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My mom knew how to cook, she just preferred not to. She could (usually) put good food on the table, but she’d have been the first to admit that she wasn’t creative in the kitchen. She had passion for a great many things, but rattling those pots and pans was not one of them. Odd then, how much she loved watching Graham Kerr’s show on PBS just before dinnertime.

The Galloping Gourmet was the first cooking show that I remember, though I don’t remember my mom ever trying any of the recipes Kerr featured. He was funny, moved briskly around the kitchen, and his creations always seemed to be on the verge of spinning out of control. In the end of course, the dish somehow came together, and the Galloping Gourmet would sign off each episode with his signature glass of wine in hand.

Julia Child was on the tube first, but it was Graham Kerr who created the concept of imparting great cooking knowledge through the prism of entertainment, never hesitating to even use the totally British mode of silly slapstick to keep the viewer’s attention. All those smiling, cookbook-writing celebrity chefs falling over each other on the Food Channel owe their chops to Graham Kerr for opening up the genre for them.

It was fun watching The Galloping Gourmet with my mom, but it was The Frugal Gourmet, Jeff Smith’s PBS cooking show that aired a decade later, which fueled my desire to cook. Smith entertained the viewer as he cooked, but in a very different way. As he introduced the featured ingredient at the beginning of each show, he confidently explained the history of the culinary component, it’s geographical importance, and why it tasted so good with other ingredients, especially with wine. Food and cooking became 3-dimensional for me; it became a worthy hobby as I watched his shows.

Most importantly, I loved the way Smith would explain the classic preparation for a recipe, and then fearlessly deviate from the recipe because he felt it was better. That cinched the idea of cooking with me – using a recipe as a guide, and not feeling chained to it if I felt that making a change would taste really good. He was the kind of cook who would extol the virtue of making beef stock from scratch, and then look into the camera and forgive you if you decided to use canned stock anyway. His closing wish at the end of each episode was, “I bid you peace.”

Well, in the 1990’s Jeff Smith was accused of sexual abuse, never charged, but settled out of court. I prefer to think he didn’t do it, but his career was done on the spot. I couldn’t tell you if you can still find his cookbooks, but one, The Frugal Gourmet Cooks Three Ancient Cuisines – China, Greece and Italy, is the first cookbook I ever bought, and it remains a well-thumbed favorite in my collection. If you ever trip across it, you’ll find the opening monologues to each chapter entertaining and informative, and the recipes easy, creative, and frugal.

This entry was posted on June 16, 2012 at 1:51 pm and is filed under Books, Family, Food with tags frugal gourmet, galloping gourmet, graham kerr, jeff smith, pbs cooking shows. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.