good news: alton brown of good eats is bringing his 2005 book tour to our area on january 18! if you haven't heard of mr. brown you should read this salon.com article, "TV chefs who don't bite." an excerpt from the piece sounds like it could have been written about tommy, who is an excellent cook and in love in a non-gay way with with brown:

How did my engineer boyfriend learn to cook so well? Certainly not from watching the food shows the cable TV channels dish up in abundance. The personality-driven recipe files of Emeril Lagasse, Nigella Lawson, Rachael Ray, Jamie Oliver, even Jacques Pepin entertain us, but they don't teach us much cooking. And "Iron Chef"? That's just a neo-feudalistic game show that happens to involve food.

Nope, Leonard and I aren't much for food shows. It's the geeky cooking shows we devour in search of explanations, technique, equipment tests and, yes, entertainment: Food Network's gimmicky-in-a-good-way "Good Eats" (which sometimes runs as often as three times in one day) and PBS's consumer-reports show "America's Test Kitchen" (check local listings), which explain the science and engineering behind good food. Leonard got his awesome sweet potato recipe from "ATK's" "Thanksgiving III" episode, and I'm looking forward to finding out what menu items from its holiday dinner show -- as well as from "Good Eats" episodes on cookies, fudge, cake and cheesecake -- will end up on his table later this month.

...Using more science than his "Test Kitchen" counterparts, Brown moves smoothly between theory and practice in every scene. Both shows throw out conventional wisdom when a cheaper, better or faster option seems obvious. Brown goes further, improvising ingredients and even equipment more often. Why buy a grill when you can make one from hardware-store parts? And at every step, we learn the chemistry and physics of the process, and thus how to vary the instructions to produce a different result. The "Test Kitchen" is a dedicated committee, but Brown is a crabby and brilliant tinker.