids and not much money but we never went hungry.

She also learned how to cook some Italian from my paternal grandmother and great-grandmother (who came over on the boat.) We had spaghetti and meatballs nearly every Sunday and no one had a problem with that at all. Until the day she decided she wanted to go an easier route and served Ragu. We all sat down to eat and seven voices, all nearly in unison, went "What is this stuff?" as soon as we tasted it. She left the table crying and never tried that again.

I always spent lots of time with my gran and learned to cook by watching and helping. My Italian great-aunts were also a wonderful influence. Them women could really cook up a storm, altho I never cottoned to fried smelts. LOL

I don't have cable so I don't watch much foodie TV. But I've always loved Julia. She was so sweet and not too snobby about cooking. There was a right way to do things but it was for a good reason. There wasn't this aura of celebrity about her. I loved Baking with Julia because she was so gracious to share her kitchen with others who maybe weren't as well known. The one we do get on PBS and I don't like to watch at all is Rick Bayless. He's way too melodramatic for me.

I've seen some of the others like once, when I was home in Ohio visiting my folks who watch almost nothing else. I liked Mario Batali but wasn't impressed by the others too much. I watch "America's Test Kitchens" for some techinical tips, but Kimball isn't my favorite, neither are the others on that show except I do like Bridget and Julia, We also get Gourmet Magazine's "Diary of a Foodie." Not a cooking show per se but there are some good stories and sometimes some really wild stuff on there. I figure even if I would never cook some of the stuff I see on some of these shows, I can take it all in like osmosis and even use some of the theory if not the exact recipes or concepts.

I really just don't like the "celebrity" that's built up around some of these people. But that's just me, I guess. In my house, food is strictly about love and the desire to share something wonderful with others. Even if it is sometimes healthy! LOL

Eleny and I know I've forgotten at least 20 more, all give me inspiration and the courage to experiment

I don't watch much foodie TV, but I will admit I like RR's 30 minute meals and I love Alton Brown

growing up I started cooking for our family when I was 11 or 12, with phone support from Grammy or Mother but it was extremely basic fare, Pot Roast, beans, Fried Chicken and lots of canned stuff. Every dinner table I remember of my childhood had a plate of sliced white bread and oleo on it.

Lunches were bologna and cheese or PBJs with chips

I took up cooking as a hobby in 2003 since we were poor and couldn't afford eating out 10 times a week. I swore I hated cooking but realized since I had to do it every day, I'd better change my attitude so I started calling it my 'hobby'

thanks to you guys and digging out all of Grammy's OLD cookbooks and investing in a few good tools, I'm a pretty decent cook these days

:yourock:

and I'm still learning and spreading my wings.......

:hug:

over the last 3+ years......

well now you do! thanks! (and Mr. Ketchup is grateful daily for your influence

:rofl:

:hug: I've felt like a total failure in the kitchen this week. Dry pound cake and melted malfatti.

:hug:

yeah, but we just keep chugging eh?

I critique my cooking every night commenting on texture, spice overtones or lack there of, too brown, not brown enough and Mr. K takes it so seriously "Honey, stop it, it's great!" or "Honey, don't be so tough on yourself" not realizing that for Ms. Hollandaise (me), it's part of the process, the challenge, the fun of how could it be better, which technique worked well and which do I need more practice on.

I love both your triumphs and your 'learning opportunities'

thank for sharing :pals:

...is the way the inspiration goes all the way around in this forum (you inspire me, too!).

:hug:

:pals:

If we could just get everybody to eat and stop making war.

what's so wonderful about you is how you so generously include others in your life and in your successes and then give it back to them!

Mr. K is indeed a lucky one!



:toast:

You ain't no slouch in the kitchen, either, gal. And you so totally rock, too! :hug:

Let's see...Julia Child (duh)...Jacques Pepin...the late Craig Claiborne...the late Pierre Franey...Maida Heatter...Ina Garten...despite the recent controversy, Robert Irvine...James Beard...Elizabeth David...Bernard Clayton...Mark Bittner...I'm sure there are others, but those are the ones who come immediately to mind.

(You mention Thomas Keller. There's a blogger who is making every recipe in his French Laundry Cookbook...at www.frenchlaundryathome.com ...just FYI.)

Pastry Chefs like Jacques Torres & Gale Gand, Duff, etc., who can spin sugar into magic, sculpt chocolate into artwork and turn flour & eggs into a little taste of heaven. To bake things that taste good isn't hard, but to make them things of such exquisite beauty is an art in itself. Chocholatiers to me are magicians. How they can make things that are so delicious and so beautiful - it's like magic to me. I don' know... but there's something almost sacred in taking in one's body such wonder and beauty.


Bread bakers who have inspired me are Dan Leader, Peter Reinhart, Nancy Silverton, Rose Levy Berenbaurm and many others. When I was at a transition point in my life and felt that I NEEDED to knead bread, I found Dan Leader's book "Bread Alone" and it resonated so deeply within me - THAT was the kind of bread that I wanted to make. Big, gorgeous, rustic artisan loaves of bread, gorgeous on the outside and inside. Long, slow rises to develop maximum flavor. Sourdoughs, natural leavens and pre-ferments. For me, a whole new world opened up - it was dealing with forces of transformation - taking the most simple ingredients of water, flour and salt, applying the simplest of elements - time and heat - and creating something magnificant to look at and at the same time, delicious and nourishing. I needed to know every everything about how it all worked. My starters were children to me - how I loved and cared for them. How they fed me in return! I spent years "just wanting to made bread" and something within me was fulfilled. A couple of those years, I ran a bread forum in the early days of the internet, connecting with other bread bakers, sharing what I knew and learning from others. I'm still inspired by artisan bread bakers, those inspired to experiment with water, wheat and salt to transform and bring out the full potential of the elements.

Your children starters..your bread must be incredibily delicious made with all that love and attention. Sometimes, posts like these make me want to quit my job, downsize my house, and simply bake. Does that make any sense at all?

even if no one else does! There is something really satisfying about baking, particularly with bread, I found, that connects you back through history with an activity that people (particularly women) have been involved with for thousands of years. Something soul-related.

You can start with where you are, bake on the weekends if that's the only time you have. You can get starters ready to go during the week mix up your dough Friday night or Saturday morning, then bake Saturday or Sunday.

Hehehe, I've even taken starters and flour to work so that I could feed them on schedule, so they'd be ready for me to mix up dough when I got home in the evening!

Taking your starters to work to feed them!

Yeah, I set aside weekends to bake. Not just bread. This weekend it is banana caramel cake from scratch because my hubby has been working his behind off and needs a reward (besides the obvious anyway!)

:evilgrin:

a rather sternly uncompromising whole grain bread book. I did learn how to produce dense but edible whole grain peasant breads that kept me going.

I soon found a few other less stuffy bread books and improved the crumb considerably. What has really made a difference is Crust & Crumb, which should be every avid breadmaker's main book.

The King Arthur Flour 200th Anniversary Baking Book is another one I won't do without. It has all the other stuff in it.

I love that book, I think it's one of the very best of the artisan bread books - and for pan breads too. I've never been able to get the scone recipe to work though, I think his butter qty is way off - the scones totally melt down and I get something more like cookies that have all run together. His biscuit recipe is out of this world! Love everyhing I've made from that book.

"The Tassajara Bread Book" is tough for beginners. Many people give up after making a few bread-bricks from that book. I like "The Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book" pretty well for whole-grain breads, especially for beginners.

I'm with you on the KA Baking Book - it's a real treasure too.

Did you ever get into grinding you own wheat and baking fresh bread with it? Now, THAT's delicious! And can be made quite light and somewhat soft, especially with white whole wheat. I had an electric mill for a while but couldn't really get it to grind finely enough so I gave up that persuit, although I gotta admit, the loaves were delicious.

and all flours were done to order, five pounds at a time. The flour would still be warm from the stones when I got it home.

Freshly stone ground wheat makes an unbelievable bread. Even buying commercially stone ground whole wheat flour from a place with a really fast turnover doesn't compare.

If I were ever to invest in an attachment for the Kitchen Aid, it would be the stone grinder. The difference is that dramatic.

I wanna bake bread like that but I'm too lazy to mess with a starter. A few years back, we got the book Nancy Silverton's Bread from the LaBrea Bakeries thinking we would do that. But like you, I thought of the starters as children and had the opposite reaction you did. There's a reason I don't have children. LOL

But you've inspired me to maybe give it a whirl, sweetie! I dunno, gotta think on that a little while. ;)

I would make a trip just for that.

I live on the east coast, so it's a cross-country flight.

It just sounds incredible.

And he developed the concept of Beurre Monte, butter melted in a way that it doesn't separate, and is a great way to cook lobster, or hold other food deliciously warm. I've made it - it's great.

Means literally to mount with butter.

As I recall reading from a Michael Ruhlman book...

Regardless, it's a great technique - butter that gets hot but doesn't separate.

And regardless of that, it's a restaurant I would REALLY want to try. This would be a destination restaurant for me.

I've eaten at his Bouchon in Vegas, and it was wonderful.

Really. I love Martha.


:D

My grandmother was not a good cook but, she made a contribution, she called it Raspberry Gooslum. Whip egg whites as for merange add sugar and fresh raspberries beat again - eat.

My mother became a good cook after taking nutrition courses in college. She over time had nine mouths to feed and did it very well. We grew up with a salad, meat and potatoes/rice with fruit dessert each day. She taught me how to make jam, can veggies, make bread. Her contribution was to give herself Sunday off - we ate popcorn/soup - it was our choice.

Favorite chefs Julia Child and now the t.v. cook who speaks of food as though it is masculine. I can hear her now - doesn't he look great, can't wait to have a taste of him, Paula Deen even though she uses way too much butter for me.

My contribution is because of my allergy to the protein in milk (casein) is to modify my favorite recipes to use with rice milk or soy milk. Can I make a croissant or a scone with clarified butter and rice or soy milk? The whole world thinks that each meal must contain milk - argh!

These days, the folks at America's Test Kitchen/Cooks Illustrated are my favorites, and their show is the best. Right after them comes Lidia Bastianich, which surprises me because I initially thought she was kind of annoying. I have three of her cook books now and am exploring them. I was astonished at how good her simple marinara is.

My mom's mom. She's a wonderful cook. Simple, homey farmer type fare, but delicious and, thanks to the rellies who still were farmers, always fresh. I've never understood how my mom turned out to be such a mediocre cook.

TV cook? I like Giada, she's fun and I love italian, many of the dishes are familiar to me but I've never seen them prepared. And she does love her cheese.

TV chef? First would be Martin Yan or Jeff Smith, both made cooking and food seem both interesting and fun, and inspired me to try cooking for the family now and then when I was a kid. Both did the little trip things to the market and such, which made the food that much more interesting, as I felt like I had a greater bit of the whole experience.

I never saw Julia Child growing up, and since they don't replay her stuff, I still haven't seen a lot of it, which makes sad.

Currently, I have to say that I love Anthony Bourdain. Yeah, he doesn't cook on No Res, and yeah, the snarkiness is funny as hell, but what I really enjoy about No Res is that he has a genuine joy and enthusiasm about the food he is trying, and is at least willing to try anything. And, as snarky as he can be, he isn't disrespectful to the chef or their culture, even if what he is eating is horrid. I've been encouraged by him to try things I'd never have tried otherwise, such as many offal dishes, and been happily surprised.

There's not really any other chef currently who I enjoy watching, most seem either false bubbly happy or brusque and unpersonable.