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
THE COS TCO CONNECTION
Look for Alton Brown: EveryDayCook
(Item #1090488) in most Costcos, in addition
to ingredients for your everyday meals.
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