Ms. Oriana and Masterchef

To a stunned Bruno Barbieri who had asked her why she was there at Masterchef after tasting her “Sunday tortelli” with some perplexity, Ms. Oriana, with great candor replied , “I am here for tradition, because you cook things that normal people don’t eat and don’t understand.”

General frost, a two-to-one vote to let it continue, with Cannavacciuolo saying no and Barbieri and Locatelli voting yes instead. It seemed to end there, but instead the episode had a rather wide media impact and Mrs. Oriana is in danger of becoming a sort of heroine of the home kitchen. In the facts she told us that “the king is naked,” that much of the professional cooking of star chefs is not understood by very many people, which is true and underestimated in its importance.

Of course, such things have always happened in other areas of human expression as well. In art, in music, in literature, great geniuses have been misunderstood, at least in their period of activity. Then certain artistic expressions are understood and appreciated by a few enthusiasts, think of many contemporary installations, Luciano Berio’s compositions, De Dominicis’ canvases.

Cooking as a television phenomenon

But for cooking, especially if it becomes a TV phenomenon, it is a different matter, in my opinion, and I tend to sympathize with Ms. Oriana. If Masterchef is not just an entertainment program, I think the recipes that are presented should be able to be replicated or, at least, make people want to be replicated at home, for example. They should tell stories of family, local traditions, of particular ingredients, and not just a somewhat extreme and often end in itself culinary technique that accentuates the distance between starred cuisine and the common feeling of people.

This is a theme I had tried to address in some previous editorials, with sometimes even polemical reactions from those who think of self-referential, somewhat rhetorical and, in the case of restaurants, very expensive and entirely theoretical “excellence” for most. If, on the other hand, Masterchef is just an entertainment program, if Barbieri, Cannavacciuolo and Locatelli are simply hosts, actors playing a part, and not chefs (Locatelli is, moreover, a restaurateur rather than a chef, as Bastianich was), then everything is understood and falls into place. It is comedy, farce, entertainment, whatever, in which cooking is the excuse for showmanship, for creating characters, who will then use their popularity to write books, to advertise not-quite-craft products, to participate in other and different broadcasts, as the star system grants. It is enough to know.