You are right in that I don’t like Paula Deen as a chef. It’s not that I don’t like her personally or dislike her for her success, it’s just that I don’t find her cooking to my liking and I don’t think she’s a good representative of what I know about Southern cuisine – it’s not all about deep fried Twinkies and bacon cheese burgers served on a glazed doughnuts. I don’t know any respectable Southern lady who would serve such a thing to a guest unless the guest was some damned Yankee who she was trying to kill. In which case a shotgun would be quicker and cleaner : ),
Sadly, there’s gotta be somebody out there who cooks Southern food that is not the dull as dishwater Natalie Dupree (who should stick to writing books). There was a time when PBS OWNED the cooking shows and we had to put up with a whole bunch of dull cooks (with a few good ones thrown in like the great Julia Child, Jacques Pepin and the jolly Chris Kimball). And watch what PBS did to transform Lidia from a snarling chef to a warm, grandmotherly figure! (Although they need to shake up that po-faced daughter a bit.) With the advent of the Food Network, even dozey PBS had to shake up their cooking “stars.”
I personally never found Natalie Dupree as “dull as dishwater”. And I rather liked when PBS had cooking shows that focused more on cooking and food education, even if some found that rather dull. I liked them more than the so called “food stars” now days that are more about personalities and trendy and way over the top cooking shows like “Top Chef” and “Chopped” and “Cup Cake Wars” and . I mean, really who really cooks like that or who even really wants to eat most of those dishes? Jalapeño, orange rind, sardine and tofu filled cupcakes with gummy bear infused chocolate licorice and lobster glazed icing. Really? Really?
Julia Child and Jacques Pepin and even Jeff Smith (the Frugal Gourmet before he was found to be a perv) on PBS were great and I learned a lot about cooking from them. Most of the shows on the Food Channel now days, not so much.
And Jacques Pepin was even more duller than dishwater IMO than Natalie Dupree, but both of them knew how to cook dishes that real people would want to cook and actually eat.
Actually, Jacques had a lot of Gallic personality and no one but no one could beat his exquisite knife/slicing techniques. It was a masterful thing to watch. Julia always let him do the slicing and dicing. Mesmerizing to me!