For Black History Month the Food Network has added a black couple to join the channel’s impressive lineup of culinary artists who host their own cooking and other food-related shows. The newly added program is called Down Home With the Neelys, a cooking show hosted by husband and wife Pat and Geena Neely whose owns a chain of successful barbecue restaurants, Neely’s Bar-B-Que, in Tennessee and expose viewers to such recipes as Get Yo’ Man Chicken, Southern Creamed Corn, BBQ Spaghetti, Memphis-Style Hickory-Smoked Beef and Pork Ribs, and the Neely Family’s BBQ Sauce.
My fiancee is a wizard in the kitchen and even her own blog, ItaliaRican Kitchen (Her mother is Sicilian and her father is Puerto Rican), complete with recipes and little nuggets of culinary wisdom. My favorite dish of hers is hands-down her spinach pete, a dish which can be best described as spinach pizza without the sauce.
Yes, I know this is a shameless plug for her site, but I owe her. This girl knows how to throw down–and not just in the kitchen!
Given her love for cooking, she watches the Food Network for hours on end, subscribes to Everyday With Rachel Ray (RR is her co-hero along with Mariah Carey). One day I asked her if there were any black Food Network stars. After all, African-Americans and West Indians have a rich (and delicious) culinary tradition. She said except for one black cake decorator who is one of several co-hosts on a cake design show, there were no black Food Network stars. I know there is a Latina Food Network star, Ingrid Hoffman, who despite her Jewish-sounding name, is actually Colombian and hosts Simply Delicioso, a cooking show based on her Spanish-language show, Delicioso on Galavision. In addition there are several Latino chefs featured on various Food Network programs, and the half-Portuguese/half-Quebecois Emeril Lagasse (if you count the Portuguese as Latinos). Despite a very rich and diverse culinary heritage among Latinos, Ingrid appears to be the only Latino Food Network star, with no black stars in sight until now.
Shows like Grillin’ and Chillin’ are hosted by two white guys and other types of Southern (African-American cuisine is really Southern cuisine) is covered by Paula Deen. Food Network has certainly covered all bases with Italian cuisine and culinary stars of Italian origin/ancestry. According to their website, Food Network also has Roker on the Road with Al Roker, Sugar Rush with Warren Brown, and Watch Bobby Rivers with Bobby Rivers (who is not actually a cook and does no actual cooking on the show). Not to grasp at straws but I’ve never seen any of these shows on Food Network’s schedule of programming, and Bobby Rivers serves mainly as a host and Warren Brown is not a cook at all, but a cake decorator. Not that decorator is any less significant than a cook or chef, but it is a completely different occupation.
I know on a post on Xicano Power titled, “Latinos be Representin’ on American Idol” I commented the following:
Proportional Latino representation on American Idol? Now I can sleep easily at night!
In all seriousness, who gives two diamond-encrusted shits about Latinos “representin’ on American idol? Let me know when Latinos “be representin’ in the U.S. Senate. The only downside of Obama being elected President will be that the U.S. Senate will lose its only Senator of color.
Honestly, I know the very same can be said of this post, but I do think that the Food Network’s effort to expose viewers to the diverse culinary traditions of many different cultures is far more important than a diverse group of aspiring singers performing the same mainstream musical genres (pop, rock and R & B). It’s not like they have contestants who sing Tejano, salsa, merengue or reggaeton.
At least now Food Network is making a step in the right direction in tapping into largely ignored markets such as African-American cuisine a.k.a. soul food and the diverse facets of Latin American cooking. Let’s just hope the Food Network doesn’t cancel Down Home With the Neelys by the end of Black History Month.
Entries (RSS)
March 5th, 2008 at 4:38 am
Wonderful article. This information is very interesting which tells about food recipes prepared by by both wife and husband. Even i have gone through this kind of article while i am surfing on net, which tells about Colombian food recipes which is also a very interesting concept.
April 5th, 2008 at 8:54 pm
btw, I don’t know what ingrid’s deal is, but you can be from columbia and still be Jewish. There’s a big community of Columbia Jews and many of them end up going to Miami.
April 7th, 2008 at 1:39 am
Well Robin, Colombia is a country, not a religion. Just like saying that you’re from the United States doesn’t mean you’re a white Christian. Most Jews in Latin America fled from Spain in the 1500s to escape the Spanish Inquisition, which forced Jews to convert to Christianity, be expelled from Spain or be executed. Even Jews who converted were still treated as second-class citizens in Spain and had to wear an arm band with a symbol indicating that they were former Jews. Most converted Jews fled to the Americas to more safely practice Judaism in secret.
Spanish Jews, or Shephardim were among the first Europeans in the Americas. The oldest synagogue in the Western Hemisphere was built in 1636 in Brazil, and the oldest synagogue in the United States was founded in Rhode Island by Shephardic Jews, who were also the first Jewish immigrants. My own paternal ancestors were Shephardim who wre forced to convert to Christianity.
Other Jewish Latinos, like Ingrid Hoffman’s ancestors, fled from Europe to avoid the Holocaust and the advancing Nazi armies. The most famous Jewish Latino I can think of is Don Francisco from Sabado Gigante, whose real name is Mario Luis Kreutzberger Blumenfeld. Ironically, the Jewish Latinos whose families immigrated to Latin America in the 1940s also own the majority of the television networks throughout Latin America.
I’m not surprised to hear that Jews, even Colombian, flock to Miami. Jews do seem to stick together, regardless of national origin or ethnicity. For example, I attended a predominantly black college, and the members of the school’s Hillel, the Jewish students club, was literally made up of all the dozen or so Jews who attended the college.