Miss-Delectable
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Hot 'L' Chicago :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Entertainment
Hot lesbian action. That's what's on the menu tonight when stars from Showtime's "The L Word" arrive to slave over scorching stoves in the name of a children's charity.
Their impromptu culinary creations, prepared with area chefs, will benefit the Gender Public Advocacy Coalition, which fights discrimination based on sexual stereotypes.
As on TV's "The Iron Chef," each team (including one with a non-celebrity donor) will receive identical mystery ingredients from which they'll have 30 minutes to concoct a cocktail, appetizer, entree and dessert. The scores of spectators who watch them work won't be forced to consume the results -- unless they want to. The event will be catered.
"Thank goodness," says Chopping Block owner Shelley Young with a laugh. "We probably wouldn't get a lot of people buying tickets if they had to eat what we prepare."
Two of the celebrity participants -- actresses Jennifer Beals and Marlee Matlin -- are Chicago natives and longtime acquaintances who both hit the showbiz big-time in their late teens: Beals with "Flashdance" and Matlin with "Children of a Lesser God."
Cookingwise, however, they have little in common. While the latter can slice and dice and bake and broil, the former is pretty much clueless.
"I'm a cereal person," says Beals, who's no maniac on the kitchen floor. (And who, it's a fairly sure bet, adores "Flashdance" puns.)
"I mean, I cook for my daughter if I have to. There's no gourmet things going on. She has to wait for her dad to come home to make something good."
Fortunately, Beals will be ably guided by newly minted restaurateur and Oprah Winfrey's food pharaoh Art Smith.
"I want to tell you something," Smith says. "I will always, always remember the first time I saw 'Flashdance' and Jennifer Beals. I'm tellin' you, she is one beautiful woman. You know I'm a gay man, but trust me, she's beautiful!" He laughs large at the thought.
Unbolstered by her primo partnership with Smith, Beals predicts certain annihilation. "[Marlee] will be highly entertaining and humiliating me over and over and over again," she says.
On the off chance Matlin makes the versatile Jewish dish kugel, a specialty passed down from her mom, church may well be out.
"It's basically a lot of cholesterol," Matlin, who is deaf, says through her spokesman. How's it made? "Egg, eggs and eggs and brown sugar and butter and butter and sour cream and egg noodles. I make noodle kugel, and it's baked. If you're looking for a heart attack, just have a piece."
Matlin has never cooked competitively, but she contends that preparing meals for four kids and her husband comes kind of close. OK, not really, though it can get somewhat hairy with everyone vying for something different. Matlin also notes that she works well under pressure "considering the circumstances that I come from."
Still, aren't there disadvantages to being a deaf chef?
"No," she says. "It's the same thing as being deaf and driving. You're actually a safer driver if you're deaf because you pay more attention with your eyes than you do with your ears. Although I have been caught texting while driving."
Beals, too, is a motoring multitasker.
"I can eat a bowl of cereal while I'm driving a car," she boasts. "It's a talent."
No wonder they click on-screen.
"My husband just loves it," Matlin says of their scenes on "The L Word," now shooting its fifth season. "Every guy who grew up in the '80s, apparently, has a fantasy about the deaf girl and the girl from 'Flashdance.' And now they get to see us playing it out together.' "
But they've never sizzled quite like this.
Hot lesbian action. That's what's on the menu tonight when stars from Showtime's "The L Word" arrive to slave over scorching stoves in the name of a children's charity.
Their impromptu culinary creations, prepared with area chefs, will benefit the Gender Public Advocacy Coalition, which fights discrimination based on sexual stereotypes.
As on TV's "The Iron Chef," each team (including one with a non-celebrity donor) will receive identical mystery ingredients from which they'll have 30 minutes to concoct a cocktail, appetizer, entree and dessert. The scores of spectators who watch them work won't be forced to consume the results -- unless they want to. The event will be catered.
"Thank goodness," says Chopping Block owner Shelley Young with a laugh. "We probably wouldn't get a lot of people buying tickets if they had to eat what we prepare."
Two of the celebrity participants -- actresses Jennifer Beals and Marlee Matlin -- are Chicago natives and longtime acquaintances who both hit the showbiz big-time in their late teens: Beals with "Flashdance" and Matlin with "Children of a Lesser God."
Cookingwise, however, they have little in common. While the latter can slice and dice and bake and broil, the former is pretty much clueless.
"I'm a cereal person," says Beals, who's no maniac on the kitchen floor. (And who, it's a fairly sure bet, adores "Flashdance" puns.)
"I mean, I cook for my daughter if I have to. There's no gourmet things going on. She has to wait for her dad to come home to make something good."
Fortunately, Beals will be ably guided by newly minted restaurateur and Oprah Winfrey's food pharaoh Art Smith.
"I want to tell you something," Smith says. "I will always, always remember the first time I saw 'Flashdance' and Jennifer Beals. I'm tellin' you, she is one beautiful woman. You know I'm a gay man, but trust me, she's beautiful!" He laughs large at the thought.
Unbolstered by her primo partnership with Smith, Beals predicts certain annihilation. "[Marlee] will be highly entertaining and humiliating me over and over and over again," she says.
On the off chance Matlin makes the versatile Jewish dish kugel, a specialty passed down from her mom, church may well be out.
"It's basically a lot of cholesterol," Matlin, who is deaf, says through her spokesman. How's it made? "Egg, eggs and eggs and brown sugar and butter and butter and sour cream and egg noodles. I make noodle kugel, and it's baked. If you're looking for a heart attack, just have a piece."
Matlin has never cooked competitively, but she contends that preparing meals for four kids and her husband comes kind of close. OK, not really, though it can get somewhat hairy with everyone vying for something different. Matlin also notes that she works well under pressure "considering the circumstances that I come from."
Still, aren't there disadvantages to being a deaf chef?
"No," she says. "It's the same thing as being deaf and driving. You're actually a safer driver if you're deaf because you pay more attention with your eyes than you do with your ears. Although I have been caught texting while driving."
Beals, too, is a motoring multitasker.
"I can eat a bowl of cereal while I'm driving a car," she boasts. "It's a talent."
No wonder they click on-screen.
"My husband just loves it," Matlin says of their scenes on "The L Word," now shooting its fifth season. "Every guy who grew up in the '80s, apparently, has a fantasy about the deaf girl and the girl from 'Flashdance.' And now they get to see us playing it out together.' "
But they've never sizzled quite like this.