El Chef paraguayo Julio Fernández

1. Laura Gosalbo & Henri-Pierre Millescamps
celebrity chefs
Food entertainment history
From the first great chefs to television
FRANKFURT
BOOK FAIR
LIMITED EDITION FOR
PROFESSIONALS ONLY

2. CONTENTS
12 FOREWORD BY EDOUARD COINTREAU EDOUARD NIGNON
PIERRE LACAM
14 INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHORS AUGUSTE ESCOFFIER
PROSPER MONTAGNÉ
PIERRE BLOT
19 WHY WE LIKE TV COOKERY SHOWS CHARLES RANHOFER
23 HOW TO BECOME A TOP CHEF
29 WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE A CELEBRITY CHEF? 117 ORIGINS OF SHOW COOKING
35 THE PERFECT CELEBRITY CHEF
39 TV CHEFS AT HOME 123 THE RISE OF FOOD ON TV
TV AND COOKING SHOWS: AN OVERVIEW
45 COOKING IS WHAT MADE THE MAN
124 TV CHEFS: WORLDWIDE CELEBRITIES
61 FAMOUS CHEFS THROUGHOUT HISTORY MOIRA MEIGHT
X. MARCEL BOULESTIN
GUILLAUME TIREL, TAILLEVENT
MAITRE CHIQUART 131 POST-WAR CHEFS IN BRITAIN
JOHANN BOCKENHEIM PHILIP HARBEN
MEISTER EBERHARDS MARGUERITE PATTERN
MAESTRO MARTINO FANNY CRADDOCK
BARTOLOMEO DE SACCHI GRAHAM KERR
ROBERT DE NOLA LESLIE HOARE
ANTONIO CAMURIA DELIA SMITH
CRISTOFORO DA MESSISBUGO KEITH FLOYD
LEONARDO DA VINCI THE NEW GENERATION
BARTOLOMEO SCAPPI NIGELLA LAWSON
MARX RUMPOLT JAMIE OLIVER
LANCELOT DE CASTEAU
FRANÇOIS MASSIALOT 179 CHEFS IN THE USA
PATRICK LAMB JAMES BEARD
VINCENT DE LA CHAPELLE DIONE LUCAS
FRANÇOIS PIERRE DE LA VARENNE FLORENCE HANFORD
FRANÇOIS VATEL JULIA CHILD
FRANCISCO MARTINEZ MONTIÑO JACQUES PEPÍN
ANTONIO CATALÁN WOLFGANG JOHANN PUCK
ANTONIN CARÈME EMERIL JOHN LAGASSE
ALEXIS SOYER
JULES GOUFFÉ
206 FRANCE
URBAIN DUBOIS
ADOLPHE DUGLÉRÉ 213 SPAIN
10 CELEBRITY CHEFS

3. 216 GERMANY YVAN CADIOU (FRANCE)
CHAKALL (PORTUGAL)
219 CHINA CHRISTINE CUSHING (CANADA)
226 JAPAN FLORA DE ECHANDI (COSTA RICA)
DONATO DE SANTIS (ARGENTINA)
228 ARAB COUNTRIES JULIO FERNÁNDEZ (PARAGUAY)
JIGYASA GIRI & PRATIBHA JAIN-PRITYA (INDIA)
231 SOME SHOWS THAT CHANGED THE RULES ANNABEL LANGBEIN (NEW ZEALAND)
TWO FAT LADIES NARDA LEPES (ARGENTINA)
THE NAKED CHEF LEA LINSTER (LUXEMBOURG)
IRON CHEF ANDRES MADRIGAL (SPAIN)
FAVOURITE MOMENTS: THE SWEDISH MUPPET CHEF LAUREL-ANN MORLEY (BARBADOS)
MICHEL OLIVER (FRANCE)
236 COMPETITIVE COOKING SHOWS COCO PACHECO (CHILE)
CHEF RAMZI (LEBANON)
239 FOOD REALITY SHOWS CLAUDIA RODEN (UK)
242 FOOD & THE INTERNET ART SMITH (USA)
243 FOOD GAMES SAHRAP SOYSAL (TURKEY)
243 WINE TV MARLENA SPIELER (USA)
246 21st-CENTURY CHEFS ANDREAS VIESTAD (NORWAY)
VOLUNDUR VOLUNDARSON (ICELAND)
CHEF WAN (MALAYSIA)
251 FOOD & TV TODAY IN FIVE INTERVIEWS
FOOD CHANEL DIRECTOR: MANDI CIRZA (SPAIN) 337 ABOUT THE CHEFS: BIOGRAPHIES AND
TV PRESENTER: BASS WESTERWEEL (THE NETHERLANDS) INTERVIEWS
SOCIOLOGIST: JEROEN BOSCHNA (THE NETHERLANDS)
FOOD CRITIC: RASHMI UDAY SINGH (INDIA) 407 FOOD TV: COUNTRIES, TV PROGRAMMES
TV PRODUCER: EDOUARD COINTREAU (FRANCE) AND CELEBRITY CHEFS
271 CHEFS AND RECIPES 441 GLOSSARY
MONIKA AHLBERG (SWEDEN)
VEFA ALEXIADOU (GREECE) 450 INDEX OF RECIPES
JOSÉ ANDRÉS (SPAIN)
CUQUITA ARIAS DE CALVO (PANAMA) 454 BIBLIOGRAPHY
MRIDULA BALKEJAR (UK)
YANN BARRAUD (FRANCE)
RACHAEL BERMINGHAM & KIM McCOSKER (AUSTRALIA)
JULIE BIUSO (NEW ZEALAND)
CHRISTIAN BRAVO (PERU)
CELEBRITY CHEFS 11

4. FOREWORD BY EDOUARD COINTREAU
Every country around the world now has its own celebrity chef(s).
A celebrity chef today usually does not have a restaurant, but a
television show. Very few celebrity chefs are known beyond their
national boundaries, but they are usually huge stars in their own
country.
The public has a very close bond with its celebrity chef. He or she
becomes the family figure who transmits food culture. This role
was once played by the mother or grand -mother in nearly all cul-
tures, but has disappeared with the modern way of living. So the
celebrity chef has become part of the family, and has a major role
in society, impacting on behaviour, health and social life.
Television is the most effective medium for conveying emotion. The
celebrity chef builds his or her success on the ability to entertain,
using food as a tool to satisfy the basic needs and emotions of the
public. The Romans wanted bread and circuses, panem et circen-
ses. Today, on television, bread is the circus.
The celebrity chef is an entertainer with a following which makes
him a star, but his role with food places him at the centre of the
family. Thus, the one quality that unites celebrity chefs around
the world is that the public wants them to be part of their family.
Clearly they have to be “normal” and never appear arrogant, they
must seem friendly and relaxed, with powerful energy and obvious
mastery of the culinary arts. There are a few black sheep – foul
mouthed and with a bad attitude – as in every family, but even
they may be accepted if their behaviour is combined with humour
and if it finds an echo in the same anti-social traits found in the
general public.
Nearly all celebrity chefs stop running restaurants, as that is such
a difficult business. Most of their income is derived from their tele-
vision appearances, cookbooks, sponsorships, product endorse-
12 CELEBRITY CHEFS

5. ments and events, rather than directly from their television broad-
casts. Television is their marketing tool, which they need in order
to promote their real business in the consumer market.
Cookbooks may possibly be the major business for celebrity chefs.
Most of them will make more money from selling books than from
television. But they need the television in order to sell the books. At
the end of the twentieth century a cookbook linked to a television
programme might sell at least ten times more than if it had been
marketed without the benefit of television. Today, the market is very
competitive, and the cookbook linked to a television show usually
stops selling the moment the show is off the air.
Television has been the engine behind the growth of the cookbook
market worldwide, which has multiplied fourfold in the last twenty
years.
This book is extremely useful because it shows how star chefs in the
past were real cooks, owning or running restaurants or working for
wealthy patrons with important households. Today, celebrity chefs
run millions of kitchens over which they preside through television
entertainment, and have no time for a restaurant. The main focus
of the book is to show that celebrity chefs are actually remarkable
human beings who can blend into most families easily, happily
and peacefully. Their drive and energy fuel their food.
In many instances, they have become role models for the young
and inspire positive behaviour. In the future, they may be a key to
improving a sustainable, healthy world. We all need the celebrity
chefs.
Edouard Cointreau
Gourmand World Cookbook Awards
CELEBRITY CHEFS 13

6. long as we treat food as mere fuel and convenience, we shall be
part of the instant food movement but once we begin to realise that
food nourishes and makes us who we are, in addition to exciting us,
then we’ll move more towards the opposite end of the spectrum”.
Chef Wan insists on the health aspect: “People are getting more
and more concerned about food and about what they eat. Everybo-
dy loves eating but, at the same time, we are more worried about
health and living well. Some of us never learned to cook, but now
we think it is basic, it is important. Many shows on TV project that:
our need to cook for healthy lifestyle”.
The problem, as Chef Völundur Völundarson sees it, is that “We
need time to devote to cooking and, if people take a lot of pleasure
in preparing food, but they have a busy life, by watching a few te-
levision programmes, they will discover that making a simple meal
can be fun and easy”.
Coco Pacheco explains that good cooking is relaxing, through
creating the food and eating it. “Our world is running fast, but
being in a hurry does not bring us happiness. Eating calmly, eating
good food, really well-prepared dishes containing natural, high-
quality ingredients produces a high level of satisfaction, higher still
when we share them with friends or relatives.”
According to Andres Madrigal:
“Our society has changed not only the way we eat but the
meaning of cooking too. We have acquired bad habits with
the new lifestyle but we want to know more about everything,
including food, and we are bringing back some recipes,
going back to our roots, and opening up a new way of en-
joying and a culture that had long been forgotten.”
Being a home chef is fashionable nowadays, something that adds
prestige to our c.v. and a new extension to our social life. As Flora
de Echandi puts it, “Is there a better way to welcome our guests
than with a homemade lunch or dinner?” She is right, fast food is
monotonous, boring, but usually it is all that we have time to eat in
the midst of our busy daily lives, even though we may be longing to
be back home, enjoying good home-made food.
Chef Ramzi and Chef Völundur Völundarson The twenty-first century brings us back to the comfort and intimacy
at Gourmand/LBF Cookbook Corner,
London Book Fair 2008. of home and as Cuquita Arias, “Frequently we try to find nice tra-
ditions and memories to share with people we consider special and
to whom we offer the privilege of sharing our table”.
So, for the beginner, it’s a good idea to show how to make some
easy, basic recipes, a few ideas for improving our way of eating.
This is what Julio Fernandez defines as “educational entertain-
20 CELEBRITY CHEFS

7. ment”, demonstrating healthy but basic dishes, using ingredients
that are easy find and making food that does not require long
preparation.
We soon come to realise that cookery is a matter of “practice makes
perfect”, until we no longer fear pots, pans, and stoves; “When
one has learnt the basics well, then one can improvise, innovate,
and create magic in the kitchen“(Pedatha & Pratihba).
For Yvan Cadiou there are some economic reasons as well: “In
the 1980’s there was a lot of money around: the stock market, the
internet business, there was easy money for a lot of people. Going
out for food was a new trend and for twenty years, from 1980 to
2000, people lost the gift of passing on the knowledge of cooking
at home. Now in 2008, people have realised that it is a good thing
to cook at home, first of all because you know what you are eating,
you know the quality. Secondly it brings everyone together, and thir-
dly, with the world economic crisis the cost of food has increased a
lot, and so people have realised that it is cheaper to cook at home.
So, suddenly, everybody wants to learn, and when there is no link,
no connection between parents and children as there used to be in
the past, you have to learn from chefs, from cookbooks, and from
television”.
Michel Oliver adds: “We are living into the civilization of the leisure
activities but we do not have (crisis obliges) the means to take ad-
vantage of it. The most gratifying and the cheapest leisure is cooking.
Women consider cooking as a daily duty; it is the man who seized
this hobby. It is like acting as a magician to transform the ingredients
and after receiving the congratulations of his guests. Today celebrity
chefs are the TV stars and It’s easy to become identified to them.”
If we are really busy, we can cook at the weekend something have
seen or read during the week. As Andreas Viestad explains it: “the-
re are those of us who live not only of food but for food. But people
with a more – what shall I say – normal relationship to food have a
tendency to combine an interest in food with precooked dishes and
fast food. On weekdays they eat whatever is simple and quick; at
the weekend, they either eat out or do their own cooking. In many
ways, it is everyday food that suffers”. Andreas Viestad.
For Donato de Santis it is a question of marketing, “the huge TV
companies are always hungry for new product, new designers, new
super-models and rock stars…now it is cooks who have become
the latest fashion”. Whatever the situation, we must not forget that
eating is a social act, which is why anything related with food will
always be a success.
CELEBRITY CHEFS 21

8. te constantly, easy things, simple things, it took me ten years to get rid
of my professional attitude and technique and become a normal person
because I am closer to people that way.
The more I cook for my friends at home or for my family, the closer I am
to reality.”
CHAKALL
“Yes, I cook quite often.”
CHRISTINE CUSHING
“I cook at home almost every day. When I was shooting a live daily
show, I would cook on weekends because I would get home very late
during the week.”
FLORA DE ECHANDI
“At home, I prepare and taste new recipes, the ones that we are going to
record weekly for television programmes.”
DONATO DE SANTIS
“I cook quite often, sharing knifes and chopping-boards with my wife and
my daughters.”
JULIO FERNANDEZ
“I live alone and I don’t like to cook for myself, so usually I go out but, I
cook for special occasions.”
JIGYASA GIRI & PRATIBHA JAIN-PRITYA
“Both of us love to cook for our families and friends.”
ANNABEL LANGHBEIN
“Yes, always, I am obsessed. It’s like a physical need I have to cook.
Even when I go on holiday I cook. We went on a family holiday up to the
Sofitel in Hua Hin and after a day or two sitting round the pool I just had
to find the kitchens, and then spent the rest of the week in there helping
out and learning how to cook some amazing Thai food. That is my idea
of bliss.”
NARDA LEPES
“I do cook, but less than I would like to. I live in a Chinese neighborhood,
so that I have a lot of fresh produce nearby. Grilled fish, soups, a lot of
soups, tortillas, vegetable croquettes, pastas…some cooked dishes.”
LEA LINSTER
“Well, everything in my life has been about since I was born. For me, it
is entertainment, and I don’t want to loose this word.”
Chef Julio Fernández with Oky, his friend and co-host ANDRES MADRIGAL
in their program Sabores y Algo Más, Red Guaraní,
Paraguay.
“Unfortunately I have no time to cook at home but when I have the chan-
ce to cook for my family and friends, I really have a great time.”
LAURELANN MORLEY
“I cook, I cook everything, we do everything. Our restaurant is in our
home, we live upstairs, we even do lunch, we sit on the gallery, loo-
40 CELEBRITY CHEFS

9. JULIO FERNÁNDEZ (PARAGUAY)
“La gastronomía es la
identidad cultural de
la naciones, es algo que
las representa y muy bien,
del mismo modo que lo
hace la música
u otro arte.”
Sopa paraguaya
Sopa típica de la cocina paraguaya
Serves 4
300 CELEBRITY CHEFS

10. Ingredientes: Preparación:
1.500 g de harina de La cebolla se pica y sofrita con el aceite
maíz precocida. sin que la cebolla tome color y se deja
300 g de queso paraguay enfriar. Aparte se baten los huevos con el
(es un queso casero fresco) queso previamente desmenuzado.
6 huevos. En un bol se coloca la harina de maíz y
200 ml de leche. se mezcla muy bien con la cebolla pre-
200 ml de aceite de maíz parada anteriormente, luego se incorpo-
5 g de sal fina. ra el batido de queso y los huevos, se
250 g de cebolla picada. agrega la sal. Por último y según la ne-
cesidad, la leche. Se coloca en un pirex,
se cocina al horno por un tiempo de 30
minutos y a una temperatura de 170ºC.
Queda como una torta de maíz y se sir-
ve fría o caliente.
Nota: el pirex se enmanteca previamente.
Antiguamente se usaba la hoja de bana-
na como base antiadherente.
Ingredientes:
1 gallina casera.
100 ml de aceite de maíz. vori-vori de gallina
2 dientes de ajos.
250 g de cebolla picada o rallada.
100 g de zanahoria en brunoise.
150 g de tomate picadito.
100 g pimiento verde
(locote verde) picado.
1 rama de orégano Para el vori:
preferentemente fresco. 150 g de harina de maíz.
sal fina a gusto. 100 g de queso paraguay.
2 hojas de laurel.
2000 ml de agua.
Preparación:
Cortar en 8 presas la gallina y dorar en aceite de maíz y se reserva
aparte. En el mismo fondo se sofríen todas la verduras y la hoja de
laurel.
Luego se agrega el agua, la sal, algo de pimienta negra y se deja
cocinar. Una vez que empiece el hervor incorporar las presas de
gallina previamente doradas.
En un bol colocar la harina de maíz con queso desmenuzado y hu-
medecer con un poco del caldo de gallina, hasta que resulte una
masa manejable (como para albóndigas). Amasar durante algunos
minutos, armar un bolitas pequeñas con la masa e incorporar den-
tro del caldo. Dejar cocinar durante 10 minutos, agregar el orégano
fresco y servir bien caliente.
CELEBRITY CHEFS 301