Channel 4

Channel 4 News’ Alex Thompson asking if the International Olympic Committee is embarrassed about being duped on the right to free protest during the Beijing Olympics.  Watch here.  Given the general credulity of the press it’s a nice reminder that some of them are capable of trolling.

Television.  Light entertainment.  Cooking.  One of the things I hate about celebrity chefs is that  for the purposes of entertainment they intervene in lives, and make recommendations about diets.    I’ll refer to such programmes as “intervention television”.  Of course, intervention television exists in many forms, notable examples are “I’m a cretin that subsists on chips – help me BBC 3”, “Fuck-a-doodle-do  I’m fat – come gawk at me like I’m a freak” on Channel 4, and “poor kids shouted at by 1950s pedo teachers” on Channel 5.  I’ll stick to food though, because celebrity chefs deliver petitions to Number 10 Downing Street, and, furthermore, they think they’re the shit (they are in a sense).

An episode of the F-Word particularly annoyed me.  Gordon Ramsay, in full on intervention mode, met some 20-something NORPs that live on takeaway curry, one of whom wants to run a marathon.  Gordon, in his infinite wisdom, recommended a curry recipe; the logic being that someone that lives on curry would want to cook it for themselves.  My problem is that if people can’t do basic food right, there’s fuck all point in teaching them things like making a curry.  As soon as the celebrity chef has gone the rice will be overcooked, the food will be under-seasoned, and worse the fuckers will force their new found gastronomic confidence on guests.

Often people who, basically, can’t cook, buy the latest Jamie Oliver or Gordon Ramsay cookbook.  It’s not that the recipes are bad, Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsay are better chefs than the majority of people, it’s just that the pretentious fuckers buying their books often can’t cook a decent soup, let alone many of the recipes.  That’s why I think Marco Pierre White, and Delia Smith *, aside from being mental as rabid badgers, in their own way, are doing better things for British food than walking cocks like Jamie Oliver, and Gordon Ramsay. They are teaching delicious basics.  That’s what many people in the UK need.  Not over-complication and pretentious fuckwittery.  For example – basic soup.

Anyone can cook a decent, ubergruppenhealthy **, soup.  All of what follows is approximate, and flexible:

The core of the recipe: One sliced medium onion, two peeled chopped carrots (or more if you like carrots), a bay leaf,  a few handfuls of of chopped potatoes, a couple of sticks of chopped celery, a peeled whole clove of garlic (more if you want), and some skinned chicken.  Put it all in a big saucepan cover with water  (plus a couple of stock cubes – although some are cuboids strictly speaking) or stock, put in some dried black peppercorns to taste (five or six is fine).  Optional herbs include thyme,  parsley,  tarragon (be careful – it’s a dominating herb –  a small pinch at most) etc.  That’s a basic soup.  Optional other stuff includes chopped ham, mushrooms, cabbage, leftover vegetables, a small handful of pearl barley, a handful of rice,  – nettles even, swedes, turnips, celeriac etc. etc.  It’s simple.

Cover. Bring to the boil simmer for an hour or more, taste, season, remove any bones, skim any excess fat, and voilà – acceptable, very healthy, soup.  A cheap pack of 12 chicken thighs will be enough for about 8 people with large soup portions – more people can be served if there’s some bread.  Alternatively a left-over roast chicken carcass is just fine also but it will need to be simmered longer.  A kid with minimal supervision and a blunt butter knife can make soup.  You can experiment, and find the perfect combinations/ratios for you.  Don’t get me started about dumplings and suet dumplings. A well trained dog could probably make them.  Bit of white pepper in the dumplings – lovely.

Total cost less than £8 – the main cost is the meat.  Dried herbs are fine. If it’s left overs the total cost is less than £5.  Hate chicken?  Use cheap cuts of lamb (cheap is betters suited to simmering) or rabbit (drop the tarragon in both cases IMHO), simmer until the meat is tender, and flavours defuse.

Celebrity chefs are teaching people stuff they aren’t equipped to do well.  MPW and DS excluded. I’d rather have a decent soup or other healthy basic recipe than some faddish nightmare cooked badly from a recipe book.  Serious.   Marco Pierre White is right.

* Years ago, at some ill-defind point in the past, I watched Delia Smith in an altered state of mind, and it took me weeks to get over it. In fact just thinking about it makes a little nervous.
** Which is, after all, what Jamie Oliver, and Gordon Ramsay has in mind for us.  For us all to be ubergruppenhealthy.

Dispatches – The Truth About Beauty Creams is available online at this link but only through Windows Media Player enabled browsers.   It has five days left.   The thing most often put forward by pro-DRM types, such as Channel 4, is that they need to protect their ‘rights’.   Presumably that would work if programmes a) weren’t available elsewhere in non-DRM format, and b) the programmes had resale value that would be harmed by redistribution.  Dispatches is available in various places in a DRM free format (see, but, beware I haven’t checked the links for bad stuff), and Dispatches, while fulfilling a small part of Channel 4’s remit, has very little resale value.  So it’s pointless.   I really can’t work out why programme makers and television networks aren’t providing DRM-free downloads with hard-encoded adverts (adverts encoded as part of the original programme, rather than as part of a playlist).  Or YouTube-alike videos with hard-encoded adverts.  South Park Studios are taking just such an approach with their new player (although it doesn’t work in countries with decent healthcare systems, yet, presumably not to annoy television stations that have bought South Park in the last year or two).