Disney Food: Grimsley Cooks Pie, Walken Cooks Chicken

Back in the glory days of televised cooking shows, the stars (Julia Child, Graham Kerr) worked seemingly without a script, but always with a bottle of wine, and their personalities made even their mistakes interesting. Nowadays, if you watch 'reality' shows like The Next Food Network Star, it seems that the folks in charge think we want cookie-cutter chefs who smile, rush, and pose.

Anyone remember Two Fat Ladies, a cooking show from the late 1990s? The ladies drank, smoked, and scowled while cooking such classic English fare as bubble and squeak. More of them, please (the Fat Ladies, not the bubble and squeak).

I'm not saying that Greg Grimsley, owner of the blog DisneyObsession, drinks, smokes, and scowls. But he does cook. Inspired by the recent movie Julie and Julia, in which a blogger cooked and blogged her way through Julia Child's classic cookbook, one recipe per day, Greg has decided to cook and blog his way through Disney dishes, one recipe per week.

Greg calls his new series Dining with Doc, and for his first kitchen challenge, he whips up the Rose & Crown Pub's Cottage Pie from Cooking with Mickey, Volume 2.

Unfortunately, Greg doesn't film the feat. He simply bookends the recipe with before (ingredients) and after (dish) pictures. But his notes and comments are helpful if you want to try it yourself.

I had the same idea when I first saw the trailer for Julie and Julia and prepared to undertake a similar project myself when I remembered that I'm not a good cook (unless you like bad food). I'm glad Greg is doing it, instead.

PS. For Greg and other budding on-line chefs, I recommend this short but masterful video of Christopher Walken cooking a chicken.