Re: Who is your favourite Celebrity Chef

Ina Garten - love her 'laid back' style and have picked up a few very good tips in the last few weeks.

Re: Who is your favourite Celebrity Chef

My favourites are the Hairy Bikers. They are not trained chefs but I love the way the present both the programme and the food. They are far more entertaining than most of the others.
I also very much like Mary Berry. She has had an enduring career and is a gracious, unassuming lady.

Re: Who is your favourite Celebrity Chef

I can only manage cookery programs in small doses but I quite like to watch Nigel Slater, who cooks in a relaxed, simplistic way and is both interesting and relaxing to watch. Most of the television chefs are so frenetic you are left breathless, and they put so much spice and chilli in everything I need a cool drink just to watch them, and yes, as AntiBrown rightly says, their meat is always bleeding...why is that?

As for the Hairy Bikers, I watched the first of their new series last night about gourmet food on the cheap and was less than impressed, both with the food and of their presentation which seemed quite insincere and laboured.

Re: Who is your favourite Celebrity Chef

I like all the cookery programmes and don't really have a favourite chef. Masterchef is my favourite show as I think what they get the contestants to do now is so different and advanced from the old show in the studio when Lloyd Grossman used to present it.

Saturday Kitchen Live is a great show too although I couldn't drink wine that early in the morning personally

Also regarding undercooked meat, red meat has no flavour if its cooked all the way through. Beef in particular must be cooked rare to medium rare to have any taste at all and a bit of blood does you no harm.

Re: Who is your favourite Celebrity Chef

I beg to differ Val darlin' - meat thoroughly cooked through can have taste. However, prior to cooking I make up a marinade and also add whatever blood has oozed from the meat in the marinade too. I tend to use my slow cooker a lot as joints of meat cooked overnight are wonderfully tender and very tasty.

Re: Who is your favourite Celebrity Chef

But UJ if you cook beef rare to medium rare you don't need any marinade because it is tasty enough on its own. Overcooked beef is a crime The slow cooker is great for cheaper cuts which need long slow cooking but a good quality joint of top rump for example will always be tender and doesn't need cooking all the way through because it ruins the flavour. The same applies to steak. When I hear people in a restaurant ordering a fillet steak well done I groan. Why pay for a top cut of meat when you are telling the chef to ruin it.

I am having beef on Sunday and it will be cooked for 1 hour max yum yum

Re: Who is your favourite Celebrity Chef

I don't mind beef slightly pink but I don't want my plate to look like an abattoir, although given a choice I'd take it well done to burnt...

All a matter of taste really, to each his own don't you think..

Re: Who is your favourite Celebrity Chef

I recall recently watching some foodie programme which said that the red that oozes from rare meat is not actually blood but something else but forgot what it was so looked it up (ain't google brill?)

As meat is cooked, it turns from red to pink to gray to brown to black (if burnt), and the amount of red liquid, myoglobin (not blood), and other juices decreases. The color change is due to changes in the oxidation of the iron atom of the heme group in the myoglobin protein: raw meat is red due to myoglobin protein in the muscles, not hemoglobin from blood (which also contains a heme group, hence the color). Prior to cooking, the iron atom is in a +2 oxidation state, and bound to a dioxygen molecule (O2), with a red color. As cooking proceeds, it loses an electron, moving to a +3 oxidation state, and coordinating with a water molecule (H2O), turning brown in the process.

Bit scientific but there you go, to all you 'blood on the plate' haters, it is not blood after all.

Oh yea and as for my favourite chef it is difficult to say, depends on what programme I watch, love Nigel Slater's programmes as he always seems to do what most of us do, that is look in cupboard/fridge to see what is there then concoct. However I also love watching the much maligned Ramsey, especially that one where he goes to show people why their restaurant is failing. I love the way that having asked for his help, some, indeed most, then proceed to accuse him of not knowing what he is doing and claiming that they are doing everything right. Oh yea and has anyone else seen an American programme called Triple D (or Diners, Drive-ins and Dives)? Love this one last thing at night. Funny and interesting, the enormous portions of food they seem to be able to put away, and omg the way some of them interpret British recipes.

Re: Who is your favourite Celebrity Chef

Love Tripple D too, like Nigel Slater James Martin Hairy Bikers, absolutely adored Keith Floyd talking to his cameraman (Clive). My queen though is Delia Smith. I do have my own personal chef though so I usually email him.

Re: Who is your favourite Celebrity Chef

I love watching Raymond Blanc, haven't a clue what he's cooking though, just love his French accent and of course the wonderful Keith Floyd, you never knew what he was going to say next