0.cached.png
By Marc Peyser
0
Share
Newsweek is a Trust Project member
See more of our trusted coverage when you search.Prefer Newsweek on Googleto see more of our trusted coverage when you search.
Rachael Ray would like everyone invited to her wedding this month to know that it's OK to dress casually. "You can come in blue jeans if you want," says Ray, who's tying the knot in an Italian castle. "I'm going to wear a dress picked out in 28 minutes. It's Vera Wang, but it was the cheapest one in the store." Quick and cheap--that's so typical. After all, Ray is the star of the Food Network program "30 Minute Meals" and its travel companion "$40 a Day," so it's hardly surprising that she'd buzz-saw through her own trousseau. Needless to say, Ray won't be baking her wedding cake, either. "Baking makes me really tense, and I get snippy and snotty," she says. "Any time I'm forced to do something that requires patience or even makes me speak slowly, I'm just a wreck."
A professional cook who doesn't bake or spend more than a half hour in the kitchen--maybe Ray's in the wrong line of work? On the contrary: culinary ADD has been very good to her. Ray just got her fourth Food Network show, "Tasty Travels," a program for viewers who want to spend more than $40. Like a certain blond ex-con, Ray will soon launch her own food-and-lifestyle magazine, called Every Day With Rachael Ray. (Martha Stewart's recipe magazine is called Everyday Food. Coincidence?) Unlike Stewart, Ray, 37, is cute, perky and unpretentious, the kind of person who says in midsauce: "This is the roux, like Tigger and Roo," and then giggles. If you think that's adorable, you'll love Ray. If not, you can join the club at a blogging site called Rachael Ray Sucks.
It's hard to believe that anyone who met Ray would think she, uh, sucks. She's got to be the most down-to-earth TV star on the planet--she actually boasts about once working at Howard Johnson's. She won't even watch her own shows, in part because her TV self upsets her dog. "I have a very distinct, weird voice," she says with a flat boom, like a cheerleader from Fargo. "I think that's why children like me." When she walks onto the Mediterranean-colored set of "30 Minute Meals"--wearing jeans, naturally--the first thing she does is egg on the crew to sign up for the show's annual bowling party. Then she checks her reflection in the door of the microwave oven. "I need some powder," says Ray. "I'm sweatin' like Nixon."
Read More on News
The theme of this episode is late-night snacks. Ray is making what she calls gnocchi with tomato and basil, though that's a highfalutin way of saying she's sauteing stale bread and smothering it in red sauce. So it's not exactly haute cuisine, but Ray really does cook every meal (she's also doing vegetable scrambled eggs and an ice-cream latte) in 30 minutes. And she's never claimed to be a chef. When the Food Network discovered her four years ago, she was doing local cooking spots on the news in Albany, N.Y., a job she got to promote her gig making 30-minute meals at an upscale grocery store. "The first thing I said at my Food Network meeting was, 'I don't belong here'," Ray says. " 'You guys are champagne, and I'm beer out of a bottle. I'm not a chef. I can't even learn to be a chef. I chop onions wrong'." On her very first show, she sliced her hand open. "I wasn't even chopping. I was chatting," she says. "When we went to the break, they put Krazy Glue on my finger to keep it together."
So you can see why some foodies (and others) despise her. "I remember this one episode where all she did for a side dish was boil some frozen pirogies, put some butter in a pan and saute them," says Misty Lane, who founded the anti-Ray blogging site three years ago. "I was thinking, 'That's on the back of the box, Rachael. I don't need you to show me that'." The thing Rachael-phobes hate most is her cutesy food lexicon. The biggest offender is "E.V.O.O.," short for extra-virgin olive oil, which Ray says repeatedly--that one does get a little annoying. There are so many of them (chart) that Ray's inspired a college drinking game. Every time she utters a Rachael-ism, you take a gulp. As Ray might say: how awesome is that?
Still, the bloggers aren't curdling Ray's cream. With "Tasty Travels," she's got more than 13 hours of original programming a week on the Food Network, second only to Emeril. "There are food purists who only think someone is capable of being on television if they're a four-star chef," says Food Network programming chief Bob Tuschman. "But Rachael has a personality that makes people feel welcome in the food world." As if she weren't busy enough, Ray's 11th cookbook, "365: No Repeats," is coming this fall. She writes all the recipes herself, of course, though you'd be surprised where she gets some ideas. "I'm a voracious reader of food magazines, even when I don't understand the language," she says. "I'll pick up a magazine that's all in Italian or Spanish or whatever and look at the pictures and try to figure out how to make a 30-minute version." Which probably means Ray will be working during her Italian wedding. Let's hope she gives her guests more than 30 minutes to eat.
View 0 Comments
Submit Correction
View Editorial & AI Guidelines