Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Alton Brown Memories



With the 10th anniversary of Good Eats coming up I thought we'd take a look back at some Alton Brown memories.  Alton has gone through a lot of minor changes from geeky Food Network upstart to one of their premiere hosts and chefs.  During this transformation we have lost touch with the personal side of Alton as his celebrity increases, but from what I see and hear from people lucky enough to meet him in person he is still the same down to Earth guy.

On that note, I'll start with one something that I sorely miss: the original Alton Brown website.  It was kitschy, updated regularly, and had some life to it.  My personal favorite part was the Rants & Raves section.  It was off the cuff and thoughtful; it was truly Alton.  One of AB's first posts was in remembrance of his grandmother, Ma Mae.  It shows the humble side of Alton, but still he leaves us with a lesson.  Thanks AB!


Tuesday, December 04, 2001
 
Last week "the big one" finally caught up with my grandmother. Good Eats fans may remember Ma Mae from a show called "And the Dough Also Rises" wherein she and I staged a biscuit bakeoff which she won.
Ma Mae wasn’t a great cook. Her batterie de cuisine was humble. The highlight of her culinary library was a paperback published by the electric company in 1947. Her oven cooked a hundred degrees hot. She didn’t even own a decent knife. And yet, her food was the epitome of good eats. Her chicken and dumplings, greens and cornbread were without equals. Her cobblers were definitive. Her biscuits…the stuff of legend. She learned to make these from her mother and grandmother. She didn’t tinker with the dishes nor did she dissect them or ponder their inner workings. She just cooked. She thought my own Frankensteinian desire to understand food was a little on the silly side.
The first thing I did when I got to her house was greedily seize the small wooden recipe box that had sat on the counter my entire life. Upon inspection, this ancient codex proved disappointing. There were gobs of recipes written in her smooth hand, but they were all the stuff of gossip…Mary Sues Marshmallow Salad…Gertrude's Oatmeal divinity, etc. The real treasures were nowhere to be found and that made sense. She knew those recipes and had no reason to write them down. It had been my duty to learn them from her and I hadn’t taken the time. In her last years I’d been too busy to visit much, too preoccupied with peeling away the mysteries of egg proteins and figuring out why toast burns. In short, I’d missed the whole stinkin’ point. When I left her house after the funeral I took Ma Mae’s favorite cooking tool, her grandmother’s cast iron skillet. I understand this vessel, the particulars of its metallurgy, how heat moves through its crystalline matrix. But I’ll never be able to coax the old magic from it and for that I am very sorry.
This is a cautionary tale kids, and I hope you’ll take heed. In the end, cooking isn’t about understanding it’s about connecting. Food is the best way to keep those we must lose. So put down that glossy cookbook, put down that fancy gadget and get thee to grandmother’s house. Or go cook with your dad, your aunt, your sister, your mom. Cook and learn and share while you can.
End of lecture.
 

5 comments:

Erin Sleme said...

What a nice post that was. He makes a good point. I've actually been thinking about this kind of thing a lot recently because of my grandma getting older and less able to do things. Kind of interesting timing I guess.

Lauren said...

I'm extremely thankful for the Wayback Machine. I had not known of the greatness that is AB when the site was thriving (by that, I mean the Rants & Raves were being updated). I've spent many an hour checking out its history & enjoying every minute of it.

That is my favorite post, hands-down.

Lobster Gram Recipe Blog said...

Good words of wisdom here. It's too bad that these ever-important lessons usually only reach us when it's too late.

Admin said...

Thanks for all the comments! It's great to hear other personal experiences.

Definitely wise words from Alton. I've been helping my own grandmother in the kitchen lately to glean some wisdom into her basic dishes, like spaghetti sauce and fried chicken. Last week's Good Eats on crepes reminded me that she used to make those for me as a kid also; except they were just 'French pancakes.' :-)

I'll post some more Rants & Raves from the Wayback archives soon.

Lisa said...

AB's site use to be great... though the bright neon green was always questionable (and I like green!)

But this was one of his best. Thanks for reposting it.