Rick's List
Like many of you, my wife Eileen and I are delighted during this pandemic to have thousands of television programming possibilities.
And yet ... mostly, we watch cooking shows and spin-offs featuring cooking show personalities. Have you seen Guy Fieri’s adaptation of Rabelais’s “Gargantua and Pantagruel” yet? Magnificent!
And speaking of cooking shows, it was two weeks ago we ran out of episodes of “Chopped”; we’ve now seen all 2,046 of the competitions. If you don’t know “Chopped,” four chefs on each program try to outcook one another, creating a three-course meal from separate “appetizer,” “entrée” and “dessert” baskets of ridiculously incongruous ingredients. After each course, one chef is “chopped.”
Life was sad without “Chopped,” but Eileen found what we thought was a similar competition. It’s called “The Great British Baking Show.” Several common-folk contestants from across the UK gather in a huge circus tent on the grounds of some duke or another’s castle. Over the course of months of increasingly arcane baking assignments, with one-by-one eliminations each week, a baking champion is crowned by a dude who looks a bit like Simon Cowell (except you don’t instinctively want to sabotage his new bicycle so he might fall and break his back) and an older woman who might well be Queen.
I know, I know. The baking deal doesn’t sound that interesting — but I assure you that we got drawn into it at top speed. The biggest appeal to me was how freakin’ civilized the British bakers and judges are. The contrast between them and our countrymen on “Chopped” reminds me of a routine by the late, great comedian Greg Giraldo — one where he compared the elegant love letters written to sweethearts back home by Civil War soldiers to the coarse, grammatically-bludgeoned efforts by contemporary warriors to their girlfriends or wives.
With respect to Giraldo, here are a few examples of “Chopped” behavior in contrast with a few from “The Great British Baking Show.”
1 When competitors are introduced and share a bit of biographical information:
“Chopped” chef (dancing onto the set like Mick Jagger and blowing kisses): “I’ll be Michelin 3-star by midnight because there’s no better chef in the entire world than me. I want to win ‘Chopped’ because I DESERVE to win ‘Chopped.’”
“Baking” contestant (shyly smiling): “I’m a librarian from north Wales and in my spare time I make tea-time scones for orphans.”
2 When the contestants size up their competitions’ dishes: “Chopped” chef (drawing finger across throat menacingly): “That’s just garbage. You learn to cook in prison? Thanks for giving the judges ptomaine, you stinkin’ losers!”
“Baking” contestant: “Oh, look at Nigel’s plum tartlet! Gorgeous! And I could never create as lovely a Savarin with Chantilly Cream like Ivy just did!”
3 Upon advancing to the next level of competition: “Chopped” chef (pointing at judge Bobby Flay): “Gimme my prize money NOW! And I’m coming for YOU, Flay. I’ll burn your children at the stake! How’s that for an entree, Bobbo?”
“Baking” contestant (shedding tears, hugging fellow finalists): “It’s breaks my heart that we all couldn’t have won. I promise to honor your skills with each Choux Buns Religieuse or Minted Lamb Pasties I bake! And we WILL meet at the holidays for pudding!”
Well, at least here in America we don’t eat Savarin with Chantilly Cream. Unless that’s British for “porkskins and beer.”