SPOTLIGHT
A FIVE Items Do You What
Your Refrigerator or Freezer? lways Have in
As for the aforementioned statuettes, he said that be- ing the recipient of one shy of a baker’s dozen is “pretty cool.” “Of course you want love and acceptance from your
peers, which is a nice thing,” Zien said. “But really what you want is people coming up to you on the street say- ing, ‘Hey, we made that buffalo chicken pizza the other night, we loved it, and you know what? We don’t cook, and now we feel that we can cook.’ That’s what I like.” It’s that humble approach, along with his “big in taste and small in effort” approach to teaching TV viewers how to streamline the cooking process, which led to him being featured on a local morning news show twice a week, prior to his current gig. Also, having a sense of humor intact is another way to set himself apart from other TV chefs. “Absolutely, and I think it’s a couple of things,” Zien professed. “I’m not trying to be funny; I’m just being me. I think that’s really the key for anything you do. I made a joke once that I’m not very bright, so me having to remember what my TV persona is and when to use it, and what my social persona is and when to use it; I don’t have to keep those two things separate anymore. “In the beginning, I think I was trying to be what my
vision of what a cooking person on TV was. It took about six months, but I eventually found my voice and now I can’t shut myself up.” Zien gave us his recipe for the show’s success. “I think I
have the ability to put things into plain, simple English,” he remarked. “And in this case, it happens to be cooking. I like to look at something and say, ‘What’s the easiest way that I can do this?’” Another off-shoot of his TV show is Zien taking pen to
paper, and fingers to keyboard, on a series of cookbooks, with his third, Just Grill This, due out next year. He let us in on how he researches the “unconventional ideas” that become recipes for both his books and his show. “I think my brain just works unconventionally at times,” he admitted. “It’s not like I’m researching unconven- tional stuff; it’s just kind of the way that things go into my head. It’s not relegated to the kitchen; I like to take cauliflower, the whole head of it cut thick in slices, and put that whole thing right on the grill.” While Zien has found his own way as a TV chef, he did admit that “plenty of chefs could kick my ass all over a kitchen,” and cited two that have informed his own television persona. “I credit Graham Kerr and Julia Child for some sublimi- nal influencing of my life, even though I didn’t realize it at the time.” he stated. “If you go back to the early days of Graham Kerr, he was completely him and not trying to be anybody else. Julia Child, if she made a mistake, she talked about the mistake; if something fell apart in the show, she fixed it and would continue to go on. “Now skip to Sam The Cooking Guy; I can’t tell you how
many times I’ve cut myself on the show and left it in,” he said. “I finished a show one day, and this will probably lose me viewers, with a bunch of wadded up paper tow- els in my left hand, because I had cut myself so badly. It wasn’t the prettiest television, but hey, it was me.”
For more information about Sam The Cooking Guy, log onto
thecookingguy.com. And to purchase tickets for The San Diego Bay Wine & Food Festival, type
worldofwineevents.com into your favorite search engine.
50
RAGE monthly | NOVEMBER 2010
Kewpie
Japanese Mayo
Pesto
Frozen Shrimp
Black Bean Garlic Sauce
Greek
Non-Fat Yogurt
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