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Tuesday, Feb 9, 2010
The author of "Cookoff" discusses the intense -- and thoroughly modern -- world of competitive cooking.
Nov 13, 2003 | Thanks to reality television like "The Restaurant" and the Food Network's series -- "Date Plate," "Food Fight" and "Iron Chef" among them -- the high-strung cooking show has become a staple of many TV diets. But the cooking face-off, it's worth remembering, has a long history.
Cutthroat cuisine had its start in the county fairs and brand-sponsored recipe contests that dotted the nation during the 1950s. But as newspaper reporter Amy Sutherland found out, those cooking-trials still exist, and instead of nostalgia fests that bring blue ribbons and prize sows to mind, the cook-offs now have higher monetary stakes and attract an increasingly modern group of contestants.
Sutherland spent two years trekking around the country for her book "Cookoff: Recipe Fever Hits America (Heartbreak, Glory, and Big Money on the Competitive Cooking Circuit)." She attended events like the Gilroy Garlic Festival, the National Chicken Cooking Contest, the National Beef Cook-Off, and the granddaddy of them all, the Pillsbury Bake-Off.
Sutherland recently spoke to Salon from her home in Portland, Maine, regarding her misconceptions about the world of competitive home cooks, the way the subculture is adjusting to a changing world -- and some really gross recipes.
So how did you get hooked by the cook-off world?
I was invited to the 2000 Pillsbury Bake-Off because we finally had a Maine contestant going. That got wheels turning for me. I was intrigued that the Bake-Off was still around and still very vibrant in a day and age when more women were working and American cooking was getting so much respect. It was a strange anachronism, this thing that was still kicking.
When I got there I realized that if I pursued amateur competitive cooking I would find out not only more about people and cooking, but I would find out more about my own country. I know that sounds corny, but as you can tell, I sort of fell in love with the whole world.
You associated cooking competitions with 1950s America?
Yes, and that was off target. A lot of people still presume that the cooking competitor is this cook that no longer exists -- a Midwestern housewife in a little clean apron. But the contests have kind of come a long way with the country on both the cooking front and the working-women front; there were more professionals than full-time homemakers in the 2002 Bake-Off.
What kinds of professional women enter cooking contests?
I met a female forensic scientist, an air traffic controller -- a woman. One of the people in my book, Liz Barclay, is the assistant principal at a private school in Annapolis with a Harvard degree. Then one of my favorites, Camilla Saulsbury, was finishing her Ph.D. in sociology.
Are the competitions another way for ambitious career women to flex their competitive muscles?
Professional ambition has fueled these contests. A lot of the contesters are Type A during the week, and you know we carry those habits over into our kitchens at night. In general people are much more ambitious cooks than [they] used to be. There are ambitious ethnic dishes, ambitious Thai concoctions that they can't even pronounce. Something about the contests appeals to the Type A quality. What sort of catches people off guard is the intellectual and creative element. You not only have to be a good cook -- you have to be an extremely creative cook, and you have to be a strategist.
How much time does it require to participate in these?
The contesters know how to do this pretty efficiently. It takes them less time than, say, me, because once you get going you develop this bank of recipes you can keep tweaking and twisting. What's cool about cooking as a hobby is you can do it in your everyday life. This aspect just takes it a whole step further, and turns it into a way to win prizes, take fancy trips, even develop a social circle.
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