Matthew Burbidge
food
Carlton Food Network (DStv, channel 54) is a strangely compelling place to visit. The studios have a warm tint, a homely feel; it’s inviting, it’s all about sizzling food, lovely smells, tastes but none of it seems real. The portions are huge and steaming, polished. “Here’s one we made earlier,” the chefs say, to save time in cookery demos but who can believe them?
But whatever the tricks TV chefs get up to, the channel is an awesome recipe resource. To have a chef talk you through the intricacies of making choux pastry, souffls, a fiddly Italian dish or a curry is unbeatable when you finally get back to your humble kitchen. The channel also has a massive recipe archive there are thousands stored at www.taste.co.uk, as well as a handy feature for those short of ideas, where you specify (the only) three ingredients in your fridge, for example, a tomato, cream and a can of beans, and the website will find you a matching recipe.
The United Kingdom-based network started screening here in November 1996 and has now been rejigged and renamed Taste. Three top UK chefs Alan Coxon, Aldo Zilli and Patrick Williams are here to relaunch the channel.
The three chefs cooked with a few members of the public at the Rotunda in Cape Town this week and four prize-winners will now get to take a chef home to cook them a dinner for six.
According to Taste marketing director Nick Adderley, South African men watch more cookery programmes than do men in the UK, but this is because we get the full 17-hour daily service, while the channel is not available in the evenings everywhere in its home country. In both countries, the bias is towards daytime programming, aimed at “the housewife”.
The three celebrity chefs, or “Spice Boys”, were in high spirits during their stay in Johannesburg this week. Zilli was giggling himself hoarse at his own jokes as he handed out cards for his six restaurants in London.
He says cooking should be a collaborative effort between partners and should be fun. If it isn’t, you shouldn’t be cooking.
Williams who appeared on the programme Four Burners and a Grill is the least known of the three chefs and spoke of the difficulty of breaking into the television market. He has a job lined up as a sous chef in a London restaurant when he returns. But chef or not, his favourite food is still fast food, for example ribs. Williams London-born of Jamaican forebears has also written a book called The Caribbean Cook, which will be released here in August.
Coxon seems hot property these days, a kind of Andre Agassi of the cooking circuit. His excellent daily feature, Coxon’s Kitchen College, runs continuously, as well as his Land of Plenty a culinary amble through the United States.
He’s also just completed a 13-part series called Tasting South Africa. He cooked in Cape Town, then caught the Blue Train to Pretoria, where he rode an ostrich, and later cooked one of its relatives.
Another episode has Coxon deep-sea fishing in False Bay; he describes catching the snoek, and then cooking it (and take note here’s the recipe) in a paper bag and tinfoil with sliced lemon, orange segments, banana, lime juice, onion and caraway seeds.
Coxon (on Coxon’s Kitchen College) regularly receives a standing ovation from the studio audience for his dishes. His enthusiasm for food is infectious and he manages to convey, in plain English, fairly complex culinary techniques.
He had 24 years in various kitchens before he launched himself on to the airwaves and was head chef supervising 50 chefs at the Newport Bay hotel in Paris (which can serve up to 5 000 meals a day). He also has his own restaurant, The Taste of Magic, on the Isle of Man.
He places great store in the history of food and believes once you know where an ingredient comes from, it’s easier to marry it successfully to others.
Coxon appears charmed by South Africa. “Chefs here are not worried about the rest of the world or what they see on the pages of Vogue for instance, at the moment [in London] if it doesn’t have galangal and lemon grass it seems it’s not worth cooking.”
He says we have some of the best fruit, vegetables and fish that he’s come across.
“I came here in 1999 and saw a country with great potential,” he says.
“Now the standards have doubled. All you need to do is make sure you keep some of your best produce for yourselves and don’t export it all.
“You’ve got what Italy has the fresh, organic produce, the tomatoes. Everything’s sun-kissed,” he enthuses.
His advice to South African chefs, then, is to cook simply, allowing the natural flavours to emerge.