Culinary Poll #16: How Do We Rate Ourselves as Cooks

[Doug Z]

i make a pretty mean coq au vin...

but i wont get into a pissing match about whose coq is better.....

[Shel T]

I'd rate myself as "very good" but short of "excellent". That because I think the truly excellent cook has to be an innovator and my strengh lies not in innovation but in replicating and perhaps adapting classic recipes from the French, Italian and several other European cuisines.

I will say, however, that no-one on this planet makes better boeuf Bourguignon, tournedos a la Rossini, coq au vin, lobster Thermidor, pommes de terre Anna, eggs Benedict or potato latkes! Challenge that statement at your own risk.

Best
Rogov

Wouldn't it be fun (great/terrif?) to have an international "throw-down" AKA cook-off with all those dishes. Now all there is to figure out is how to do simaltaneous continental tasting. If you come up with a slution, count me in!

[Daniel Rogov]

Shel, Hi......

A wonderful qua wondrous suggestion. All we need do is arrange a group to meet on neutral territory, let's say St. Moritz, to stay at the Badrutt Palace Hotel and perhaps to work with Johri in taking over his restaurant and kitchen for an evening for each of us to prepare his/her version of the various dishes and to invite a collection of French and American critics we all respect to do the tasting/judging. Alas, I suspect that such a meeting would be expensive enough that I could easily enter the bankruptcy courts before the cook-off even started.

On which one my rare smilies

Best
Rogov

[Shel T]

Shel, Hi......

A wonderful qua wondrous suggestion. All we need do is arrange a group to meet on neutral territory, let's say St. Moritz, to stay at the Badrutt Palace Hotel and perhaps to work with Johri in taking over his restaurant and kitchen for an evening for each of us to prepare his/her version of the various dishes and to invite a collection of French and American critics we all respect to do the tasting/judging. Alas, I suspect that such a meeting would be expensive enough that I could easily enter the bankruptcy courts before the cook-off even started.

On which one my rare smilies

Best
Rogov

Hey Daniel, I sense a "reality" show here! Over to you, sell the idea to any of the Euro or Israeli TV production companies or networks and will be happy to participate and bring my own toque. Maybe we could title it "Near the Top Chef"!

[Daniel Rogov]

Shel,

There are four things in the world that I hate and "reality shows" are three of them. LOL because this week I'm scheduled for filming by CNN, CBS, France's Channel 2 and Israel's Channel 1.

As Ultra Violet put it so nicely......we are all famous for 15 minutes.

Best
Rogov

[Shel T]

Aw c'mon Daniel, your fame is worth at least a half hour!

[Daniel Rogov]

Words I wish I had written:


I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

[Charlie Dawg]

My father had a teacher in school, who used to say, in regards of grades, G-d gets 5 (or A), I get 4 (B), rest of you get 3 (C). When my father was done with school and was taking entrance exam to university, he got solid 5 (A). Well,, by the same token in cooking G-d gets 5, my grandmother gets 4, my mother 3, and I, I only get 2. That is how I great my self. That doesn't matter that the others would great me at that level. I am positive I would receive much higher score.

And Daniel, I already told you, it is I who makes the best potato latkes.

[Robin Garr]

I'll immodestly lay claim to excellence. I've been a foodie since the whole food thing started in the US with James and Julia and Craig & Co. in the 1970s and took most upscale baby boomers along by storm. I love cooking as a creative outlet and have written about it professionally since the 1980s, including a position as publishe restaurant critic from 1984-90 and 1994-present; I have always taken the position - not shared by all food critics - that you shouldn't criticize how other people do it if you can't do it yourself. I've worked, albeit only as a brief "stage"-like experience, on the line in a restaurant kitchen. And I've cooked most of the dinners in our two-person household for 25 years or so. I've studied nutrition, food science and food anthropology in reasonable detail. I'm a sufficiently confident cook that I now create most of my recipes (and publish many of those); and I flatter myself that I can cook in a variety of ethnic cuisines at a level that would not truly offend a member of those ethnic groups. I love cooking (and conceptualizing dishes and thinking about food and the role that it plays in our lives), and it shows ... although I hope it doesn't show too badly on my waistline - I also try to cook and eat sensibly and walk off a lot of the calories that I cook or review.