The Costco Connection - October 2016

FOR YOUR TABLE

BY HANA MEDINA

FOOD NETWORK STAR Alton Brown is known for his humorous food-science prowess on his long-running show Good Eats, as host extraordinaire on competition shows Iron Chef America and Cutthroat Kitchen, and for his live show, Eat Your Science (hitting Broadway in November). There’s no doubt that Brown keeps a fast-paced schedule. In fact, he was rushing to hair and makeup (at 6: 30 a.m.) before filming the finale of Cutthroat Kitchen: Halloween Tournament when The Connection caught up with him by phone to chat about how he became a food media personality, and his latest cookbook, Alton Brown: EveryDayCook.

Before he was known for his skills in the kitchen, Brown, a Costco member, was making a living behind the scenes as a director and cinematographer for commercials. As a hobbyist cook in the late ’80s and ’90s, he felt the cooking shows of the time were dull and lacked entertainment.

In 1994, Brown took a leap of faith and quit his job to go to culinary school to create his dream show, on a hunch that food media was going to get big. His instincts proved to be dead on, and his food-science cooking show Good Eats launched in 1999. He admits he was a miserable science student, but after going to culinary school he realized that

Alton Brown

Food Network star gets personal

understanding the science behind the stovetop was the only way to improve as a cook. “When I figured out a way to understand [the science], then I could figure out a way to explain it in an entertaining way,” he tells The Connection. “Our motto was ‘Laughing brains are more absorbent.’ ”

Good Eats had a successful run until 2012, when Brown says he saw food TV moving toward competition shows. He had already begun hosting Iron Chef America, and once Good Eats ended, he went on to also host

Cutthroat Kitchen.

While he was busy entertaining the masses on TV, he also wrote seven cookbooks; EveryDayCook is his eighth release. He says it’s called that because he believes in cooking every day. And despite winning a James Beard Award, he still considers himself an everyday cook.

Cooks of all levels and
taste preferences will find accessible recipes
for all three meals (plus snacks and desserts)
to add to their repertoire, from spins on basics
like oatmeal and scrambled eggs, to more
exotic dishes like beef pho and kimchee crab
cakes, to more involved meals, such as a
whole turkey.

Brown says he’s diligent about not only
how a dish is developed, but also how precisely
the recipe is written. “It doesn’t matter how
brilliant I can be as a cook, or [how] brilliant
you can be as a cook. If you can’t communicate
the steps properly to the other person, it’s like
computer code that’s gone bad,” he says. “All
you do is replicate mistakes.”
So what’s next for the food guru? He’s
launching a new Good Eats–style web series
next year and plans to continue to push the
limits of food media.

“In this day and age, when … we’re disconnected from each other in a lot of ways, I still feel that food is the great unifier,” he says. “And if I can bring a few thousand people together in a theater [for Eat your Science] for a fe w hours, to be unified by food and by all things culinary, then I think that’s a worthy endeavor.” C