cheryl
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The Art of the Cooking Demo Disaster - Taste Cooking
From Letterman and Julia to Leno and Emeril, late-night cooking segments have always been utter chaos.
ulia Child’s third ever Late Night With David Letterman appearance, on December 22, 1986, begins like any other television cooking demonstration. She arrives onstage, the playful host warmly greets her, and she announces she’s going to make some “very fine” hamburgers. However, when the hot plate refuses to heat up, Child decides to ad-lib her recipe into one for what she calls “beef tartare au gratin,” surprising Letterman by pulling out a blowtorch to melt the Gruyère cheese. Letterman is tickled (“What do you do, you cook this when the car breaks down on the highway somewhere?”), production plays a mooing-cow sound effect, and, grossed out after tasting it, he ultimately spits the raw ground beef into a napkin. The audience explodes.
“They [NBC] wanted a service show,” recalled Hal Gurnee, Letterman’s longtime director, to Newsweek in February of 1986, a few months before Child’s appearance. “They wanted Dave to do cooking demonstrations. And he resisted. He wanted to do a comedy.”
While Letterman knew that cooking demonstrations had always had their place on late-night comedy shows, the segments hadn’t exactly been comedic themselves until he started injecting his signature brand of sarcasm and sabotage.
From Letterman and Julia to Leno and Emeril, late-night cooking segments have always been utter chaos.
ulia Child’s third ever Late Night With David Letterman appearance, on December 22, 1986, begins like any other television cooking demonstration. She arrives onstage, the playful host warmly greets her, and she announces she’s going to make some “very fine” hamburgers. However, when the hot plate refuses to heat up, Child decides to ad-lib her recipe into one for what she calls “beef tartare au gratin,” surprising Letterman by pulling out a blowtorch to melt the Gruyère cheese. Letterman is tickled (“What do you do, you cook this when the car breaks down on the highway somewhere?”), production plays a mooing-cow sound effect, and, grossed out after tasting it, he ultimately spits the raw ground beef into a napkin. The audience explodes.
“They [NBC] wanted a service show,” recalled Hal Gurnee, Letterman’s longtime director, to Newsweek in February of 1986, a few months before Child’s appearance. “They wanted Dave to do cooking demonstrations. And he resisted. He wanted to do a comedy.”
While Letterman knew that cooking demonstrations had always had their place on late-night comedy shows, the segments hadn’t exactly been comedic themselves until he started injecting his signature brand of sarcasm and sabotage.