Dude Food

[talon]

Dude food is a cutesy term for food men prepare and eat. It's still just food but apparently with the "girl cooties"

We've got these "eat like a man" blogs (Esquire's is actually named that, and macho-named dishes like "Bust a Nut Squash", and more male cooking blogs with titles and purposes like "cooking to get laid", or the men who eat bugs and stuff just to prove how manly they are, and therefore how manly cooking is.

Think of all the celebrity chefs: Graham Kerr, Bobby Flay, Rocco DiSpirito, Sam Zien, Guy Fieri, Andrew Zimmerman, James Beard, Lucius Beebe, Adam Richman, Tony Bourdain, Alton Brown, Jeff Smith, Mario Batali, Jamie Oliver, Emeril Lagasse, Gordon Ramsey, Ted Allen, Tyler Florence, Alan Coxman, Benjamin Christie, Mark Veyrat, Wolfgang Puck, Jacques Pepin, Brian Boitano, Paul Prudhomme, Martin Yan, Michael Pollan, Tom Colicchio, James Martin, John Besh, Rick Bayless, Govind Armstrong, Dan Barber, David Burk, Charlie Trotter, Wylie Dufresne, Ferran Adria, Marco Canora, Floyd Cardoz, Nate Appleman, Scott Conant, Jose Andres, David Chang, Julian Alonzo, Danial Hum, Matthew Dillon, Jeremy Fox, Gabriel Kreuther, Charlie Palmer, John Schenk, Jacques Torres, Ethan Stowell, Richard Mead, Wayne Nish, Ming Tsai, Cathal Armstrong, Johnny Monis, Eric Rippert, Frank Sitt, Jason Wilson, and the few women among them: Rachel Ray, Martha Stewart, Paula Deen, Nigella Lawson, Giada de Laurentiis, Sandra Lee, Ina Gartin, Crescent Dragonwagon, Alice Waters, Susanna Foo, Nancy Silverton. That's 60 male celebrity chefs to 11 female celebrity chefs. I chose only living chefs, or the list would have been much longer - and I'm sure I left a few off as I'm doing this from memory, but that's still very heavily skewed towards male chefs.

So cooking needs to be "duded up" to make it appealing to men?

Why?

It's food. Men eat. Therefore men must also cook. Because if they didn't, wow, would we women far outnumber male celebrity chefs and we'd so totally rule the world - starving men would be too weak to do much more than beg for another bite. Whoever controls the food controls the world.

It's so obvious, put that way, that food is already the stuff of dudes, and it doesn't need to be "machoed up" or made "duderiffic" or filled with apologetics (Chefs aren't gay! Real chefs don't mince vegetables, they chop! Chefs are regular guys! Bam! Bang! Look! Knives! That's a Guy Thing, right?)

I certainly don't think we should return to the past, where women cooked and men were chefs! or where men ran the kitchen while women cooked, or men were in charge of procurement or financing and women cooked. Nor am I comfortable with the over-the-top male chefs who scream and shout and throw things or loudly protest their manhood as they slam slabs of meat onto searing flames and shake pots filled with sizzling vegetables.

I'd kind of like a happy medium, where men were as comfortable in the kitchen as they are in the garage -and just as matter-of-fact.

Dude food is then no longer something separate from food, even though it can still be special.