Mario Batali prefers to fill his kitchens with women because he feels that only women have that traditional and insightful "grandma" touch and intuition that makes great food. I don't quote him exactly: he is much less sexist. Actually, his reasoning is somewhat sexist but also very much cultural. Anyhow, that is why Anne Burrell is his sous-chef on Iron Chef America: she's better than any man in the kitchen...except, of course, Mario.
IR, I've always thought that one of the most interesting and difficult things about envisioning justice for the people who live here and now in our country, on our planet, is accomodating both the reality of how people's lives are affected by things like sexism, as well as leaving room for change so that it won't have to have such a big impact on their lives in the future. Whether women are socialized to be more "conversational" in their writing style or whether it's somehow to tied to their biology (I personally doubt the latter), the fact remains that women very often do it, and there's no reason to devalue it. On the other hand, not all women do that, and there are maybe lots of women who otherwise could find more direct voices, or men who could communicate more clearly in more stereotypically feminine ways than they do in the ways they're encouraged to. So we have to fight the prejudice on both fronts - the predefined roles that not everyone fits, and the idea that one of those roles is inherently less important than the other.
OMG there was a hilarious(albeit not in the way it intended to be) article in the Daily Fucking Mail about this. It proved the exact opposite of its point. The writer had obviously been specifically instructed to mess up Nigella's recipes; it turned out they were completely unambiguous so he had to resort to ignoring the instructions (a MILLILITRE? What's a MILLILITRE? Only gypsies and paedophiles and illegal mmigrants use millilitres!) and then complaining about the results. The conclusion I drew: Nigella's recipes are so easy to follow that even a total moron has to try to screw them up.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/
pages...in_page_id=1879
At least based on the two examples posted on the Daily Mail page both the female Lawson and the slightly less wordy male Jamie Oliver are extraordinarily verbose compared to admirable Irma S. Rombauer of the Joy of Cooking.
figleaf
Ditto what figleaf said. Nigel Slater is also a joy to read, much in the same way that I love listening to Nigella Lawson talk about what she's making (I've never used her cookbooks, just watched her shows).
I like the dry, straightforward recipes of Rombauer, Child, and so on, and I use them often. But I love to read or listen to people who are enthusiastic about their food (much as I am), and who aren't afraid to show it in their shows or cookbooks.
Nigella Lawson's recipes are really yummy. But I wouldn't recommend her to the beginning cook. Her recipes often tell you what to do, but don't tell you how to do it. (For example, she'll tell you to braise something, but won't explain how to braise- you need to know already what "braise" means and how to do it.)
That said, she is "chatty" and I really like that about her. She's a food writer, so she's not simply transcribing recipes. In particular her first book "How to Eat" is a book you could sit down with a cup of tea and just read straight through. Her "recipes" include 'buy some good prociutto and eat that with a nice glass of wine;" or suggestions to eat fresh peaches, followed by a lyrical description of how good fresh peaches are. In the recipe for mayonaise, she writes something like, 'when I was a teenager, I loved to read Henry James, until someone asked me didn't I find him difficult, and then I started finding him difficult. It's the same with mayonaise. I used to make it all the time, until I read somewhere that it's difficult to make. Now it seems difficult, (but it's really not).' Not only did I want to try to make mayonaisem, but I wanted to read Henry James as well.
Basically, she assume a certain amount of intelligence and cooking skill on the part of her readers.
From your description of that article, it sounds like if the finding were reversed, the female chefs would be criticized for having such simplistic writing styles and the male would be praised for their verbosity.
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