How 'bout a dish of voluptuous quail?

Kelly Kazek

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September 11, 2009

By Kelly Kazek The News Courier Fri Sep 11, 2009, 01:19 PM CDT

Several years back, when word first arrived that a new TV channel was being launched called the Food Network, I couldn’t believe my luck.

This made much more sense than that golf network and its whispering announcers; the Weather Channel, which could be replaced by simply looking out a window; or, Lord help us, NASA TV. We get it. Conquering space is wa-a-a-ay cool. But watching a silent space shuttle orbit a miniature earth is about as scintillating as watching my cat shed.

Food is definitely something I could watch 24 hours a day. You’ve got your morning cappuccino, breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner, snack, snack, snack. Never a dull moment.

I imagined it would be, to me, like one of those DVDs of swimming fish that owners play for their cats while they go to Hawaii or somewhere cool (the owners, not the cats). I could sit and be mesmerized by the array of food parading before me.

Then my daughter Shannon started to watch Food Network regularly and I got the shock of my life: Did you know the network does not show delectable dishes ready to eat but tries to teach people how to actually cook them?

Talk about feeling lower than a worm with intestinal blockage.

Who wants to watch people cook? Cooking is work, which is why I try to avoid it at all costs.

Why push those microwave buttons when you can drive right up to a handy window where someone sticks an arm out and drops warm food in your lap?

Shannon, who was raised in a bake-free home, was fascinated. She began regularly watching the shows, which seem to favor the spirit of competition. Who knew braising or making fondant could be so cutthroat?

For several years, I managed to avoid the network but last week, Shannon was stretched out on our sofa with a fever and she wanted to watch a show called “Chopped.”

Thirty seconds into it I heard a chef say these words: “The quail is very voluptuous.”

I’d never really thought of quail as voluptuous, mainly because I’d never really thought of quail.

Then it occurred to me that chefs like to use many words to describe food that I would like to use to describe myself.

Rich. Sweet. Non-fat. Tart.

Well, that last one not so much.

But voluptuous?

That’s what I’m talking about — who doesn’t in life at some point say to themselves: “I wish I had me some of that voluptuous quail?”

Of course, the dish this particular chef prepared wouldn’t have made two bites so you could tell he wasn’t from the South. No self-respecting Southerner serves anything less than an overflowing plate, unless it’s to her in-laws.

Then came the moment when the celebrity chef judges — how do you sign on for that gig? — had to determine which of the last two chefs would be “chopped” so they had a dessert bake-off.

Their challenge was like I imagined earning a Boy Scout badge would be: Make a fire in 30 seconds using leaves, twigs and beetle dung. The chefs, though, had to use rice paper, couscous, kiwi and, I don’t know, maybe that funky-looking Nutella chocolate spread.

The judges tried the bite-sized desserts that looked like something no Southerner would serve at a funeral and declared a winner.

The other poor person was “chopped.”

I’m sure the winner was happy, but it’s not like he could spike his mixing bowl, so the excitement level wasn’t on par with other television offerings, like, say, The World Fishing Network.

On the plus side, I learned to spell couscous.

Now if I only knew what it was …

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