Everytime I see Rachel Allen I think she must be a middle class wet dream. She’s homely, mumsily pretty and all purring niceties. She seems like the kind of person who would be ideal to have at a dinner party. She won’t get hammered, won’t say anything controversial and will be relied upon to glide into the kitchen, only to emerge with a bit of flour on her nose with a tray full of freshly baked puds. If she wasn’t Irish, the Daily Mail would probably make her a saint.
Rachel Allen’s Food For Living (BBC1, Saturday, 11am) is something I’ve been watching for a while now. Don’t ask me why, but my Saturday a.m.’s have always been filled with a couple of cookery shows followed by Football Focus and copious amounts of tea. I guess it’s comforting. Rachel’s show essentially demonstrates everyday recipes made using readily accessible foods. Out with the showing off and in with ace looking crumbles.
With this being a cookery show, it has to fall into one of two categories. Faux cutting edge or twee. By this I mean shouting or whispering. Those obsessed with appearing at the top of their game barge around kitchens yelling at onions and smacking pans together whilst shouting “YOU IMBECILIC KNUCKLEHEADS” at viewers down cameras one, two and four (camera three is spared as he’s responsible for close ups on hobs and a wonky angled shot of a neat pile of shallots in small white bowls).
With people in the food industry so very desperate to let us know that they’re better at cooking than we are and in fact, more ambitious and driven than we are, then it is left for the other type of TV cook to put an arm ’round us and say “Listen sweetypie, stop listening to those nasty oafs… when exactly are you going to be able to cook a stew made entirely from saffron and emus? Come ’round mine, I’ll make you a nice cup of tea and we’ll have a lovely steak and ale pie. I’ve even run you a bath…”
The other type of TV chef seemingly has no restaurant experience whatsoever, leaving them talking and humming to themselves in their kitchens. Occasionally patronising, these ‘home’ cooks don’t want to leave anything to chance because the thought of us getting upset in our meagre kitchens leaves them all in a tizz. Of course, I’m talking about Delia and the newest apron on the box, Rachel Allen.
Rachel is seriously the nicest person I’ve ever seen on telly. You want to go ’round her house whilst you watch the show… at times, you may actually convince yourself you’re sat in her lovely kitchen. Naturally, this is what the show wants you to believe… and who am I to argue? Saturday morning, Rachel told us of steak, lemon tarts and salads in her soft well spoken Irish burr. Imagine the Cadbury’s Caramel Bunny… only the playful flirting has been replaced by holding hands on a park bench beneath a willow tree on a sunny day. If you read a more disturbing sentence than that today I’ll be very surprised.
Rachel, like Delia, left me wondering. How do you get a job in TV being a cook if you don’t own a restaurant? I’m sure some of our more enlightened readers (read pedants) could inform me of this… but really, it matters not. It seems to me that chefs who’ve worked in the kitchens of eateries have been left scarred and mentally shattered, leaving them paranoid (“MY REPUTATION IS ON THE LINE!” they shout at their hands) and angry like Vietnam veterans. These home cooks saunter and scamper around getting all giddy at bits of beef and the smell of dripping. This may be the reason why I trust Rachel Allen more than Gordon Ramsay. I can’t caramelise onions by shouting at them, or thicken a sauce by glaring at it… so I’m sticking with the girls. [Mof Gimmers]
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