The TV Chef

  
With the exception of the jovial Keith Floyd, who had such a zest for life, satan must love TV chefs.

The most popular one it seems, also likes to burn the skin on his "perfect" turkey and fish.

TV Chefs certainly have well cooked personalities, from the overdone grin to the charred sulk.  Most also make even 'leaders' of homosexuals seem humble. 


They wouldn't be satan's friends, though, if they didn't get teaching cooking all wrong.

A decent TV cooking programme could have the smart arse chef going into someone's house at random and knocking up something with whatever the cupboards provide, not give out daft shopping lists using up a week's budget in one meal.

To dance in the kitchen one should be able to make a tasty thing or two with virtually whatever is there.

To make a feast one should be able to juggle with whatever took one's fancy in the market.

Cooking is not really about recipes.  It is about a few basic techniques - even then none of them having absolutely definitive methods - and going with the flow of life, or the flow of wine in the chef.

No classic dish in the world has a fixed recipe.  How can cooking be about recipes then?

The TV Chef, though, and the cooking publishing industry, would have everyone believe it's all about recipes.  Recipes - mostly non classic and ephemeral - you need to buy from them to be a complete human being.