Feb 25, 2020
How Easy Is That?: Chasing Ina Garten’s Perfection With My Mother
On other cooking shows, the cooks might make mistakes and laugh about them. Ina Garten has never made a mistake.
Rax King is a dog-loving, hedgehog-mothering, beer-swilling, gay and disabled sumbitch who occasionally writes and works as assistant editor for Sundress Publications. She is the author of the collection 'The People's Elbow: Thirty Recitatives on Rape and Wrestling' (Ursus Americanus, 2018). Her work can also be found in Autostraddle, Barrelhouse, and Peach Mag
On other cooking shows, the cooks might make mistakes and laugh about them. Ina Garten has never made a mistake.
I am no gentile, but a Jew, with chill Jewish parents, who loves the pepper-and-onion slice at Alfie’s.
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I suspect that these shows, which characterize speed and hustle as natural elements of cooking, are part of the male professional kitchen’s effort to divorce their work from the feminine history of cooking.
Critics say that Sandra Lee’s idea of cooking is nothing more than opening a can and having a cocktail. Here’s the thing: That’s true! But who cares?
Guy Fieri allowed me to ask: who do I fear noise and brightness for? Who do I fear food for? And he gave me the answer: I fear it for myself.
