Masterchef-style cooking drives me nuts

We watched the recent “Masterchef – Back to Win” TV series because it’s fun watching “home cooks” trying to create modern Gordon Ramsay-style meals in 45 minutes. Some of the meals looked interesting, even good enough that I would try them out if I had a chance and didn’t have to pay $200 for a meal at some fru-fru restaurant.

It comes down to this: my mother and grandmother cooked midwestern-style and southern-style food the way those dishes were prepared in the 1940s and 1950s in home economics courses or as presented in cookbooks like the Joy of Cooking.

Among other things, this means that a meal was composed of various elements that were placed separately on the plate rather than as something called a “dish” in which the elements are placed in an artistically assembled thing that’s viewed as one item–meaning stuff is piled top of each other.I generally refuse to eat rare meat even though Ramsay and the other judges consider anything cooked longer than rare to be ruined. I don’t know when rare became the default cooking level when, to me, it’s basically still raw.Whatever I order, I don’t want it placed on top of or next to some horrid-looking puree. This stuff looks (and tastes) like wallpaper paste and makes me want to pass a law that blenders cannot be used in food preparation.If I order meat and asparagus, I don’t want the meat sitting on top of the asparagus. Why the hell would I want each bite of steak to include a piece of asparagus on the fork?I love potatoes, grits, and other starchy stuff, but definitely don’t want it piled on top of the meat.I also don’t want a handful of mixed greens thrown on top of the whole shebang and called a salad. Sautéd arugula is not a salad.Random crap strewn around the plate (connected by colorful smears of puree) and called a garnish and/or an artistic presentation of the “dish” is horse hockey. Place the stuff in small serving dishes so those who want it can dump it on their entrées.I believe that if chefs want to ruin food they should do it in the privacy of their own homes rather than serving it to others as something special for $200 a plate.

I know I’m out of sync with the kind of meals that TV’s Masterchef and Hell’s Kitchen promote, but I like what I like and would rather have a sack of Louisiana chicken and dirty rice from Popeye’s than the swill I see on these purported upper-crust cooking shows.

–Malcolm