Application with significant changes and completed sections

Show Name: Food Deja Vu
Tag line: Hi. I'm Ivan Corwin and I want to welcome you to Food Deja Vu (or other title) -- the show where we rediscover the foods of our past which have not made their way into the mainstream american food culture. These are the foods of our parents and grandparents, foods on which we once lived and now foods which we are dying to have again. Come with me as we learn and explore the rich stories, recipes and cooking techniques which once ruled our kitchens.
Structure: Each week select a new authentic vegetarian dish which has not found its way into the mass american food scene.
1. Give a short historical sketch of the food and its significance.
2. Discuss how, if in any way, it has found its way into popular cuisine.
3. Find an expert at making it and have them give me a cooking lesson, also have them relate their memories and thoughts about the food.
4. Take it back to my kitchen and try to follow and translate their lesson. Talk about how the implications of their techniques and their choice of ingredients and why they developed as they did.
5. Experiment with alternative methods which might be more suitable for working people --- premade mixes, substitutions, healthier ingredients.
6. Solicit people who have or know someone who has a great, authentic dish, or story about dishes of days past.


1. Why do you want your own Food Network Show?
Americans are more interested in diverse, ethnic foods now than ever. To attract this new market interest, purveyors of ethnic cuisine have modified and refocused much of their menus towards dishes heavy on meats and cheese, and have overlooked many vegetarian options. The result is a mainstream culture of often inauthentic food which grossly neglects the rich heritage and colorful histories of ingenious cooking techniques and flavorful recipes from traditions spanning the globe. I keep a kosher kitchen. Some may see that as a disadvantage to exploring ethnic cuisine, but I feel that it has given me an opportunity. I look past marquee meat dishes --- the meatballs and chicken tika masala --- and in their place I see homemade pastas and Dosas, I see principles of fermentation and methods of dough creation, I see stories of culture and of history. This opportunity and these sights are what I want to share with my audience.

2. Do you have any formal/profession cooking training? If so, please describe. Did you graduate from cooking schoool?
No.

3. If you did not go to cooking school, how did you learn to cook?
I watched and listened to family, friends and food network. I asked questions to my Bubbee (grandmother) and mother about my own Jewish cooking traditions.

4. What is the greatest lesson you've learned about cooking?
To open myself up to every smell, taste and sight around me. In particular I have learned the most from watching people like my Bubbee, or the mother of my former Indian roommate, or the Bangladeshi fiance of another of my roommates make the foods which they love. By trying to reproduce or at least approximate the dishes I watch them prepare, I gain a better perspective about the ways of their respective cuisines.

5. What do you feel you can teach someone about food, or cooking? Please make something specific to you -- not about "having fun in the kitchen" or similar.
I can teach people to embrace thousands of years of knowledge and tradition which has created excellent dishes. People have learned to appreciate diverse cuisines but often stop short of exploring beyond the one or two dishes they feel save with. I will show my audience the gems of culinary experience which are found in cultures the world over.

6. Who was the greatest influence on your cooking, and why?
Before I began to delve into the culinary heritage of other cultures, I looked deep into my own. This culinary introspection was prompted by memories, both mine and my families, of the delicacies and baked goods of my great-grandmother, Bubbee Kerlin. Her nearly 100 years of cooking traditional Jewish food gave me a sense of longing to experience and understand the cuisine of my family. And now I look to experience and understand the cuisine of those around me.

7. In addition to any cooking jobs listed above, list any other culinary experience:
None aside from preparing meals for friends and family.

8. What is the largest number of people you have ever cooked for? Please explain.
At my apartment, or during family vacations I have prepared meals for upwards of 10 people. While in college I volunteered at a homeless shelter and on a few occasions I prepared basic food for a larger population.

9. What makes you different from anyone else on food television?
Everyone wants to teach others how to cook. I want to learn alongside the audience as real greats, people who have been cooking for upwards of a century, teach their many lessons.

10. Briefly sum up your unique "Culinary Point of View." That us, what specifically makes you and your food different from everyone else's (not just "I cook with fresh ingredients."); what is special about what you can teach Food Network viewers?
Diverse environmental, social and religious factors have influenced the cuisine of different regions. Over thousands of years and usually driven by necessity, equally diverse cuisines and methods of cooking have developed. In America today we are free of many of the limiting factors in determining what we can eat. However, without these external constraints, many culinary traditions have begun to fade away. In their place stand mainstream menus claiming to be Indian, or Italian or Chinese, but sharing non of the distinctive traits or histories of the true cuisine. My approach to cooking, which has been driven in part by my own constraint of being kosher, is to look past the mainstream ethnic foods and to try to understand and recreate foods which have been developed and tested over thousands of years, by millions of families --- not foods developed in the last 25 years for quick service. There are many lessons to be learned from the evolution and ultimate product of cultural cuisine. People will jump at the chance to learn these lessons, discover their history and look past the takeout menu.

11. Complete this sentence: "If I were an ingredient, I would be _______________." Why would you be that ingredient?
If I were an ingredient, I would be the seasoning on an old cast iron pan. Well seasoned cast iron (the only choice of our ancestors) has many layers built up over time to create a wonderful surface on which to cook. Every meal adds a layer to the pan, and every meal draws from the flavors and oils of the layers below it. In this way, every time I cook with my cast iron, I am connecting to all of my previous cooking experiences. In my show I will seek to establish this physical connection to our culinary history through interviews with and tutorials from people whose own cast iron (be it literal or figurative) has many more layers than mine.

12. Tell us 3 things about food, or ingredients, that demonstrate your food knowledge.
1. In south east Asian cuisine fermentation plays a very natural and positive role. The warm and wet climate prevented dry storage of foods and accelerated the process of fermentation and molding. Indigenous cuisine learned to use and control this. For instance, lentils and rice could be soaked together and fermented and then ground into a paste which would only take a few minutes to cook. Compared to the hours of cooking to make lentils without fermentation, this was a godsend.
2. Oil is an excellent vehicle for holding and preserving spices in foods. Rather than adding spices to a final product, consider adding them to the hot oil before other ingredients. Adding spices at the end of cooking results in the spice's flavor being localized to the spice itself. By heating the spices directly, their aromatic oils are expelled and mixed into the other oil. This oil mixture is then evenly distributed throughout the food, resulting in a more intense flavor without hot spots of spice.
3. The principle of spicing foods cooked in a slow cooker is different though. The only spices which should be in the slow cooker are large solid spices - onion, garlic, ginger, cinnamon, peppers, bay leaves, etc. The long heat will slowly pull the flavorful oils from these large spices. Small powder spices will become over powdered during the long cooking and should only be added in the end in the manner described in question 15 part 4.

13. Do you have any dietary restrictions or food allergies? Are there any foods you cannot or will not eat? Please give complete details.
I keep kosher. For me, this means that I will no eat any meat or fish which is not kosher, or anything with these ingredients. I will also not cook with unkosher meat or fish, nor will I mix meat and milk in my cooking. For ingredients which are not meat or fish I do not require them, however, to be explicitly kosher and will eat at a restaurant which serves both meat and vegetarian (though I will only eat vegetarian).

14. Clearly describe 3 of your "signature dishes" that best represent you and/or are most popular with your friends/family. Tell us why they represent you so well.
1. Flour Paposas. A flour and baking powder dough stuffed with cheese, chilis and beans and then pan fried with just a little oil in a cast iron pan until golden. This is my adaptation of the dish I had while staying in El Salvador, and then again at the Red Hook sports field food stands.
2. Dal and Rice porridge. A simple Indian porridge spiced with freshly roasted cumin seeds, including Dal, rice and a small amount of peas, carrots and potatoes. I learned this by watching the Indian mother of my former roommate prepare it at our apartment. During this lesson in Indian cooking she taught me about roasting Dal for a minute or two before adding liquid, and also about the order of Indian spicing. The dish, to me, epitomizes simple, wholesome foods which are nowhere to be found in popular Indian cuisine.
3. Sweet, sour and spicy green beans. A base of ginger, garlic, pepper and curry powder cooked with green beans and then tossed with honey, balsamic vinegar and pre-roasted almond shards. This dish, which I sometimes eat as a whole meal, comes from two sources. The first was is a childhood memory of eating something like this at the table of the Indian mother of an elementary school friend. The second is from lessons I learned from the Bangladeshi fiance of a former roomate. She taught me that, as opposed to Indian foods, Bangladeshi foods are often sweeter and also more sour. She would commonly use vinegar and honey in her curries. I likely would have never thought to do this to curries, yet by drawing on her knowledge of traditional cooking, I learned a very interesting and scrumptious lesson which I now apply to other dishes.

15. What are your top 5 original cooking tips? (Be specific, Give us information; teach us something. This is a chance to show us your technique and your culinary knowledge)
1. To make tofu with a firm, crunchy skin, without much oil use honey. After marinating remove the tofu and squeeze a little honey onto the precut pieces. Use a large cast iron skillet with oil to coat the bottom and pan fry for five minutes on each side, or until browned and firm. The honey coating locks in the flavor the tofu absorbed, so even when mixed with vegetables in a sauce, the tofu keeps its own flavor and firmness.
2. When making matzoballs, replace the water with seltzer. This creates fluffier balls which are easier to eat and have a nicer texture.
3. When making Risotto with a vegetable, precook the vegetable in large pieces. Then leave enough time for the vegetable to cool before cutting and adding to the Risotto at the end of cooking. Cooking large pieces and cutting when cool keeps more of the flavor in the vegetable, and adding when cool helps keep a distinct flavor separate from that of the rice.
4. If a soup or porridge like dish is lacking in flavor, rather than adding spices directly into it, consider using the Indian method of flavoring Dal. Take a small pan and heat oil. Add in the desired spices, with large spices or onion, garlic, ginger etc, going first followed by powdered spices. When spices have cooked, pour the oil directly into your pot and then stir to distribute.
5. When ever possible use cast iron. Of course there are many benefits to cast iron including its heat distribution, safe non-stick properties, and affordability. However, I encourage cast iron use also for the joy of creating and enhancing the seasoning of your pan. A cast iron pan which is well seasoned carries with it the stories and flavors of everything which has been cooked on it. Pass it on to other family members and children so that they can recall your food when they cook theirs.