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The Next Food Network Star Finale

As the latest season of "The Next Food Network Star" comes to a close, I just wanted to take a minute to highlight the difference between a Food Network Star and the average good home chef. Both of the finalists on the television show are what I would call niche cooks. Jeff is the self-styled "sandwich king" who says you can turn any sandwich into a meal and any meal into a sandwich. Susie's Food Network show concept is "Spice it Up," a show about adding a little extra flare to traditional Mexican cooking. 

Those are great concepts for television shows or cookbooks, but each represents only a single facet of what a good cook delivers at home. We all make sandwiches and learning how to turn leftovers into a sandwich for lunch the next day is a skill we'd all love to have. Let's face it though, if we served sandwiches for every meal, we'd face a dining room rebellion before too long.

Similarly, Susie brings her Mexican heritage to the kitchen. We'd all love to add classic Mexican dishes delivered with a modern twist to our family's menu. It's even an appropriate choice for those occasions when we are entertaining. On the other hand, even though we might all love to "Spice it Up" once in a while, variety is the real spice of life. The United States is the great melting pot, and one of the hidden benefits of our mixed heritage is that at any given moment our own pots might contain almost any flavor found anywhere in the world. Americans, by and large, appreciate the finest cuisine of almost every culture around the world, and a good home cook can make Mexican dishes, Thai dishes, Italian dishes, classic French haute cuisine, and good old southern style barbecue. We are a diverse people with a taste for diversity.

We all want to learn how to cook Mexican dishes, but for the most part, we don't want to limit ourselves to only Mexican dishes. In my cupboard, I have dog-eared cookbooks that each focus on the foods of one of at least a dozen different countries and I'm always looking for more. When I travel to other countries, or even other parts of the United States, I try to pick up a new dish from whatever region I'm visiting.

So, yes, a show that focuses on making sandwiches good enough to serve for dinner when guests are visiting or a show that focuses on modernizing classic Mexican fare are both of interest to most home cooks, but while a TV chef can be a one-trick pony, home cooks need to be ring-masters able to introduce many different acts to their family's table, juggling left-overs and prime quality ingredients from all around the world to create an ongoing performance that never gets boring.

Will I watch "The Sandwich King"? (Jeff won the season and will be getting his own show on the Food Network.) Yes, I'll watch an episode or two, but if he doesn't give me a new act that I can add to my own three-ring kitchen circus, I won't be watching for long. I don't need to hear about his three-year-old son helping in the kitchen or his father's favorite comfort food, I want new recipes, new techniques, and most importantly new flavors presented with enough detail that I can replicate them and decide whether to add them to my family's menu.
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