Just a gigantic rumble in the belly?

This week, Rachael Ray enters the pantheon of America’s highest-paid cookbook authors, signing a multimillion-dollar, multibook deal that is one of the largest in cookbook history.

Ray is a food television phenomenon. A perky 35-year-old home cook with no professional credentials, she has such good chemistry with the camera that her “30 Minute Meals” is the Food Network’s top-rated show. It’s particularly appealing to Madison Avenue’s favored demographic, the impressionable younger adult, age 18 to 49.

Ray personifies everything people love about food TV: She’s charismatic, accessible, upbeat and she never stops moving. She also represents what rankles members of the food world’s intelligentsia: There’s no attempt at culinary excellence.

“Food Network has made a decision to go after the lowest common denominator audience,” says Darra Goldstein, editor of the scholarly quarterly Gastronomica and a professor at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass. “Even with this audience, there is so much more that could be done.”

But this is not about cooking. Research shows that “the job of America is to get out of cooking, not to spend more time cooking,” says Harry Balzer, vice president of NPD Group, a Chicago-based company that collects and analyzes consumer data. “Food television is entertainment.”

Food Network now entertains an average of 550,000 households during prime-time each day, a 16% increase above last year and a 33% increase above the network’s prime-time audience in 2002. Its overall ratings put it well ahead of E!, ESPN2, Cartoon and TV Land among 18- to 49-year-old viewers.

In the last three years, Food Network has expanded its reach from 54 million to 84 million households, enough for the 10-year-old network to be considered a universally available channel. It now delivers more than 800 hours of original food programming a year.

But food television is not just one channel, and Ray isn’t the only star: She’s at the head of an outsized class of celebrity TV chefs who dominate bookstore cookbook displays nationwide. And as the demand for food programming has grown, both the volume of shows and the outlets for them have multiplied.

Anyone who grew up watching Julia Child knows that public television was the birthplace of food TV. Now public television stations across the country broadcast more than 71 cooking shows. That’s a 69% increase from the 42 shows they offered three years ago. There are as much as 11.5 hours of chopping, dicing and baking across major markets.

“Food is the most popular genre of programming we make,” says Cynthia Fenneman, president and chief executive of American Public Television, a programming distributor to public television stations. APT shows such as “America’s Test Kitchen” and Lidia Bastianich’s “Lidia’s Italian-American Kitchen” are viewed on average by about twice the audience as Food Network’s top programs, according to Nielsen NSI ratings.

But you can also tune into Style Network for a dose of Nigella Lawson’s sultry sensuality or Bravo for “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” on which the fab five never fail to prepare something splendid. Food entertainment has even made it to network TV: NBC spent millions of dollars trying to turn chef Rocco DiSpirito into a prime-time star with “The Restaurant.”

Food as escape

But if most of food TV isn’t about cooking, what’s really going on?

Food is an antidote to modern life, a comfortable place to go, an escape, says Brooke Bailey Johnson, Food Network’s president. “Food is pleasant, and it’s made by pleasant people,” she says, noting that people can talk about food without offending anyone.

The striking thing, Johnson adds, “is that the audience cuts across every age. It’s families watching.” During prime-time evening hours, as many men watch Food Network as women. Children and teenagers are avid viewers.

That’s why Food Network’s advertising revenue has soared from $150 million in 2002 to an estimated $225 million in 2004, according to Kagan Research.

“It’s ‘least-objectionable-programming,’ ” says Jon Mandel, co-chief executive of the advertising buying firm MediaCom, who points out that it is snagging top-dollar car and pharmaceutical ads. “It’s being considered for more than food ads because so many different types of people are watching. And it has the potential to be bigger.”

Devon Espinosa is one person who sees food TV as more than just entertainment. During his childhood in Arleta, in the San Fernando Valley, dining out for Espinosa was a trip to Numero Uno for a pizza. Home cooking often meant tearing open a box.

Still, during his years at James Monroe High School, Espinosa dreamed of becoming a chef, a true “culinary artist.” Chefs are his heroes, he explains; they are the stars of his favorite television shows.

“First it was public television with Martin Yan, then came the Food Network, all this food that, as a child, I never had myself,” says the 21-year-old student now in his final year of a bachelor’s program at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y. “The majority of us watch the Food Network religiously,” he says, referring to his fellow students.

“My students are modeling the young, masculine swagger of the Food Network stars. I see it all around me,” says Krishnendu Ray, one of Espinosa’s instructors at the Culinary Institute and an adjunct professor at New York University’s department of nutrition and food studies.

“When I speak to students, they place their context of food knowledge with Food Network,” says Ken Rubin, associate education manager of Le Cordon Bleu Schools North America. “It’s not ‘This is what my mother cooked.’ It’s about what they saw on some television show. I watch Emeril with his band, and I cringe. But he’s done an amazing job of getting people excited about food.”

The James Beard Foundation has noticed that something is up. “More young people are interested in going to the Beard Awards,” says Len Pickell, president of the foundation, who notes that the otherwise humdrum awards banquet is now a sellout event with the fans of food television lining up for a glimpse of their favorite stars.

“Television is the new cultural foothold for food,” he says.

“Americans have always looked outside themselves for food ideas and traditions,” says Laura Shapiro, author of the recently published “Something From the Oven,” a history of the 1950s American kitchen. “Every generation has had one or more culinary authority -- Fanny Farmer, James Beard, Betty Crocker, Julia Child.”

A highly mobile society of mixed heritages, “Americans accumulate rather than inherit their culinary habits,” she says, noting that television is a critical part of that process. “It’s the true future of viable home cooking.”

Gastronomica’s Goldstein disagrees. Food television isn’t cooking, “it’s voyeurism. You watch it but you don’t do it,” she says.

Barry Glassner, a sociology professor at the University of Southern California who is writing a book on American eating habits, takes that idea a step further. “A very high percentage of food television is very pretty pictures of food posed in tempting positions,” he says. “That’s not to say it is somehow dirty or bad, but I don’t think we should kid ourselves about it being instructional or educational. It’s titillating. And quite clever.”

Whatever it is, it works. It took Food Network several years to find its formula, but now it has learned to follow its audience rather than lead it. “Low Carb & Lovin’ It” addresses the “low-carb lifestyle.” “Calorie Commando” with Juan-Carlos Cruz, a spa cuisine cooking show, will add a reality TV element next fall: a weight-loss contest with Cruz teaching contestants how to cook low-calorie food, while viewers follow their progress in taking off the pounds.

During the next several months, Food Network will launch several shows mimicking what’s worked for other cable networks. In the spirit of Bravo’s “Queer Eye,” the network will premiere “Party Starters.” Like Learning Channel’s “Trading Places,” “Kitchen Cops” will do radical kitchen makeovers -- at breakneck speed.

“It’s gee-whiz programming,” says Kathleen Finch, the network’ senior vice president of prime-time programming. “At 9 p.m. you don’t want to work. You want to put your feet up and be entertained.”

What’s visibly absent from the Food Network is anything that could be considered ethnic food. With notable exceptions made to allow for Wolfgang Puck’s Austrian lilt and the campy “Iron Chef,” there’s no foreign presence. There is no Mexican cooking show, no Japanese chef heightening flavor with yuzu juice.

“There are a lot of types of cooking that people love to eat but they don’t want to see every day,” says Bob Tuschman, Food Network’s senior vice president in charge of daytime shows. “Asian, Latin food, that’s not what we’re doing now,” he says, noting that Sara Moulton and other chef-stars often host guests who cook these cuisines.

“In the early days, we assumed people were passionate about food,” says Tuschman. “We no longer assume they have much skill.”

Retro finds success

That mentality gave birth to “Sandra Lee’s Semi-Homemade,” a show featuring recipes that seem to have all originated on Campbell’s soup can labels. The retro cuisine drives serious cooks mad.

“I’m sick to my stomach when I read Sandra Lee’s cookbooks,” says Gastronomica’s Goldstein.

But the Food Network audience loves her. “From the day she first appeared a year ago, she has had a huge fan base,” says Tuschman.

“If you are looking for food with foam on it, we’re not going to have it,” he says. No apologies for abandoning more sophisticated cuisine? “I’d be more apologetic if we did a high-end program that made people feel that they can’t do it and so they stay out of their kitchens,” Tuschman says.

To learn how to debone a duck, turn to public television, where Martin Yan takes viewers on a tour of Macao, where he found “8-treasure lucky duck” at Tou Tou Koi restaurant, then went back to his studio kitchen to show the audience how to replicate it.

“Public television is an older demographic -- more homespun, quieter programming. I love the sensibility,” says Geoffrey Drummond, producer of Julia Child’s last series as well as “Martin Yan,” “America’s Test Kitchen,” “Lidia’s Italian-American Kitchen” and others. “They don’t tell us how to produce our shows. We submit them finished.”

That approach allows for everything from Andreas Viestad’s “New Scandinavian Cooking” to Ming Tsai’s “Simply Ming” and “Chefs A’ Field,” a series that educates viewers about the relationship between restaurants and the people who grow and raise the food they serve.

On public television, wine is served and discussed with nearly every meal. Food Network, on the other hand, deems wine a bore. Where Food Network has Bobby Flay throwing barbecue parties and touring the country’s renowned smoke pits, public television features “Barbecue University With Steve Raichlen.”

“There are five barbecue methods and a limited number of techniques that produce specific results. It’s a coherent system,” says Raichlen, a French literature major and former Fulbright scholar. “My books are as much about culture as anything, and full of essays.”

And they outsell Flay. Raichlen is one of the biggest names in barbecue, selling 2.5 million books that detail his grilling methods.

Food Network has more razzmatazz, but the common denominator in today’s bestselling cookbooks is television, says Maria Guarnaschelli, senior editor at W.W. Norton.

An estimated 1,000 new American cookbook titles are released each year, according to industry sources, who say there are no precise statistics.

“There are more and more and more cookbooks. We’re going to have to build another room for the crockpot cookbooks alone,” says Ellen Rose, owner of Cook’s Library in Los Angeles. “And the Food Network books are huge, absolutely huge.”

The emergence of these powerful television personalities has turned the once sleepy sector intensely competitive. “It’s show business now; the stakes are higher,” says Guarnaschelli. “Ray is worth the money.”

By focusing on quick and easy cuisine, Ray has tapped the college market. “She’s their introduction to food, which means a lot of new people are coming to food,” says Guarnaschelli.

In 1998, when Ray tried to find a publishing house for her “30-Minute Meals” cookbook, she had to give up on the majors and take her book to tiny Lake Isle Press.

It wasn’t until 2001 that Ray joined Food Network, taping 100 segments of “30 Minute Meals.” Within a year, she was hosting a second show, “$40 a Day.” This fall, she adds a third show, a celebrity interview program.

Last year, three of Ray’s cookbooks simultaneously were first, third and seventh on the New York Times bestseller list -- and one of those books was her 6-year-old original collection of recipes, now in its 19th printing.

The deal she just signed with Clarkson Potter, an imprint of Random House (neither the publisher nor Ray’s agents would confirm details of the deal), is particularly significant in the context of other cookbook deals. A major advance is $250,000, while $50,000 is more typical, according to cookbook editors.

Ray now is in a league with Mario Batali, a Food Network star and highly respected chef in New York City with successful Italian restaurants, who is rumored to have received a $750,000 advance for his coming cookbook (his publisher would not confirm details of his deal). Food Network’s other major talent, Emeril Lagasse, is said to get even higher advances.

“Rachael has a real message,” says Hiroko Kiiffner, publisher at Lake Isle Press. “It’s very important to her that people of limited means aspire to the good things in life,” says Kiiffner, who adds that she never submitted Ray’s books to publications for review.

“I let the consumer do the talking,” she says. “The food media would have shown her the door.”

Now, of course, they’ve beaten a path to Ray’s door. And they’re bearing gifts of gold.