Well Fed Network

Posted by Madeline Miller on Edible TV.

The New York Times recently published a review of Ingrid Hoffmann’s new Food Network show, Simply Delicioso. It describes her style as a “physical brand of cooking.” Huh?

After a quick rundown on Ingrid’s history (she’s from Columbia and worked as a Miami retailer and restaurateur), the Times says that Hoffmann is “all tight fits and high heels.” And I’m starting to sense a theme with this description of the show: “Ms. Hoffmann cooks with her whole body, as if every occasion to chop some cilantro were also an opportunity to show how well she might fare as a backup dancer for Rod Stewart. She appears less covered up to marinate a chicken than Ms. De Laurentiis does to go jet-skiing.”

Then the reviewer finally gets to Hoffmann’s abiliity to cook…

Though I count among my acquaintances a number of very attractive women who really know their way around a saucier, “Simply Delicioso” has not convinced me that Ms. Hoffmann would be one of them. In one episode, in which she produced what she considered a “mousse” out of whipped cream and condensed milk, she also made something else from ingredients, no two of which I’d ever consider in concert: a shrimp dish with brandy and ketchup.

Another criticism is that her recipes are “ethnic food from which any real sense of ethnicity has been stripped.” Even her set isn’t safe from scorn: “Her set, a cheerful lime-green kitchen gleaming with chrome, seems never to have opened its door to a pig’s foot.” Here’s the kicker: “The Food Network signed her . . . and what it seems to want in its effort to capture the Hispanic market is less an authentic treatment of Latin cooking than an air of manufactured ’70s Latin style. You can watch ‘Simply Delicioso’ and almost hear the faint sound of a director signaling Charo.” Ouch.