I want to be a Celebrity Chef
What is a Celebrity Chef?
Does a celebrity chef cook for celebrities? No. Our celebrated meal-makers travel the world extolling the virtues of their concoctions. They score prime-time cable-TV reality shows wherein they graciously teach us how to prepare a 7 course dinner with desert and coupons. They author best-selling books replete with photos of moodily lit appetizers. This is what I want to be.
I will need a hook
Of course, no one gets on TV unless they have been arrested, lost a bid for reelection, or endorsed by Oprah. I plan to achieve all three of these accolades as I wend my way toward becoming a celebrity chef. I will need an easy to understand 'hook' that fits conveniently into Twitter posts. My story must be heart-string tugging, easily understood, and mildly controversial. An optimal hook can be condoned by half of cable TV pundits and and condemned by the other half.
I am considering these hooks:
- Abused as a child by a really mean chef: Throughout my formative years I was fed nothing but chicken livers and Tang at every meal including Thanksgiving and 4th of July picnics. Everyone will feel sorry for me as I expose my sadness on Entertainment Tonight, Good Morning America, and Talk Soup.
- Wasn't allowed to use the stove: All my siblings learned to make pancakes at an early age but I was restricted to boiling water in the microwave. For years I yearned to turn on the ceramic heating surface and whip up a really good batch of mashed potatoes, but it was not to be. Eventually I ran away from home and got a job at Best Buy.
- Flunked out of Community College Chef School: After piling up thousands of dollars in student loans, I found myself just 3 credits short of an Associate's Degree in Chef Studies. Despite a noble effort I was unable to pass the required course in napkin folding.
- Ate something gross and got sick: After a struggle with food poisoning I swore off food for several hours, then decided to dedicate my life to cooking meals that would not make people ill. I locked myself in my parent's basement and designed a line of completely sterile meals for all occasions.
I will have a signature dish
Every reasonably successful gourmand boasts a signature dish. As a celebrity chef, I will be invited to appear on other celebrity chef's TV shows to prepare my specialty. Fellow chefs will look on in approval as I smoothly concoct my famous foods while maintaining amusing banter. They will sincerely sample the finished product and swoon over my mastery of flavors as I hold up my latest cooking book, available on Amazon.com.
My signature dish will reflect my upbringing as well as my culinary influences. It will being to mind all the flavorful nuances that made me what I will be. In order to become a celebrity chef, combining previously uncombined taste sensations becomes necessary. I plan to make a name for myself by merging foods heretofore unmerged: my signature dish will include Fritos and caviar stuffed into a soy duck served with civet coffee, which is disgustingly gross but somehow elegant at the same time. My sauce will be catsup and butterscotch pudding with mushrooms, sprinkled with fresh pepper from a huge grinder that requires a MS in Mechanical Engineering to operate.
Everything will be fresh. 'Fresh' is the adjective legally required to describe every ingredient in a signature dish. No ingredient older than 5 minutes will be part of my recipe. Everything will be fresh and organic and authentic and local and free-range, including the napkins and silverware.
I will branch out
Eventually I will have climbed all the mountains and met all the culinary challenges placed on my plate, so to speak. In short order, being a celebrity chef will become insufficiently challenging. I plan to branch out into other endeavors. I will provide myself as a judge on American Idol. I will run for Congress. I will start a TV production company. All these things and more will be open doors for me after achieving celebrity chef status.
Some things that will happen to me:
- I will make appearances with famous celebrities who, after a lifetime of debauchery, have gone vegan because no one pays attention to them anymore.
- I will make appearances with political figures who, after a lifetime of doing whatever they want, now intend to make everyone else eat healthy.
- I will make appearances with professional athletes who, after a lifetime of abusing their bodies with prescription drugs and Gatorade, now intend to become highly paid pitchmen for healthy eating.
Join me in my quest
Becoming a famous cook will make me happy but I need your help to get truly famous. Go online and order my books, tapes, books on tape, ebooks, videos, recipes, and placemats. Watch me when I am on TV, even if it's just The View. Talk about me at work. Serve my food at Thanksgiving and Super Bowl Sunday. Thank you for your support.