RecipeMuncher

On the way to work so for now, here are images of Baked Honey-Lemon Chicken for Food Friday. Recipe and musings to follow…

The problem with anticipation is that the majority of times, one is left with a great chasm of disappointment rather than a belly-full of satisfaction. Such is the way of the world. It’s like the difference between a backlit picture of a Big Mac, a towering burger able to sate the most ravenous of appetites, and the withering feeling of self-loathing that washes over you precisely 0.8 seconds after swallowing that final mouthful.

This time last week I was bouncing round in Tigger-like excitement at the prospect of seeing two adventurous chefs eat their way ‘up the food chain’ tackling some socio-cultural culinary taboos along the way. At least that was the premise.

Instead what we got was a missed opportunity, a series of refusals to eat what they had been presented with and an agonisingly annoying voiceover of the sort that made me want to turn off the volume and listen to something, anything, less teeth-grindingly frustrating. Celine Dion would have done nicely.

Where there should have been depth, there was mere superficiality. Cultural reasons and justifications were ignored like a condom machine in The Vatican and issues of animal welfare were glossed over in a similarly facile way. The chefs at the heart of the experiment seemed certain from the outset that some items were way beyond the pale but there was no effort on their part to explain their decisions.

Other bold culinary adventurers (Anthony Bourdain for one) make a serious effort to contextualise the food they are eating. With them you honestly see how food can be at the very beating heart of a culture. Could You Eat An Elephant? offered no such insight.

Considering both Henderson and Lee’s commitment to eating locally sourced, sustainable food (and consuming as much of the animal as possible) their steadfast refusal to even try rat, monkey or the eponymous elephant had a faint whiff of a double standard. I expected more from these veritable stalwarts of the British food scene.

Another flag-waving foodie to grace our screens this week was Heston Blumenthal. Yes, he of the three Michelin Stars and the snail porridge and the bacon and egg ice cream. Honestly, he really must tire of being unable to hear his name without it being supplemented with a register of his justifiably famous dishes like some edible millstone around his neck. His latest mission? To transform the fortunes of ailing British roadside caf ‘The Little Chef’.

How to explain this uniquely British institution to those who are unfamiliar (and there will be some of you, my friends over in the US, particularly)? As a nation we have a rather bizarre habit of idolising and holding in reverence the utterly sub-mediocre. Those stores, or items, or restaurants that, if they were a dog, would have been put down long ago for the sake of kindness. Witness Woolworths. Eddie the Eagle. Tim Henman and Butlins (and I use the term loosely) Holiday Camps.

We have a unhealthy and debilitating love of nostalgia and, as a result, Little Chefs still grace the sides of major A-roads all over the country like pimples on the shoulders of a testosterone fuelled body builder.

Admittedly, I haven’t eaten in a Little Chef since the age of nine when it was (I kid you not) a favoured destination for children’s birthday parties. Given the current dietary habits of the nation’s tweenagers I am surprised that the fashion for filling kids with meat of dubious origin, chips, beans and a hastily fried egg to celebrate the birth of one of the little food-hoovers hasn’t blossomed again. But it hasn’t.

And I’m not the only one who hasn’t been there in a good decade and a half. The company was declared bankrupt two years ago and only the intervention of a private equity group prevented the chain from disappearing entirely.

Enter science-loving-robo-chef Heston. In his car. A black BMW that seemed to spend more time on screen than the delusional, cliché loving company boss. The latest Bond movies have more subtle product placement.

Yes, OK, the programme was fun but I couldn’t help wondering if Heston was the right man for the job. I’m sure lamb tongue, sweet bread and oyster hot pot would go down a storm at his pub in Bray but I’m not too sure if the A133 to Clacton-on-Sea is quite ready for it.

Surely this sort of show is a vehicle for Jamie Oliver, perhaps even Gordon Ramsay. But who knows? Maybe Heston and his BMW Blumenthal-mobile (oo, there’s another helicopter shot of Heston driving down a road) can succeed and make Little Chef great again. Well, maybe not great but at least passable and worthy of a nostalgic trip back once in a while. We’ll find out tonight when part two airs. Channel 4, 9pm.

www.justcookit.co.uk

The problem with anticipation is that the majority of times, one is left with a great chasm of disappointment rather than a belly-full of satisfaction. Such is the way of the world. It’s like the difference between a backlit picture of a Big Mac, a towering burger able to sate the most ravenous of appetites, and the withering feeling of self-loathing that washes over you precisely 0.8 seconds after swallowing that final mouthful.

This time last week I was bouncing round in Tigger-like excitement at the prospect of seeing two adventurous chefs eat their way ‘up the food chain’ tackling some socio-cultural culinary taboos along the way. At least that was the premise.

Instead what we got was a missed opportunity, a series of refusals to eat what they had been presented with and an agonisingly annoying voiceover of the sort that made me want to turn off the volume and listen to something, anything, less teeth-grindingly frustrating. Celine Dion would have done nicely.

Where there should have been depth, there was mere superficiality. Cultural reasons and justifications were ignored like a condom machine in The Vatican and issues of animal welfare were glossed over in a similarly facile way. The chefs at the heart of the experiment seemed certain from the outset that some items were way beyond the pale but there was no effort on their part to explain their decisions.

Other bold culinary adventurers (Anthony Bourdain for one) make a serious effort to contextualise the food they are eating. With them you honestly see how food can be at the very beating heart of a culture. Could You Eat An Elephant? offered no such insight.

Considering both Henderson and Lee’s commitment to eating locally sourced, sustainable food (and consuming as much of the animal as possible) their steadfast refusal to even try rat, monkey or the eponymous elephant had a faint whiff of a double standard. I expected more from these veritable stalwarts of the British food scene.

Another flag-waving foodie to grace our screens this week was Heston Blumenthal. Yes, he of the three Michelin Stars and the snail porridge and the bacon and egg ice cream. Honestly, he really must tire of being unable to hear his name without it being supplemented with a register of his justifiably famous dishes like some edible millstone around his neck. His latest mission? To transform the fortunes of ailing British roadside caf ‘The Little Chef’.

How to explain this uniquely British institution to those who are unfamiliar (and there will be some of you, my friends over in the US, particularly)? As a nation we have a rather bizarre habit of idolising and holding in reverence the utterly sub-mediocre. Those stores, or items, or restaurants that, if they were a dog, would have been put down long ago for the sake of kindness. Witness Woolworths. Eddie the Eagle. Tim Henman and Butlins (and I use the term loosely) Holiday Camps.

We have a unhealthy and debilitating love of nostalgia and, as a result, Little Chefs still grace the sides of major A-roads all over the country like pimples on the shoulders of a testosterone fuelled body builder.

Admittedly, I haven’t eaten in a Little Chef since the age of nine when it was (I kid you not) a favoured destination for children’s birthday parties. Given the current dietary habits of the nation’s tweenagers I am surprised that the fashion for filling kids with meat of dubious origin, chips, beans and a hastily fried egg to celebrate the birth of one of the little food-hoovers hasn’t blossomed again. But it hasn’t.

And I’m not the only one who hasn’t been there in a good decade and a half. The company was declared bankrupt two years ago and only the intervention of a private equity group prevented the chain from disappearing entirely.

Enter science-loving-robo-chef Heston. In his car. A black BMW that seemed to spend more time on screen than the delusional, cliché loving company boss. The latest Bond movies have more subtle product placement.

Yes, OK, the programme was fun but I couldn’t help wondering if Heston was the right man for the job. I’m sure lamb tongue, sweet bread and oyster hot pot would go down a storm at his pub in Bray but I’m not too sure if the A133 to Clacton-on-Sea is quite ready for it.

Surely this sort of show is a vehicle for Jamie Oliver, perhaps even Gordon Ramsay. But who knows? Maybe Heston and his BMW Blumenthal-mobile (oo, there’s another helicopter shot of Heston driving down a road) can succeed and make Little Chef great again. Well, maybe not great but at least passable and worthy of a nostalgic trip back once in a while. We’ll find out tonight when part two airs. Channel 4, 9pm.

www.justcookit.co.uk

Six months not having a regular exercise (read: brisk-walking) and I think I gain weight . Tsk tsk. My metabolism is getting slower…