Cook? I Don’t Think So Stone Phillips May Travel All Over The World But Put Him In A Kitchen And He’s Lost
He has conducted exclusive interviews with everyone from Howard Stern to Boris Yeltsin.
His assignments have taken him to the bitter cold of a remote Alaskan island, the endless waters of the South China sea, the heart of dangerous war-torn Beirut, the terrifying midst of earthquakes and raging fires.
His award-winning journalism has helped “Dateline NBC,” which he co-hosts with Jane Pauley, to become the fastest-growing of all television newsmagazine programs.
And - this just in - he can’t boil water.
I believe it was his curiosity of what a food interview was all about that landed me a seat across from Stone Phillips in his NBC office in New York.
Fiercely private and dashingly handsome, he at first seemed concerned about what he could contribute to such a topic. But in no time flat he was off and running like hot fudge off a mound of cold ice cream, one of his all-time favorite splurges.
“I eat like Carl Lewis runs - fast!” he begins.
“I eat so fast I don’t remember a lot of what I eat. My wife, Debra, is a marvelous cook, especially with her native Puerto Rican dishes and pasta dishes, but she’ll complain about making these wonderful meals that I just scarf down. And I tell her that I trace it back to my childhood. It’s all because of my older brother.”
Those painful pancake memories
“Growing up in Texas, every Saturday morning my mother would serve pancakes. We would just wait for it. I would sidle up to the bar, and butter and syrup down my stack of three.
“Then my brother, five years older, would hold my hands behind my back with one arm, and with the other, make four surgically precise incisions into the middle of my pancakes, going through all three layers. Then he would steal that choice center, the very heart of my pancakes!
“I would protest to my mother, but she wouldn’t do anything because she was into letting children settle their own differences. So I learned to eat quickly.
“Oh, I’ve tried to slow down, but, actually, I enjoy eating fast. I don’t like to work at my food. I’m a lazy kind of eater from the standpoint of: give me the lobster out of the shell, give me a no-effort-to-cut meat loaf, give me the fish without the bones.
“But wait - pistachios, I will work for pistachios. I guess I’m just a walking culinary contradiction.”
Attention all wives
Or perhaps I should say “Attention all husbands,” because although Phillips doesn’t cook, he let it be known that he does do the dishes. And sets the table. And opens the wine.
I repeat: he does the dishes.
Cutting calories
“I’m destined to be a fast food addict,” Phillips admits, “but I’ve given up most of that because my wife is very mindful of dishes being low in fat. Debra’s philosophy is to stop thinking of eating healthy as a sacrifice and to learn to like good foods.
“Actually, I’m at the point (recently turning 40) where fatty foods don’t even taste that good to me any more, and the three meals a day I was raised on are just too much food for me now. I stay away from cream sauces and things too drenched in oil.”
He pauses, rubs his chin and quickly adds: “OK, I do love Boston Chicken and the tuna subs at Subway. And a typical breakfast for me is stopping at this little deli on my way to work and getting a very large, very sweet cruller.
“But I have them cut it into four sections, because it’s less caloric that way.”
Edible memories
Phillips’ mother didn’t particularly like cooking, so memories weren’t always the fondest for such treats as “those salmon croquettes, that macaroni and cheese out of a box and the absolute worst: canned spinach. Slimy, disgusting canned spinach.”
Other memories included going to Spudnuts (where they made donuts out of potatoes) after baseball games, little taffy squares called Banana Bikes, chocolate NECCO wafers, pickles for a nickel at the movie theater - and the Whipped Cream Incident:
“One night when I was very young, my parents went out and the baby sitter let us get into the canned whipped cream. I remember taking a big bowl and just filling it with nothing but whipped cream … and getting incredibly sick.
“Geez, did I get sick. I couldn’t eat whipped cream for 15 years. The same thing happened with plain M & Ms, which I now love - and, in fact, I got one of those family packs in my Christmas stocking and ate the whole thing.”
Food stories from the front
Oddly enough, two of the most delightfully memorable meals Phillips has indulged in popped up in the most unlikely of places - in the middle of a sea, and in the middle of a war.
And one of the worst-ever meals he has experienced was in the middle of nowhere.
“I did a story about the overhunting of walrus for ivory, and visited a small, cold, barren, rocky island off the coast of Alaska,” he recalls.
“The chief of this island village invited me to his home for dinner and served walrus meat cooked with a lot of onions and salt, a side of blubber and string beans. I finished it just to be polite, but it tasted like one of my least favorite things - liver.
“Some of the most remarkably good eating I’ve ever experienced was at the Commodore Hotel in Beirut in 1982, when I was covering the Israeli attack on Beirut. Israelis had encircled the city with all their artillery, and yet the owner of the hotel, Jousef Nazaal, would constantly amaze us with his ability to get delicacies like escargot - in the midst of a war.
“One day we were all lined up for this incredible buffet. One of the local factions who basically controlled the neighborhood pulled right into the lobby in a jeep and pointed a .50-caliber machine gun at us, angry that one of the Western film crews had taken some unauthorized video tape. We all hit the floor quite pleased to have that buffet table in front of us to hide underneath.
“Then Jousef marched over and told the guy behind the machine gun that he was offended that he would burst in right in the middle of dinner - so they left!
“I also recommend joining the French navy if you want great food. We were on the naval vessel Jeanne d’Arc, an old anti-submarine warship converted for diplomatic purposes, in the middle of the South China Sea searching for Vietnamese boat people.
“I thought this would be the ultimate hardship. But I’ll tell you, the French navy knows how to eat. Fresh croissants and baked goods, wonderful French sauces and wine with both lunch and dinner. The captain had his own chef, and a couple of nights we had just fantastic dinners in his quarters - which were, by the way, decorated with beautiful paintings on loan from the Jeu de Paume museum in Paris.”
Eating and the media
“I think news and magazine shows have certainly contributed to the food scare of the week. For instance, recently there was a big scare over pasta, the one food we thought we could eat without it making us fat.
“We tend to seize upon an oftennarrow scientific finding, which could be newsworthy. But in the telling, it can get magnified and wind up scaring people into thinking something is not safe or edible.
“It’s a reporter’s quandary - looking to put the right amount of weight on a story. The downside is that not only do people get paranoid, but they also get desensitized to the point that if there is something to be concerned about, you worry that you’re going to cry wolf too many times.
“As far as the fear of food goes, my personal feeling is that most everything is OK as long as it’s done in moderation.”
What if
What if, I ask him, you are on assignment in a primitive location and suddenly find yourself in front of a firing squad with the leader brandishing a gun at you demanding to know what your last meal will be.
“What a depressing thought,” he says, laughing. “My goodness! I think I’d rather die on an empty stomach and go down with good breath.”
Pleeze horrey, Meester Pheeleps, ve are vaiting to shoot you.
“OK, I’ve got it,” he says, still laughing. “A big Mexican combo platter. And a couple of frozen margaritas. With salt, please. And I do believe I’ll skip dessert today.”
What if, I ask him, you could host the ultimate dinner party?
“I would invite Abraham Lincoln, Adolph Hitler (in a straitjacket and leg irons), Jesus Christ, Plato, Carl Jung and Demi Moore.
“But what a tough crowd to feed. I have no idea what I’d serve them. I’d have to ask my wife. Maybe a Mexican combo platter.”
MEMO: Robin Benzle is the author of “Cooking With Humor” and “The Ziggy Cookbook” (VanTine Publishing).