[thechat] Recipe: Tom Yam Gai (Thai Hot n' Sour soup)

Martin Burns martin at easyweb.co.uk
Wed Jan 8 04:56:01 CST 2003


On Wed, 8 Jan 2003, Norman Beresford wrote:

> Nigel Slater is part of our new wave of television cooks.  Basically TV
> cooks in this country can be split into two categories.  The first is the
> old style cook, personified by Deliah Smith.  They tend to be very specific
> about amounts, stages etc.  The second is the new wave, unfortunately
> personified by Jamie Oliver.  They tend to be less concerned about weights
> and measurements etc, rather it's about understanding that cooking is a
> individual thing and that people should cook to their own tastes.

And interesting that they were the former and current (respectively) faces
of a major Supermarket chain.

> I use the word "unfortunately" with Jamie Oliver because throughout his rise
> to fame (and fortune) he's come across as a horrible mockney (fake Cockney)
> tw at t.

Part of that is that we've seen his TV persona, not his working chef
persona. There was too much of a contrast between his native way of
speaking and the way it was sanitised for TV.

> However a lot of people (myself included) have revised their opinions
> of him after his latest venture where he took a number of basically
> unemployable teenagers with a vague interest in cooking and after training
> them has opened a restaurant (which by all accounts is very good).

You also saw how he is under pressure in a professional kitchen (ie not
sanitised and prepared to call his staff all the names under the sun if
required) and realised that it wasn't the Cockney bit that was a veneer,
but the polite middle-class bit.

(Delia fwiw is middle class through and through.)

You also realise that the bloke can actually cook and has really served
his time. Unlike some *cough*AinsleyHarriot*cough*.

Cheers
Martin

--
"Names, once they are in common use, quickly
 become mere sounds, their etymology being
 buried, like so many of the earth's marvels,
 beneath the dust of habit." - Salman Rushdie




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