Food and Masculinity in Contemporary Autobiographies by Nieves Pascual Soler

Author:Nieves Pascual Soler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

I agree that the mushrooming of programs such as Kitchen Criminals, Masterchef, Kitchen Nightmares, Top Chef, Chopped and Cutthroat Kitchen reveals a craze for chauvinist cooking, not to speak of a voyeuristic desire for culinary sadism. I take issue with Kamp’s assertion that what distinguishes White’s autobiography from others of the kind is that the British chef recounts his life “without sensationalism or self-congratulation.” In his words, “[h]e was not a willful provocateur, as Ramsay and Bourdain are, but a more primitive character, forever reacting in the moment” (Kamp 2007). I will return to issues of willfulness and sensationalism to defend that there is plenty of both in this autobiography. More important for now is to note that White’s primitivism is as sophisticated as the food he prepares, or rather prepared, for he no longer cooks. Sophisticated primitivism, I insist, because for all his supposed spontaneity White deliberately recovers an unwritten history of culinary criminality in his autobiography. At this point, clarification is in order with regard to the intersection between cooking and crime.

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