Half Full or Half Empty?
I'm sure "Le Chef" will have seen the latest BBC food programme, Full On Food which has just finished... I must say I was pretty "full on food" whilst I was watching it, having just consumed loads of sausage and chips. But the programme itself seemed to be running on empty.
I think there seems to be some sort of obligatory code at the BBC which prescribes that their food programmes must appear to be as relaxed and casual as possible. This may be in order to exorcize the spirit of Fanny Craddock, whose uneasy ghost must hover over the saucepan hand of the current crop of food presenters. Nowadays, the programme has to appear totally impromptu and unstructured. The food must be perfectly authentic and genuine, yet totally without effort.
The presenters, ideally, would be tousled Italians who slosh the extra virgin around, whack the hell out of vegetables and slice fruit in a blur of razor-sharp steel. Strangely, the eventual product of all this primal activity appears to be a gorgeous delicate fantasy structure of unparalleled beauty and deliciousness. Imagine the creative technique of Jackson Pollock, resulting in a Tintoretto. Seems a bit unlikely to me. I think it's all done by camera trickery.
The next step will be to have presenters who just sit around doing bugger all, for 25 minutes, and then there's this "ping" noise, and they hoik something utterly perfect out of the microwave and then all grab little spoons and tuck in and compete for who can make the most orgasmic noises of gastronomic pleasure.
I think there seems to be some sort of obligatory code at the BBC which prescribes that their food programmes must appear to be as relaxed and casual as possible. This may be in order to exorcize the spirit of Fanny Craddock, whose uneasy ghost must hover over the saucepan hand of the current crop of food presenters. Nowadays, the programme has to appear totally impromptu and unstructured. The food must be perfectly authentic and genuine, yet totally without effort.
The presenters, ideally, would be tousled Italians who slosh the extra virgin around, whack the hell out of vegetables and slice fruit in a blur of razor-sharp steel. Strangely, the eventual product of all this primal activity appears to be a gorgeous delicate fantasy structure of unparalleled beauty and deliciousness. Imagine the creative technique of Jackson Pollock, resulting in a Tintoretto. Seems a bit unlikely to me. I think it's all done by camera trickery.
The next step will be to have presenters who just sit around doing bugger all, for 25 minutes, and then there's this "ping" noise, and they hoik something utterly perfect out of the microwave and then all grab little spoons and tuck in and compete for who can make the most orgasmic noises of gastronomic pleasure.
posted by Paul at
9:25 pm
1 Comments:
Alas, I didn't see Full On Food. I was cooking a Spanish Omelette away from the TV. An interesting article in The Observer's Food Monthly supplement (http://observer.guardian.co.uk/foodmonthly/story/0,9950,1342296,00.html) on how the French eat, makes the point that eating in front of the TV is just not done. I feel even more strongly about cooking in front of the TV. It's just really cheap and chavvy.
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