Jamie wins battle of Christmas foodies, hands down
Jamie Oliver, who ‘cooked’ Christmas in an hour-long special last night on Channel 4, has come out top of the TV Christmas cooks for me this year.
Regular readers will know that I like Jamie anyway, but his brand of no-nonsense, mash it all up and use the leftovers cooking is both inspirational and realistic and that’s what I love about it. Partner and I sat through the whole thing from 9pm to 10pm, a rare primetime slot for cookery, and have come up with our analysis of the Christmas chefs. Here it is.
Hugh is too worthy. We live in the country but even we don’t eat suet. (And his Christmas special voiceover was bogged down by leaden puns. Serious leavening is needed.)
Nigella is too perfect, distracted by the overall impression given of her recipes and lifestyle.
Gordon is shouty (although I quite like that) but ultimately focussed on the restaurant trade, which must surely die on its feet next year.
We won’t mention Wonky Willie Harcourt-Cooze coz we’d never heard of him before yesterday and who, apart from Hugh FW, is going to cook lamb in a pit in the midst of their lawn?
Jamie is real, his recipes look absolutely great and totally doable. Chestnut and sage pastry with turkey and sweet leek pie (above). What’s not to like? He even insists that at this time of year, or at any time of year, it’s too much fag making puff pastry so just buy the half-decent stuff. Hear hear, my man.
OK, he comes out with all the “wazz it up” lingo but we all have our idiosyncrasies. I do actually wazz up stuff in the food processor and the kids love a bit of “Slap in on there, Gerald” talk. The lighting and camera work on Jamie’s food programmes are to die for, with the food positively glooping off the screen into your saliva glands. River Cottage Christmas special made the Gardeners’ World mistake of spending too much time filming the team eating their own food and forgot why we were watching the programme in the first place: to see good food being made.
So thanks, Jamie; thanks, C4. We’ll be doing that turkey pie on Boxing Day and more power to your processing elbow for next year.
