Thirty minute magic

By Cory Anotado
Collegian Staff
April 12, 2006

I’m going to let everyone in on a well-known secret: most cooking shows are fake. The cook will take his crumbled saltine crackers, six beaten eggs, milk, bacon and cheese, put them in a pot, mix them all together, put them in an oven, and exactly three seconds later, pull out one of the most fabulous quiches ever made. Then, the chef will continue to make his wonderful breakfast-in-bed (complete with gourmet blueberry pancakes and home fries a la fritte de pomme) without explaining what the use of the crackers is, how long we have to beat the eggs and how hot the oven must be to cook a quiche in three seconds flat. Of course, there was preparation before the show, but that’s dishonest and it makes me cry.

Rachael Ray, however, doesn’t make me cry. She is the host of 30 Minute Meals on the Food Network, and she is my guilty pleasure. Most chefs make elaborate meals in the course of their 30 minute show, using ingredients like smetana (soured low-fat Russian cream), halva (sweetmeat made from sesame seeds) or moray eel. Ray knows that no one in his or her right mind would ever have carry, smetana, halva or moray eel next to the jelly and margarine. Instead, Ray uses common, everyday ingredients in spectacular ways to form dishes and meals that border on simplicity in terms of cooking, but elegance in terms of taste. And she gets everything done in half an hour, which is really hot.

Ray also has shortcuts to make her cooking completed in less than 30 minutes. From her I have learned the trick of the garbage bowl, a large bowl in which to place everything that has to be trashed, saving you the time of going to the garbage each time something needs to be dumped. Wash your vegetables as soon as you get them from the store and put them in plastic bags to save time when you use them. Use extra-virgin olive oil, but never call it extra-virgin olive oil more than once. Call it E-V-O-O, or else.

Ray has it all. She can cook, she’s pretty and she has her own TV show. She gets it done in 30 minutes, with a smile on her face and a meal on the table. Let’s be honest. Isn’t that what all men want anyway?

anotadoc1@lasalle.edu