I don’t watch a lot of cookery shows on TV, but you’d have to live somewhere pretty soundproof not to hear the bottom of their ideas barrel being scraped. The bar having been set suitably low, I think my idea for a new cookery show is better than plenty of the stuff that is getting made.
I got the idea after reading a tweet by Shaun Usher about how he’d just spent sixty minutes making one of Jamie’s fifteen
minute meals. We all know the problem: cookery shows, columns and books that
are supposed to give you ideas you can put into practice in your own kitchen
just aren’t realistic. You don’t have the equipment, you can’t source the
ingredients, and you don’t have the skills. It’s unsurprising that Shaun can’t
make as a meal as fast as Jamie can, when Jamie is a professional chef with a
state of the art kitchen and a team of producers to do his shopping. My idea
for a cookery show, called Jamie in Your
Kitchen, addresses these problems. I think Jamie would do it fine, but if
they got someone else they should probably change the name.
The idea is that they find someone who has a
kitchen but hardly ever cooks, and then Jamie comes round and cooks something
lovely for them. They can give it a bit of a reality show slant, where they interview
the bum beforehand, getting some soundbites about how they don’t know which
end of the potato-peeler to use, and maybe show them eating a takeaway with
their friends. Then Jamie comes round and has a look at their kitchen, which
the producers have discreetly had cleaned, and says what a waste and so on. Then
we follow Jamie around the contestant’s local supermarket, where he says what he’s
going to make and makes a big show of how all the weird ingredients are right
there waiting to be used. Then he cooks something using the sloth’s equipment
and kitchen, intercut with more soundbites about how they didn’t even realize
they owned a roasting tin and so forth. Then Jamie and the slob eat the
food, and agree that it’s very nice, and that they’ll turn over a new leaf now
they’ve seen how easy it is.
This solves the problems about not having the
equipment they use on cookery shows and not being able to source the
ingredients. It doesn’t solve the problem about Jamie being a better and
presumably faster cook than Shaun, but two out of three isn’t bad.
