Cookin' With Coolio

Coolio, still best known for his 1995 hit song "Gangster's Paradise," has launched his own cookbook on the heels of the success of his online video cooking channel.  Styling himself the "ghetto gourmet," Coolio seems determined to become the next big name celebrity chef.  But does he have the chops?

I was struck by the simplicity of the ingredients that Coolio uses.  This is entirely true to real life, but it seemed like a major departure for celebrity cheffery, which is so often dependent upon bizarre ingredients, presumably in order to give the audience the impression that the chef is very rich, very dedicated, very skilled in the use of odd things, or all of the above.  

The videos I watched used much the same ingredients - minced onion, minced garlic (by the color it came from a jar - for shame, Coolio!), olive oil, and balsamic vinegar.  You can cook a lot of different things with those four humble ingredients, and I appreciate that Coolio refused to specify "extra virgin olive oil" (or, heaven forbid, "EVOO" like she-who-shall-not-be-named), "fresh ground pepper," or "kosher salt."  If you ask Coolio, it's just olive oil, pepper, and salt.  There's a nice retro feel to that aesthetic.

Naturally, Coolio being Coolio, his recipes are not written for the easily offended crowd.  Although the videos bleeped out the naughtier words, it still left plenty of room for bon mots like, "Imma teach you how to make a salad that'll get them panties right off."  And "Tastes better than yo mama's nipples."

I was surprised that even though Coolio pays a lot of lip service to the theory of presentation, most of his recipes had pretty lousy presentation.  His caprese salad, distributed across a vast plate, appeared to be swimming in the balsamic vinegar instead of being tossed with it.  And the sautéed spinach looked formidable indeed, heaped as it was atop a plate.  I'm sure these things tasted good, but let's not pretend to care about "presentation" and then do that sort of thing to our food, shall we?

In between Coolio's Greek choir, and his frequent use of "Shaka Zulu!" as an interjection, his recipes are sound and strike me as being reasonably delicious.  They are clearly aimed at the kind of person who doesn't usually do a lot of cooking.  

This stands in stark contrast to the increasingly rarified and specialized tone of most other cooking shows and cookbooks, which have you preparing a meal with thirty ingredients while pretending that it's a twenty minute meal you can toss off on a work night without a second thought.

This mandate is made explicit in his print published cookbook (which mainly repeats the recipes from his video cooking channel), which is subtitled "5 Star Meals at a 1 Star Price."  Coolio, for all his wacky gimmicks and his (often cartoonishly over the top) ghetto speak, is aiming square at an underserved market that needs his help.  I'm sure you have heard the statistics about the poorest people in America being the demographic which eats the least healthy food, has the worst access to fresh ingredients, and is most likely to be obese.  For helping to address this problem at least, Coolio deserves a Pulitzer as far as I'm concerned.