PBS Programs: Summary and Analysis of a

PBS Programs: Summary and analysis of a relationship to global enterprise Lidia's Family Table Despite the popularity of the Food Network, many popular cooking programs still remain on PBS. Lidia's Family Table is one of the most successful. Over the course of this program, the Italian-American chef Lidia Bastianich cooks various Italian delicacies of her homeland, often with members of her family, including her own mother, son, daughter, and grandchildren.

However, what is so remarkable about Lidia is the way she has generated interest in authentic Italian regional dishes, versus the standard spaghetti and meatballs and pizza that have become accepted staples in so many households. Lidia has been known to cook meatballs but with a much wider variety of other meats than is traditional for Americans to eat. She has made lasagna with peaches, homemade gnocchi, and even cooked with rabbit.

Lidia makes genuine Italian cuisine accessible to all viewers by stressing that cooking is a way to connect with family in a positive fashion. By showing her grandchildren roll gnocchi dough she also shows how even children born in America can enjoy foods outside of the standard American school cafeteria repertoire of chicken nuggets and tater tots. Lidia has exposed American audiences to the regional diversity of Italy.

Lidia herself, as she has mentioned over the course of the series, hails from a province of Italy very near Croatia, versus Sicily or Florence. The foods she grew up with were very different from those of more familiar Italian dishes to Americans and are highly influenced by the cuisine of Eastern Europe. However, she cooks dishes from all provinces of the country. She does inject some Italian-American influences into her cooking, a reflection of the tastes of the younger generation of her household.

Lidia makes it clear that a global cuisine like that of Italy is perpetually evolving and there is no single, fixed notion of Italian cuisine. Julia Child: The French Chef Julia Child's The French Chef is one of the oldest food television programs every produced. Rather than presenting French cuisine as something intimidating and beyond the reach of the average American cook, Child rendered it fun and accessible.

She showed that it was possible for ordinary Americans to understand and cook the French way by breaking down even very complicated French dishes into relatively easy steps. However, even though Julia Child was very democratic in her approach to cooking, it is also worthy of note that she never 'dumbed down' French cuisine. Even when making an omelet or something very simple she was very rigorous in demanding that her viewers used the best, authentically French way to do so.

Julia Child encouraged her viewers to feel respect for French cuisine although not to be intimidated by it. This is very important, given that it can be quite easy to feel one or the other: to either think.