Like it or not, we are all influenced by trend and fashion. Bombarded by the media as we are, we cannot escape the influence of celebrities, advertising and the television programmes discussing the latest clothes, the latest hot holiday destinations and the latest in food trends.
Celebrity Chefs: Which One Is Your Role Model?
So, which culinary role model influences you in the kitchen? Are you a closet Jamie Oliver, Heston Blumenthal or Rick Stein, or are you a team player in love with motor bikes, the open road and showing off to bewildered dinner guests? Or maybe you're addicted to cooking in your nightie, using suggestive adjectives and licking your fingers as you sample each wobblingly delicious concoction, before and after cooking?
Michel Guerard: Nouvelle Cuisine
Our modern love affair with food started in the 1970s, when Michel Guerard published "Cuisine Minceur." Overnight (or so it seemed), heavily sauced, cream and butter based cordon bleu cooking became passe, in restaurants at least.
The 1970s dinner party took a little longer to catch up with the trend – it was hard to give up on the competitive cooking, the "if you can serve three courses, I can serve four" and "What? Only one pudding? How lame!" mentality of that long ago era. Is it only a generation ago? It seems like life on another planet, looking back.
Once the concept of nouvelle cuisine took hold, we started to live in a world of frugal dinner plates (2 square inches of fish,three peas a curl of tomato and a shaving of truffle) and artistically presented fruit coulis for afters.
Celebrity Chefs:The Two Fat Ladies
The Two Fat Ladies (Clarissa Dickson-Wright and Jennifer Patterson) were quite an antidote to the truffle-shaving school of cookery. These loud, cheerful, bulky cooks brought a wealth of life experience, reassuringly realistic waistlines and wonderful fresh ingredients into the kitchen, as well as a breath of hearty spinster aunt-ness which was somehow reminiscent of P.G. Wodehouse, Angela Brazil and other traditional British writers.
The Food Hygiene lobby were horrified when Jennifer Pattison made pastry with beautiful hands adorned with bright red nail varnish and rings that had once belonged to the Duchess of Westminster, but the viewers didn't seem to care.
For ladies of a certain age who love cooking and don't care about calories, The Two Fat Ladies became unlikely food heroines, chunky role models for the young at heart.
Celebrity Chefs:Nigella Lawson
Nigella Lawson was quite a different take on ladies in the kitchen. She wore no jewellery, no discernible makeup and often little more than a silky negligee whilst producing plate after plate of delicious meatballs, spiced nuts and party food.
More Noel Coward and Harvey Nicholls than Angela Brazil, a combination of Prada and Bloomsbury, it was difficult to tell whether Nigella was universally loved or loathed. Men certainly admired her luscious curves as much as her delectable dishes and for a while, she became a regular feature on Style pages, discussing her hourglass figure, how often she washed her hair and how her life experience had influenced her cookery.
Famously dubbed the queen of food porn, Nigella is on record as saying that food should be about family and fun. If your preference is for whipping up a Hollandaise sauce whilst clad in in fluffy mules and tight fitting sweaters mostly in primary colours, Nigella must be your role model.
Boys and Men
It still seems to be true that women are cooks but men are chefs. Cheffy Gordon Ramsay's defining style note seems to be using lots of four letter words – best not go there, perhaps. Jamie Oliver has matured from cheeky chappy to socially conscious food philanthropist, so a good role model for self-improvers.
Heston Blumenthal is the definitive mad scientist in the kitchen. If you find yourself creeping around the garden at dawn picking herbs and collecting small invertebrates for food experiments, Heston has influenced you. Beware - it'll be chemistry sets and exploding puddings next!
More tranquil are the Hairy Bikers (leather clad knights of the global highway and champions of local food) and evergreen Rick Stein, the gentleman chef.
Both Rick and the Bikers owe something to "The Wind in the Willows." Like culinary Mr. Toads, their itchy feet take them wandering out onto the open road, always seeking a food Shangri-La beyond the next horizon. If a boating trip on the Canal du Midi or a bike ride across Namibia is your idea of heaven, these must be your role models.
New Kid on the Block:Matt Preston
Lately, I notice a new kid on the food trend block. I used to veer between a love/ hate relationship with Nigella Lawson whilst deeply envying Jennifer Patterson's bejewelled fingers and ability to speak Portuguese (as well as her cooking skills). Now that I've discovered Australian Masterchef, I'm saving up for some orange trousers, just like Matt Preston's. How could you not love the man who wrote this?
"For some reason, I always though Heston Blumenthal would smell of caramel - like a moreish, salty Caramac bar - but actually he smells like Christmas. Or maybe even Santa Claus, fresh from the chimney."
Cookery writers as much as cooks dictate food trends; I will never see Heston Blumenthal cooking on television again without remembering that quotation!
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