So I'm standing in a corner at the health club doing some light weight reps, when on the TV above appears the now-famous TV chef and cookbook author Rachael Ray, on her Food Network show. Her big thing is 30-minute meals, and making cooking less intimidating for regular folks. Well, that's an admirable goal, and she's got a great, genuinely bubbly carefree manner.

Although, I have to admit, as she was putting together a pizza with pre-packaged dough, I thought, "hey, I just made homemade pizza dough from scratch the other day, again, with my son; it was fun and easy, and the pizza later was great. Anyone who cooks should learn to make it, even if just on weekends." Or something like that. But Rachael Ray - now a real franchise with her new magazine, cookbooks, TV cooking shows, kitchen implements, a line of olive oil and an OprahCo-produced TV talk show coming soon - has much fiercer critics than I, as evident in this profile from today's New York Times. It's titled, "Being Rachael Ray: How Cool Is That?"

Ms. Ray is regularly mocked by chefs and food bloggers, including one who started a crudely named Web site, at livejournal.com/community, created "for people that hate the untalented twit known as Rachael Ray." Her cutesy-pie catchphrases - sammies for sandwiches, stoups for soups that are as thick as stew - are so grating on certain people that they inspired a drinking game in which players take a sip when she uses one. If she creates a new and completely unnecessary abbreviation, they have to swallow the whole drink. "This is awesome," she said as she looked over the list for the first time last week. "But man, people are going to get hammered."

Her recipes are easy to mock. A paella burger, created as her homage to the Spanish dish, is built with a ground-chicken patty, grilled linguiça and butterflied shrimp stacked with shredded lettuce on a big Portuguese roll. On her show, Ms. Ray tried to lift the greasy behemoth to her mouth and declared: "Look at that. It's the size of my head!"

Her shows are brilliant in their lack of set design and in her wide-open, flub-filled delivery. She clanks pots around on the stove, drops things as she carries an impossible pile of food from the refrigerator and giggles mistakes away. A favorite slam is that her meals take more than 30 minutes, which, especially for people with little kitchen acumen, they often do. They say she is untrained and relies on too many shortcuts, like shredded cheese and frozen French fries.

To which Ms. Ray says, they're right. "I have no formal anything," she said. "I'm completely unqualified for any job I've ever had." But Ms. Ray's mission, and the thing that has driven her to become the most popular person cooking on television, is that she simply wants people who are tired and don't have much money to cook instead of spending their paychecks and time on bad takeout or microwavable dinners. "I never said I was the greatest thing ever," Ms. Ray said. "I just think people should be able to cook even if they don't have a bunch of time or money."

I'm with her in theory, and a little bit, at least, in practice. Frozen fries are a pander too far, but pre-shredded cheese, yeah, so? Have you tried Sargento's six cheese blend? Or those ready-to-bake Ronzoni lasagna sheets? You just have to draw the line somewhere. i.e. make your own tomato sauce, starting with some good canned Italian plum tomatoes. It's good to stay grounded. Listen to one of Rachael's fans:

"Of course it never takes you 30 minutes, but I like the idea of it," said Amie Baker, 40, a television producer in Brooklyn. Ms. Baker grew up eating at restaurants and ordering takeout. She discovered Rachael Ray through her teenage niece. "She's so not stressful at all," Ms. Baker said. "I love those other TV chefs, but I would never make what Mario Batali makes. I don't have veal cheeks."

Agreed, though a rolled veal roast is nice, or pot roast made from veal chuck. Gimme some homemade chili, some mac ' cheese, or a good roasted chicken. But, please, don't give me vertical food, especially with wafered jicama and herring roe aoli.

The trendy restaurant scene in Seattle cracks me up: it seems geared to childless thirty-somethings who flit from one au courant spot to the next. The failure rate is high. Anyplace that has a publicist hyping the chef is one I'm not patronizing.

I give Rachael some credit for preaching the gospel of home cooking, millenial-style. But what people, especially "busy" people, really need to do, is to simply get a little less busy, and get intimate with real food in the privacy of their own kitchens. Sautee a pounded, seasoned chicken breast or two, add some capers, lemon juice and dry sherry at the end; steam some brocolli, cut a fresh loaf of crusty bread. There! Dinner. Folks, it ain't brain surgery! Just promise me you'll never ever used canned gravy in a "stew" like a dear sweet redneck housemate of mine once did. I had to take him to the woodshed on that.

TECHNORATI TAGS: RACHAEL RAY, HOME COOKING

TO COMMENT: The regular "comment" feature is not in operation. E-mail comments to address under "Contact" on main page masthead, and I'll add them, here.

Sam Castic: "I agree with you, Matt - I like Rachael Ray, and appreciate her effort to bring cooking to people that don't typically cook at home. I just made one of her recipes last night - it took closer to an hour, but I didn't use all of the shortcuts she recommended." At his blog Coffeehouse Soapbox, Sam has more.

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at October 20, 2005 12:17 PM