[Speed Gibson,
Wednesday April 30, 2008 at 10:11am]
Hell's Kitchen 2008
No, I'm not going to start a weekly post on this show. But I'm in a compressed Reality Show mode, and it seems a good time to at least say why I really like this show.
Food competition is an eclectic taste. Given enough time, a million cooks with a million dollar kitchen and pantry will eventually turn out Lobster Thermidor and Crêpes Suzette. Unless dancing or singing, you have to constrain something. You give them only so much time, or so many ingredients, or isolate them on a beach with primitive facilities.
Hell's Kitchen is unique, however. The thing to fear most is not a constraint, quite the opposite: mass production! It's the only show where you get to see the life of a line cook. You don't get to perfect a single entree. You have to turn out dozens of them. With something like Beef Wellington, where you have this delicate race between pastry outside and steak inside getting to the proper doneness together, this seems almost impossible to do consistently.
But good line cooks do it. It's their cooking you're usually enjoying in better restaurants, and they deserve great credit. Gordon Ramsay's fits and rants are fun to a point, but sometimes get in the way of this fascinating peek into the kitchen.
Food competition is an eclectic taste. Given enough time, a million cooks with a million dollar kitchen and pantry will eventually turn out Lobster Thermidor and Crêpes Suzette. Unless dancing or singing, you have to constrain something. You give them only so much time, or so many ingredients, or isolate them on a beach with primitive facilities.
Hell's Kitchen is unique, however. The thing to fear most is not a constraint, quite the opposite: mass production! It's the only show where you get to see the life of a line cook. You don't get to perfect a single entree. You have to turn out dozens of them. With something like Beef Wellington, where you have this delicate race between pastry outside and steak inside getting to the proper doneness together, this seems almost impossible to do consistently.
But good line cooks do it. It's their cooking you're usually enjoying in better restaurants, and they deserve great credit. Gordon Ramsay's fits and rants are fun to a point, but sometimes get in the way of this fascinating peek into the kitchen.