I’ve seen many cookery shows over the years and I have a fairly large collection of cookbooks. Cooking, like many things goes in fashionable waves. First there was the instructional type of cooking, Fanny Craddock, Delia Smith and Julia Childs all taught different generations to chop, peel, flambe and generally up the standard of cuisine over forty years ago. It doesn’t seem to me so long ago that fruit frequently came in a can and was served with Dream Topping as an acceptable dessert after Sunday lunch. The work of these chefs opened the eyes of a post war Britain to possibilities that food can be exciting and that you can make it yourself. Home cooking was off to a new audience.
Then came Keith Floyd. He was revolutionary in his presentation style. I remember watching him as part of the family with his exuberant personality and seemingly endless glasses of wine being swigged along with his bon viveur attitude. He travelled around France and Italy cooking al fresco which was very different to the studio lecture style cooking previously broadcast on TV and made it all look like jolly good fun.
The nineties brought along Gary Rhodes with his take on British Cuisine. He was really exciting – so young and enthusiastic with his spiky hair and passion about British food. His emphasis was on cooking great British dishes at home to a restaurant standard. I never got to eat in one of his restaurants which was a real missed opportunity and it was with great sadness we heard of his death in 2019.
Two fat ladies was the program title of the eccentrics Clarissa Dixon Wright and her co-presenter Jennifer Paterson. The ladies who were of a certain age rode around the country on a motorbike with a sidecar cooking up a storm in old houses in Britain. Lard and game (the feathered kind) featured heavily according to my recollection. The likes of this duo will probably never be seen again much to the relief of all the cardiologists who work for the NHS.
Jamie Oliver burst onto the scene in 2000. It’s now 2020 and he is celebrating his 20 years of showing the UK how to cook. Deliberately provocative, he shook up the cooking scene with the geezer attitude, cookery sets that included his mates and the shocking at the time “Naked Chef” branding. He was especially appealing to men – someone commented that all her male friends not only bought his books but also used them. I personally found the exuberance a bit much but it’s reflected in his recipes which are packed full of fresh ingredients and flavour.