Food for thought

Meryl Streep plays celebrity chef Julia Child in the movie Julie and Julia. Photo / Supplied

She was America's original TV chef, whose 1960s show has inspired the modern-day likes of Martha Stewart and others. Now Julia Child's story is being told in a movie starring Meryl Streep and has ignited a fierce national debate as to why Americans love cooking on television but not in the kitchen.

Child's first programme, The French Chef, ran for 10 years and won numerous awards after it first aired in 1963. It is credited with bringing fine French cooking to many North American homes and was inspired by her time learning to cook in France.

That period is now being given a full Hollywood makeover in the movie Julie & Julia. The film mixes and matches the old-fashioned story of Child's adventures as an American cooking in France with the modern real-life story of a blogger called Julie Powell, who spent a year cooking each of the 524 recipes in Child's epic tome, Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

But though the film is meant to be a commercially successful soft sell on the delights of food and finding yourself through toiling over a hot stove, it has also sparked a more serious argument. Writing in the New York Times, famed food campaigner Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma, uses the film to launch a scathing attack on modern American cooking culture.

Pollan, a leading advocate of organic cuisine and a critic of industrial food production, said that while Child may now be being immortalised on the silver screen, her lessons had been effectively unlearned by the modern American public. He complained that Americans have relegated cooking skills to their TV screens.

"How is it that we are so eager to watch other people browning beef cubes on screen, but so much less eager to brown them ourselves?" he asked.

Pollan said it was ironic that the art of good home cooking had never had a higher public profile at the same time that fast food, TV dinners and microwaves dominated most Americans' eating habits.

Indeed, good cooking is a huge business. Haute cuisine is parsed and dissected on hundreds of blogs, just like Powell's. American bookshelves heave with cooking books.

The Food Network is a highly successful cable TV channel that seems to spawn another potential Julia Child every other week. Food Network staples such as Rachael Ray, Anthony Bourdain and Giada De Laurentiis have become national figures. Shows such as Top Chef and Iron Chef grab tabloid headlines and draw big audiences of loyal viewers.

But, Pollan pointed out, Americans have never spent less time in their kitchens. Today the average American spends about 27 minutes a day on food preparation, less than half what they did when Child first started her TV mission to evangelise good cooking.

"Many Americans are spending considerably more time watching images of cooking on television than they are cooking themselves," Pollan lamented.

He said too many people considered real cooking an "archaic activity" or thought warming up a can of soup or putting a pre-made pizza in the oven constituted real cooking.

In fact, Pollan also attacked many of the food shows themselves for often relying on pre-cooked or ready-made ingredients, such as jarred mayonnaise, rather than encouraging Americans to make such basic tools of the kitchen themselves.

The shows also relied on an adrenalin-driven macho form of cooking that emphasised speed and convenience, not quality, he said.

It is doubtful whether Julie & Julia will change that too much. The modern story of the blogger, Powell, interspersed with Child's tale seems more typical of current cooking standards than older ones. Powell's heroic attempt to cook all of Child's recipes in a single year was conceived out of a desire to write a blog and get a book deal, not so much out of a genuine love for quality cooking. That, too, would have been unimaginable in Child's simpler era.

ARMCHAIR CHEFS IN NZ

Food TV first launched on Sky in New Zealand in 2005 and offers Kiwi viewers a tasty buffet of cooking shows that include everything from demonstration programmes through to travel, adventure and culture based shows that are all food-related.

The channel features ever-popular series hosted by celebrity chefs including Rick Stein, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, James Martin and Heston Blumenthal and has old favourites such as Hudson and Halls, Julia Childs, Keith Floyd, Two Fat Ladies and the original "Queen of home cooking" Fanny Craddock. Sky TV reports current viewer favourites are:

Iron Chef America

Based upon the Japanese cult sensation, Iron Chef America sees world-class chefs battle the legendary Iron Chefs of America: Bobby Flay, Mario Batali, Masaharu Morimoto and Cat Cora. Alton Brown serves as commentator and Mark Dacascos is chairman.

Ace of Cakes

Shaping cakes with drill saws, firing up blowtorches and staffing his bakery with fellow rock musicians, Duff Goldman is not your typical baker - yet, he's one of the most sought after cake makers in the US.

Tyler's Ultimate

Fried chicken... burgers... spaghetti and meatballs... If you're only going to have one recipe for these crowd-pleasing classics, it might as well be the ultimate - Tyler's Ultimate. Between cooking in critically acclaimed restaurants, writing cookbooks and travelling the globe to feed his own insatiable appetite, Tyler Florence has experienced every conceivable approach to all of your favourite foods. Now, he's drawing from the best of the best to present a visual cookbook of America's most beloved dishes.

Great British Menu

In this BBC series, top British chefs compete for the chance to cook one course of a four-course banquet. The first series banquet was for the Queen on her 80th birthday. The second was for the British Ambassador to France at the British Embassy in Paris. The third series prepared a banquet to be held at the Gherkin in London, hosted by Heston Blumenthal. In the new series, chefs compete to cook at a celebratory dinner for British troops returning from Afghanistan.

Market Kitchen

Filmed on location at the Borough Market in London and presented by a team of top British foodies including Rachel Allen, Matt Tebbutt and Tom Parker Bowles, this is an entertaining and irresistible mix of food, recipes and market life.

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