But can she speak Swedish?!

September 15, 2010 11:58 AM

She’s an Iron Chef. The Executive Chef of Bon Appetit Magazine. The founder of Chefs for Humanity. A UNICEF spokesperson. The winner of a 'Hero Visibility Award' from the Human Rights Campaign. And now, celebrity chef Cat Cora is teaching the Muppets to cook. Two new video series have premiered online: "The Muppets Kitchen" and "Hasty Tasty Cooking Tips with Cat Cora and the Muppets." (Warning: autoplaying videos.) The series are "designed to inspire kids to get involved in the kitchen and to help moms prepare simple, nutritious and most importantly delicious dinners."

Muppet Wiki on Muppets Kitchen

posted by zarq (36 comments total)

I was hoping they'd go with Gordon Ramsay.

Also, I can't pass up this opportunity excuse to include a video of the Swedish Chef making Frogs Legs.
posted by zarq at 12:01 PM on September 15, 2010

designed to inspire kids to get involved in the kitchen and to help moms prepare simple, nutritious and most importantly delicious dinners

Nice bit of sexism from CBS, there. Apart from that, I like the concept.
posted by jedicus at 12:02 PM on September 15, 2010 [3 favorites]

Tudoooy, whirr gon poot de hergen flergel Chef-a Cora eeen de hergen flergen keeechen.
posted by mhoye at 12:03 PM on September 15, 2010 [7 favorites]

Forgot a link. This is the Muppets Kitchen trailer
posted by zarq at 12:04 PM on September 15, 2010

You know what would make this perfect?

Secret Ingredient: Food Muppets.
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 12:07 PM on September 15, 2010

I really hope Pepe isn't around when they do simple shrimp salad.
posted by The Whelk at 12:07 PM on September 15, 2010 [2 favorites]

Secret Ingredient: Food Muppets.

ALLÉZ CUISINE!
posted by zarq at 12:10 PM on September 15, 2010 [5 favorites]

Mmm, Muppet.

(Sorry, it's a MySpace video link. Only place I could find it.)
posted by kmz at 12:18 PM on September 15, 2010 [1 favorite]

Seeing a Muppet with human hands is a strange, strange thing.
posted by alynnk at 12:21 PM on September 15, 2010

I remember first seeing Cat Cora on "Melting Pot", a Food Network show years ago that kind of auditioned TV chefs, two at a time (not competitively like Next Food Network Star, like I said, years ago) and she did a great job of making Rocco DiDispirito look like a jerk by comparison. When Rachael Ray hit the big time, I screamed at the TV "WRONG SKINNY FEMALE CHEF WITH ALLITERATIVE NAME, YOU FOOLS!!!" I see she's also developing a show for the upcoming Oprah Cable Channel.. you gotta do what you gotta do.
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:24 PM on September 15, 2010

She's totally wrong about not aspirating the h in herb.
posted by bonehead at 12:29 PM on September 15, 2010

But doesn't the Swedish chef encourage kids (and adults) to cook? Watching the Swedish chef prepare popcorn shrimp, which involves music, dancing, explosions, shrimp running around the kitchen, doesn't that encourage cooking?
posted by Wolfster at 12:33 PM on September 15, 2010

If Bobby Flay is an American Iron Chef, that title means nothing. Japanese Iron Chefs were real masters.

Not that Cora isn't a good chef, I just wouldn't list her Food Network fame as anything important. The network is more concerned with generating celebrity and therefore endorsement deals, rather than teaching people what is good food and how to cook it, a la PBS.
posted by cman at 12:40 PM on September 15, 2010 [1 favorite]

I didn't think she was actually a chef, given that she's never worked in a restaurant kitchen.
posted by slogger at 12:45 PM on September 15, 2010

"Can I get some more of this neon blue ... I think it's meat?"
"Yeah, sure, Bob."
"What is it? It's terrific."
"It's Muppet."
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 12:46 PM on September 15, 2010

...designed to inspire kids to get involved in the kitchen and to help moms prepare simple, nutritious and most importantly delicious dinners

Nice bit of sexism from CBS, there. Apart from that, I like the concept.

She and her partner were both pregnant at the same time, so maybe they're being inclusive to lesbians?

I didn't think she was actually a chef, given that she's never worked in a restaurant kitchen.

Well, she owns her own restaurant in Orlando. And one bio says "She followed this with a degree at the prestigious Culinary Institute of America in New York’s Hyde Park. This particular school has a string of celebrity chef alumni to its name.

After this her career and education continued with a series of chef jobs in New York under the guidance of a couple of notable chefs, Anne Rozensweig and Larry Forgione. She also made a career stopover in France where she was fortunate to work with Roger Verge, chef/owner Le Moulin de Mougins, and Georges Blanc, chef/owner of Georges Blanc restaurant."

Is that not qualification enough?
posted by mudpuppie at 12:51 PM on September 15, 2010 [1 favorite]

I didn't think she was actually a chef, given that she's never worked in a restaurant kitchen.

Actually, she's worked in several, and was chef de cuisine for several years at Bistro Don Giovanni in St. Helena, Napa Valley, CA. That's what she was doing when she appeared on the aforementioned Melting Pot.
posted by zarq at 12:55 PM on September 15, 2010 [1 favorite]

More here:

Cora applied and was accepted to the prestigious culinary school in New York. After graduation, she apprenticed with two master chefs in France, then returned to New York to work as a sous-chef before heading out to Northern California to work as chef de cuisine at Bistro Don Giovanni, a Napa Valley restaurant.

posted by zarq at 12:56 PM on September 15, 2010

help moms prepare simple, nutritious and most importantly delicious dinners.

Because only moms cook, huh?

I suspect that this will be of more interest to nostalgia-obsessed Generation X'ers than their children. My daughter is learning to get involved in the kitchen by the example set by her mother and me. And she enjoys simple, nutritious and most importantly delicious dinners because those are very easy to provide assuming that you're of normal intelligence and care enough to look around for ideas.

What does it say about our society that there's a need for commercialized instructions on how to eat properly? How about the fact that these instructions will be tacitly aimed at adults yet come from puppets? The older I get, the less crazy the Unabomber Manifesto seems.
posted by Mayor Curley at 1:08 PM on September 15, 2010 [1 favorite]

And then you will eat these simple, nutritious and most importantly delicious dinners by throwing them against your sealed off, black felt mouth until they disintegrate enough that they appear to have been swallowed.
posted by bondcliff at 1:14 PM on September 15, 2010 [9 favorites]

"The [Food] network is more concerned with generating celebrity and therefore endorsement deals, rather than teaching people what is good food and how to cook it, a la PBS."

Amen. Now that Good Eats appears to be getting a stake through the heart by only running at 11:00pm and 2am (in Seattle, anyways) and that every other show has become some sort of idiotic competition where there should be none, the channel has little to offer anyone interested in actually, you know... cooking.
posted by bz at 1:28 PM on September 15, 2010 [1 favorite]

Nice bit of sexism from CBS, there.

Amazon Mom is particularly fucking wonderful there too. But hey, at least we've finally gotten to the place where stay-at-home dads don't raise eyebrows anymore.
posted by middleclasstool at 1:30 PM on September 15, 2010

She and her partner were both pregnant at the same time

Yeah, I know. Affront to the natural order? You be the judge!
posted by joeclark at 1:48 PM on September 15, 2010

Secret Ingredient: Food Muppets.

Soylent Green is Kermit!
posted by qvantamon at 2:04 PM on September 15, 2010 [3 favorites]

mudpuppie: "She followed this with a degree at the prestigious Culinary Institute of America"

She went there because Julia told her to.
posted by I am the Walrus at 2:19 PM on September 15, 2010

The network is more concerned with generating celebrity and therefore endorsement deals, rather than teaching people what is good food and how to cook it, a la PBS.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. I'm a Food Network junkie, and I'll be the first to admit I watch most of the shows purely as entertainment, not to learn how to cook.

the channel has little to offer anyone interested in actually, you know... cooking.

In fairness, it is called the Food Network, not the Cooking Network.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 2:21 PM on September 15, 2010

after watching the video on the Muppets, maybe Metafilter can expand and create a Metafilter Jr. which would contain posts and links for the younger Meta-Fi's as the younger generation are computer savy and canput interesting stuff targeted for their age group.
posted by tustinrick at 2:58 PM on September 15, 2010

Maybe the rest of y'all are more evolved than me, but I could sure as hell use some cooking tips and I like muppets more than I like, well, most things. This looks awesome.
posted by sonika at 4:50 PM on September 15, 2010 [5 favorites]

sonika, I too am pleased by the muppet cooking show. More muppets! More cooking! More show!
posted by sandraregina at 4:54 PM on September 15, 2010 [1 favorite]

Yeah, I know. Affront to the natural order? You be the judge!

Tudoooy, whirr gon poot de hergen flergel lesabeeins eeen de hergen flergen keeechen.
posted by mhoye at 7:02 PM on September 15, 2010 [1 favorite]

Am I the only one who dislikes the new red-nosed Italian Muppet? That video sorely lacked two things: the Swedish Chef, and explosions. *throws pöpcørn*
posted by Soliloquy at 8:11 PM on September 15, 2010

How about the fact that these instructions will be tacitly aimed at adults yet come from puppets? The older I get, the less crazy the Unabomber Manifesto seems.

This makes me sad. One of my friends owns her own puppet theater, and her focus is on nutrition education. Her mission to educate children, and yes, adults about healthy eating. And it's working -- parents really do pay attention. Because puppets are fun! Everyone likes watching them. And why should everything be so dreary all the time?
posted by bluefly at 12:57 AM on September 16, 2010

mhoye: "Tudoooy, whirr gon poot de hergen flergel lesabeeins eeen de hergen flergen keeechen."

I almost choked on my snack while laughing at this.
posted by I am the Walrus at 6:21 AM on September 16, 2010

This makes me sad. One of my friends owns her own puppet theater, and her focus is on nutrition education. Her mission to educate children, and yes, adults about healthy eating.

There's a big difference between an earnest person putting on a puppet show for children who are actually present, and a televised puppet franchise from the 70s. When my kid's ready, she'll go to puppet shows and I'll enjoy them too. I'm not maligning the concept of puppets.

I do however think that if you're a parent and you need a puppet to teach you not to feed Funyons to your baby, the state should take the kid and give it to someone who doesn't huff paint or whatever it is that reduced you to such infantilism.
posted by Mayor Curley at 11:28 AM on September 16, 2010

I do however think that if you're a parent and you need a puppet to teach you not to feed Funyons to your baby, the state should take the kid and give it to someone who doesn't huff paint or whatever it is that reduced you to such infantilism.

I don't believe these programs are aimed at that sort of audience. And even if they were, educating parents as to how they can improve their kids' nutritional intake is a good thing.
posted by zarq at 1:06 PM on September 16, 2010

She lives in my former neighborhood. She stole my kid's name.

We were at the local coffee shop. They asked our kid's name (it is unusual). 3 months later they use it. It is US Weekly's name of the week.

Now, nearly 2 years later when our kids' name is called at the playground that we share, it is obvious who is older.
posted by k8t at 7:52 PM on September 16, 2010