Food’s got to be fun, it’s got to be tasty – but it doesn’t have to be cooked by Jamie Oliver
Charlotte Raven
Jamie Oliver is a phenomenon. His programme, The Naked Chef, is the unexpected hit of the moment and his status as a Nineties icon has been confirmed by everyone, from the critics who have praised his ”fresh” approach to the Zeitgeist-snuffling Coke execs who have offered him an undisclosed sum to appear in a series of ads. Quite impressive for a 24-year-old whose declared childhood ambition was to open a restaurant in Cambridge.
His current day job at the River Caf may only be two notches more ”funky” (a word he uses constantly), but it gave him his first big break. He was ”discovered” by the woman who produced Two Fat Ladies. Patricia Llewellyn took one look at Oliver and decided he had what it takes to front a new kind of cookery show.
The result is The Naked Chef, a perfectly unremarkable cookery show that uses every clich in the book to impart a sense of youthful vigour to a recipe-based format whose contours are as old as Mrs Beeton. Fans of yoof programming will doubtless be delighted by the inattentive camera-work and cheesy Britpop soundtrack – but who on earth would think that this was ”fresh”? Where have the critics who think The Naked Chef is ”innovative” been for the past two decades? Clearly, they can’t have been watching TV or this hotchpotch of ”hip” signifiers would have struck them as distinctly pass.
Each show begins with a recap of this commonplace wisdom: ”Cooking’s gotta be a laugh,” says Oliver. ”It’s gotta be simple, it’s gotta be tasty and …” Can you guess the next bit? Do I have any bids for, ”It’s gotta be a Herculean effort which is likely to leave you weeping at the stove while the guests you are trying to impress whisper in low tones about some over-determined terrine”? No? Well, you’re probably wise. Oliver thinks, surprise surprise, that cooking has ”gotta be fun”.
Scanning his programme for pointers as to how this ridiculous pastime could deliver the promised kicks, I noticed that Oliver likes chopping. Nothing appears to excite him more than an undeconstructed pepper or a cheeky little bunch of radishes. It is both his professional duty and, we suspect, his personal pleasure to slice and dice his veg into submission. By his own admission, he likes to ”get stuck in” and the sight of him reducing a food mountain to a delicate dipping sauce is certainly pretty awesome. But chopping is not for everyone and I can’t help vaguely resenting the presumption that non-professionals are bound to have a ball if they only apply enough elbow grease. For those of us who cook without liking it, there is something slightly annoying about being told that the deficiency is ours.
As for the other parts of his credo – ”It’s gotta be simple, it’s gotta be tasty” – when did you ever hear anyone declare that their objective was to make food that was ”revolting”? No one, to my knowledge, ever set out with the dream of obfuscating culinary knowledge to the point where it was inaccessible to your average Tom or Sophie, so why are the anti-foodies so damn pleased with themselves? To listen to them, you’d think that there was a law dictating the exact composition of the dishes in every home-cook’s repertoire. Then when they encourage us, as Oliver does, to ”let our imagination run riot” (”Use any fish you like!” he says), they are not only doing us a favour but also striking a blow for culinary freedom.
The notion of the ”orthodoxy” – that dusty old rule-book torn up in the interests of more varied sauces – has served certain chefs, and their bank balances, well. It makes them look like revolutionaries when really they are offering the same combination of ”secrets”, ”tricks” and impenetrable step-by-step instructions as the didacts whose prescriptions they presume to have overturned. The only difference being that they pretend that cooking is easy while other, more honest, practitioners are wary of making such claims.
Presenting themselves as enthusiasts rather than experts, they try to give the impression that whatever they are doing can be knocked up in a couple of minutes – and with sheer good humour. No one ever mentions the skill involved. Dishes are just willed into existence, as if the fact that Oliver is a highly trained professional is a coincidence – rather than the reason why his baked chocolate tart doesn’t sink.
In an age which cares too little for expertise, Oliver is a typical example of someone whose fame is based on his ability to convince the public that there’s ”nothing to” what he does. Sadly, the viewer pays for this pose. The fact that his recipes are delivered at double speed – creating an on-screen illusion of an almost balletic ease – has the paradoxical consequence of making them impossible to follow. Unless you also had the book, I doubt whether you would be able to make a single dish. Having twice watched an episode of the programme, I couldn’t tell you how the fish got like that or why the new potatoes looked like they do in a restaurant.
Perhaps this objection is irrelevant. At the end of the day, The Naked Chef is a lifestyle programme, peddling a highly idealised version of Nineties existence. As many have already pointed out, Oliver is very New Britain. His influences and vocabulary are multicultural: he plays in a band, he likes to chat to market traders and doesn’t lose much sleep over politics.
To anyone unfamiliar with the manners and habits of the capital’s younger toffs, this might all look rather charming. But if, like me, you happen to live down the road from Notting Hill, the sight of more public schoolboys addressing each other as ”bro” might just make you want to smash their heads in.
The Naked Chef will be shown on SABC3 from April 1 at 6pm