The celebrity chef has come along way since the days of Fanny Craddock and even Anthony Worral Thompson these days the celebrity chef isn't just a tv personality but someone who is genuinely talented and hard working or has a real passion for local produce or styles of cooking. In our dinner group we all have our favourites , we all have certain chefs who really get on our goat and annoy the hell out of us and we have others who we adore and who can do no wrong whatsoever in our eyes. And so it was with great enthusiasm that we decided to embark on a monthly cookathon challenge whereby we would vote for the celebrity chef who we most admired or who we would feel most challenged by , and on the last Saturday of each month we would cook recipes by that particular chef. It's a great challenge loads of fun you can cook anything at all a starter, a main, a dessert, a cake a snack just so long as it by the particular chef.
Our first cookathon was in October and it was " The Nigel Slater" cookathon. Now not everyone in the group was a huge fan of Nigel but we all embraced him and got to work planning our recipes, looking through his books, watching his cookery shows and looking up recipes online. On the Saturday I was delighted with the response, everyone who posted their Nigel food pics had made such an effort. So I decided to tweet the man himself with our creations. How delighted we all were that the lovely lovely Mr Slater took the time to respond to each pic and found something delightful and encouraging to say about each one ( not an easy task as some of the dishes looked like a right dog's dinner my own included) but Nigel was charming and kind and we were all thrilled and excited that our efforts had been acknowledged and appreciated. Nigel gained a lot more fans that evening, his cookery books went onto Christmas and birthday lists and we all made a pact never to miss one of his shows I even thought about renaming the group " we bloody love Nigel Slater we do" but I thought maybe a bit stalkerish.
So buoyed up with the success of October's cookathon and also the unexpected but welcome twitter response we decided to chose our chef for November and to chose someone personable who was on twitter who we felt would encourage us and appreciate our efforts. We cast our votes and the most popular choice ( but not unanimous) was The Hairy Bikers. We felt sure these cheeky chappies would be wowed by our dedication to them and we got to work studying the recipes we would cook. On the night of the cookathon yet again everyone who entered pulled out all the stops they had carefully sourced their ingredients , spent the day prepping and delivered gorgeous plates of food which they lovingly photographed. I tweeted all photos to the Hairy ones and waited, and waited and waited.......... They might be in the toilet I told myself, they might be visiting friends, they might be washing their hair or trimming their beards. Nothing on the Saturday night that's ok I told myself am sure they will get back to us in the next few days but no , they didn't. Not so much as a hashtag, nada, zilch, silence. Surely this couldn't be right Dave and Si are so bouncy so bubbly they love their fans so I quickly assumed there must have been a dreadful accident involving them falling off their motorbikes or getting their long straggly hair caught in some revolving doors but no this was just not the case. The hairy bikers had just decided to snub us I have since decided to defend them a bit telling our members " look guys they are on a diet now so if they looked at our dishes they might fall off the diet wagon and run straight to the nearest pie shop" but the truth is on that Saturday in November our collective love for The Hairy Bikers died a little, their books sharply came off our wish lists, the ones we already owned were relegated to the bottom shelf of the bookcase , were defaced or in my case defaced and then given to the charity shop. We had in short collectively gone off them a bit. We still watched their programs but only to slag them off a bit and compare their cooking unfavourably to lovely lovely Nigel ( did I mention how great we all think he is?)
In December we decided not to have a cookathon citing Christmas and New year as the reason but deep down we all knew our confidence had been knocked a bit by the Follicley blessed chefs we needed a break , but now we are into January and we are renewed and refreshed and ready , and this coming Saturday 25th we are having the Tom Kerridge cookathon. Big Tom is a very popular choice we all love him we loved his proper pub food program we have all taken to referring to recipes as " proper" and " lush" and if it's really really good " proper proper lush" We have bought blow torches ( just cos Tom said we should) , Chinese steamer baskets ( cos Tom says it's the only way to steam your buns) and cream whipper guns ( because Tom says they are lots of fun and we believe him ,why else does he have such a jolly big grin on his face all the time?)
This Saturday is Tom Kerridge day and we are ready to impress him we are all excited and yes a wee bit apprehensive as in the words of one of our dinner club members " Oh my God I hope he's not an arse I'm not sure I could take it!"
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