Skip to main content

Main menu

  • Home
  • Content
    • Current issue
    • Past issues
    • Early releases
    • Collections
    • Sections
    • Blog
    • Infographics & illustrations
    • Podcasts
    • COVID-19 Articles
  • Authors & Reviewers
    • Overview for authors
    • Submission guidelines
    • Submit a manuscript
    • Forms
    • Editorial process
    • Editorial policies
    • Peer review process
    • Publication fees
    • Reprint requests
    • Open access
    • Patient engagement
  • Members & Subscribers
    • Benefits for CMA Members
    • CPD Credits for Members
    • Subscribe to CMAJ Print
    • Subscription Prices
    • Obituary notices
  • Alerts
    • Email alerts
    • RSS
  • JAMC
    • À propos
    • Numéro en cours
    • Archives
    • Sections
    • Abonnement
    • Alertes
    • Trousse média 2023
  • CMAJ JOURNALS
    • CMAJ Open
    • CJS
    • JAMC
    • JPN

User menu

Search

  • Advanced search
CMAJ
  • CMAJ JOURNALS
    • CMAJ Open
    • CJS
    • JAMC
    • JPN
CMAJ

Advanced Search

  • Home
  • Content
    • Current issue
    • Past issues
    • Early releases
    • Collections
    • Sections
    • Blog
    • Infographics & illustrations
    • Podcasts
    • COVID-19 Articles
  • Authors & Reviewers
    • Overview for authors
    • Submission guidelines
    • Submit a manuscript
    • Forms
    • Editorial process
    • Editorial policies
    • Peer review process
    • Publication fees
    • Reprint requests
    • Open access
    • Patient engagement
  • Members & Subscribers
    • Benefits for CMA Members
    • CPD Credits for Members
    • Subscribe to CMAJ Print
    • Subscription Prices
    • Obituary notices
  • Alerts
    • Email alerts
    • RSS
  • JAMC
    • À propos
    • Numéro en cours
    • Archives
    • Sections
    • Abonnement
    • Alertes
    • Trousse média 2023
  • Visit CMAJ on Facebook
  • Follow CMAJ on Twitter
  • Follow CMAJ on Pinterest
  • Follow CMAJ on Youtube
  • Follow CMAJ on Instagram
The Left Atrium

Culinary dissection

Leigh Turner
CMAJ June 08, 2004 170 (12) 1825; DOI: https://doi.org/10.1503/cmaj.1040470
Leigh Turner
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • Article
  • Figures & Tables
  • Responses
  • Metrics
  • PDF
Loading

Close to the bone: surgeons & chefs An 8-part television series Fresh Cut Entertainment, Calgary, Alta. Created by Richard Hu Hosted by Allan Shewchuk Produced by Doug Hodgson

Figure
  • Download figure
  • Open in new tab
  • Download powerpoint

Figure. Photo by: Fresh Cut Entertainment

Figure
  • Download figure
  • Open in new tab
  • Download powerpoint

Figure. Cooking with surgical precision Photo by: Fresh Cut Entertainment

If you enjoy “Asparagus Battle” and “Kamo Eggplant Battle” on Iron Chef, have an intense relationship with The Naked Chef, like nothing more than to nibble along with Nigella Bites, or spend hours sitting in the dark double-clicking on photos of curvaceous red peppers and tomatoes on foodporn sites, you would approve of Close to the Bone: Surgeons & Chefs. The premise of this eight-part television series was cooked up by Richard Hu, an orthopedic surgeon at Foothills Hospital in Calgary, Alta. Each episode features a specialist surgeon preparing two gourmet meat dishes.

Given the smorgasbord of cooking shows already available, skeptics might argue that the creation of a cooking show that tosses home cuisine into a stew containing surgery and comparative anatomy is like serving fugu fish with Worcestershire sauce on Belgian waffles. However, in an exercise of cultural fusion that combines the dining table with the operating table to create a platform for a truly nouvelle cuisine, Close to the Bone outflanks competitors and claims new ground as the television program that blends surgery and lessons in human anatomy with gourmet cooking and educational visits to a butcher shop.

The series is filmed in a studio designed to resemble an operating room. The set includes surgical drapes, an illuminator, knives and other surgical implements, and a guest surgeon dressed in standard-issue OR greens. Hosted by Allan Shewchuk, a personal injury lawyer and chef with the requisite cooking show host personality, each episode features a visit to Darrell the butcher, a short lesson in comparative anatomy that explores the relationship between the human body and the food being cooked, and a guest surgeon whose specialty serves as the narrative hook for each episode's meat dish. Joseph Dort, an ear, nose and throat specialist, prepares succulent dishes of pig snout and calf's tongue. Urologist Gerry Todd makes lamb kidney and deep-fried bull's testicles. Gary Gelfand, a thoracic surgeon, prepares braised short ribs and oven-baked glazed ribs. Vegetarians beware: the program is for hard-core carnivores.

Interested viewers who cannot gain access to the main course are welcome to sample a light appetizer from the program. Fresh Cut Entertainment provides a videoclip (http://www.freshcut.tv/bone.html) featuring Vaughan Bowen, a hand surgeon, preparing steaming dishes of tender zampone (stuffed pig's trotter) and osso bucco (veal shank). The episode quite successfully demonstrates the similarities between the human forearm and a pig's trotter. With a close-up shot of the knife slicing through succulent osso bucco and the ritual clinking of the chefs' wine glasses at show's end, the clip left me glancing at my forearm and wondering if it might make a nice soup stock.

Notwithstanding professional production values and the show's all-star cast of established Alberta surgeons, Close to the Bone garnered few nibbles when Hu dangled the idea before television executives. Viewers who like to keep their peas separate from their potatoes might pucker their mouths at the visits to Darrell the butcher and the close parallels drawn between human anatomy and the food humans eat. Close to the Bone might find itself limited to a niche-market audience, but will surely attract interest from the ranks of gourmet chefs currently closeted as surgeons; cultural bricoleurs who would like to melt the barriers separating surgery, human anatomy and home cuisine; advocates of consensual cannibalism who have exhausted the cooking tips provided in The Silence of the Lambs, and television programmers looking to appeal to the same popular sensibilities that make Extreme Makeover such a hit. While Close to the Bone does not quite reach the culinary martial art form of Iron Chef, Hu, Shewchuck and their surgeon friends are a genial bunch. The series had its debut eight-week run on the Canadian Learning Television on consecutive Tuesdays from March 23 to May 11. The series will likely be rebroadcast later this year; aficionados will be happy to learn that another 22 episodes are in the works.

Leigh Turner School of Social Science Institute for Advanced Study Princeton, NJ Assistant Professor Biomedical Ethics Unit and Department of Social Studies of Medicine McGill University Montréal, Que.

PreviousNext
Back to top

In this issue

Canadian Medical Association Journal: 170 (12)
CMAJ
Vol. 170, Issue 12
8 Jun 2004
  • Table of Contents
  • Index by author

Article tools

Respond to this article
Print
Download PDF
Article Alerts
To sign up for email alerts or to access your current email alerts, enter your email address below:
Email Article

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word on CMAJ.

NOTE: We only request your email address so that the person you are recommending the page to knows that you wanted them to see it, and that it is not junk mail. We do not capture any email address.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
Culinary dissection
(Your Name) has sent you a message from CMAJ
(Your Name) thought you would like to see the CMAJ web site.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Citation Tools
Culinary dissection
Leigh Turner
CMAJ Jun 2004, 170 (12) 1825; DOI: 10.1503/cmaj.1040470

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
‍ Request Permissions
Share
Culinary dissection
Leigh Turner
CMAJ Jun 2004, 170 (12) 1825; DOI: 10.1503/cmaj.1040470
Digg logo Reddit logo Twitter logo Facebook logo Google logo Mendeley logo
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like

Jump to section

  • Article
  • Figures & Tables
  • Responses
  • Metrics
  • PDF

Related Articles

  • No related articles found.
  • Google Scholar

Cited By...

  • Minerva
  • Minerva
  • Google Scholar

More in this TOC Section

The Left Atrium

  • On becoming
  • Chronicles of a cardiologist in Canada's North
  • Rethinking randomized controlled trials
Show more The Left Atrium

Book review

  • Ethics and education
  • A psychiatric reformation
Show more Book review

Similar Articles

 

View Latest Classified Ads

Content

  • Current issue
  • Past issues
  • Collections
  • Sections
  • Blog
  • Podcasts
  • Alerts
  • RSS
  • Early releases

Information for

  • Advertisers
  • Authors
  • Reviewers
  • CMA Members
  • CPD credits
  • Media
  • Reprint requests
  • Subscribers

About

  • General Information
  • Journal staff
  • Editorial Board
  • Advisory Panels
  • Governance Council
  • Journal Oversight
  • Careers
  • Contact
  • Copyright and Permissions
  • Accessibiity
  • CMA Civility Standards
CMAJ Group

Copyright 2023, CMA Impact Inc. or its licensors. All rights reserved. ISSN 1488-2329 (e) 0820-3946 (p)

All editorial matter in CMAJ represents the opinions of the authors and not necessarily those of the Canadian Medical Association or its subsidiaries.

To receive any of these resources in an accessible format, please contact us at CMAJ Group, 500-1410 Blair Towers Place, Ottawa ON, K1J 9B9; p: 1-888-855-2555; e: cmajgroup@cmaj.ca

Powered by HighWire