The simpler the sampler the better

One of my favorite TV channels is the Food Network. I think whoever came up with the idea of an entire network devoted to good things to eat is a genius.

It also says something about the offerings on network TV that I prefer to watch someone chopping onions than some of what passes for entertainment lately.

I first got hooked on the FN watching Rachael Ray throw together her 30-minute meals. She makes you believe that by shortening key terms — EVOO for extra virgin olive oil and delish for delicious — it cuts down cooking time.

Truth be told, it takes the average cook longer than 30 minutes to put together one of Rachael Ray’s 30-minute meals. She can do it in 30 minutes because she has backstage help prepping the food and chopping the ingredients.

Nonetheless she reeled me in and later I started watching Ina Garten, the Barefoot Contessa. Ina makes cooking elegant food look easy. If the average cook had the well-stocked kitchen Ina has — not to mention her lavish home in the New York Hamptons and the time to flit around to little specialty stores where she shops for ingredients — then maybe we can put a banquet on the table too.

So much for food fiction. It’s still better than daytime soaps and situation comedies after dinner. There’s also the variety food shows like Chopped. Four contestants are given picnic baskets, one for each course, full of such improbable items as chicken feet, horseradish, Kool-Ade, wild garlic and yak’s milk cheese, and are told to put together something wonderful using those ingredients and other items from the pantry and refrigerator in 20 minutes flat, and make it look pretty.

The histrionics displayed during Chopped rival any sketch variety shows used to put on. Stoves suddenly stop working, fires flare up in blenders, contestants nearly sever their fingers with a knife, and — most impressive of all, the judges actually eat the results.

Lately the trend on Food Network has been toward “simple” food. Celebrity chefs tout simple ingredients, locally produced. One such recipe was a soup thrown together using leftover breadcrumbs, ground almonds, and a few other things found in no kitchen ever.

Now I don’t claim to be a chef, but I can put a recipe together and warm up the leftovers. But what passes for “simple” or “rustic” food on the Food Network is out of my reach.

You want simple? I’ll give you simple. It’s also delicious. Three ingredients: a ripe, fresh, locally-grown tomato, white bread, and mayonnaise. The classic, elegant, tomato sandwich.

It doesn’t get any better than that. Unless you add bacon.