Bette And British Foods

Sunday Herald
Masterchef inspiring British food revolution
Sylvia Patterson
Feb 28, 2009

Last Sunday afternoon, one of my local pubs was especially mobbed, the one which calls itself a bar-diner, plays barely audible Etta James albums, and serves strong continental lagers and excellent, round-the-globe wines.

Almost everyone was having Sunday lunch and a nearby table was the loudest.

It was filled with two blokes in their early 30s, wearing crumpled casual shirts, surveying their substantial roast chicken dinners with audible appreciation. “That’s a biiig plate a food ya got there, mate!” cackled one in a comedy Australian accent.

“That roast potater just leapt off the plate and gave me a great big roast potater snog,” bawled the other, in a comedy cockney accent. They then adapted, together, perhaps the best-known phrase from the ludicrous Masterchef lexicon: “Finishing Sunday lunch doesn’t get tougher than this.”

For the past two months, in among the nationwide gloom about bankruptcy and diabetes, several million people have been celebrating something we have become increasingly good at in this country, as demonstrated on the ever-compelling Masterchef, the sometime cult concern which began in 1990 and has risen in popularity Рlike a beautifully timed chocolate pot souffl̩ Рto become a beloved BBC2 institution.

Masterchef, these days, not only has its presenters (John Torode and Greg Wallace, pictured below) constantly impersonated, but also its contestants, not for their eulogies on “healing lemongrass, cleansing lime”, but their increasingly delicious culinary offerings, inspiring amateur cooks across the nation to clang their kitchens asunder with similar attempts at skill, finesse and “big flavours”.

Unlike the celebrity chefs, always showboating perfected skills, Masterchef never intimidates and always encourages, the keen-to-learn public emerging out the other side of its beguiling tunnel of tension, knowledge and competitive determination with no fear of what a parmesan crisp might be.

The main meal at home for many, these days, is a Masterchef-inspired tower of experimentation, where a sea bass perches on a rosti and your peas have transformed into comedy “crushed peas” (semi-mashed with a simple squeeze of lemon). The last two gastronomic decades have seen no less than a cultural miracle, especially for those of us brought up in the 1970s and even 1980s, where home cooking still lived in the 1950s.

My mum was a triumphant soup maker and shortbread baker, while everything else was mince, literally. Sporadically, we would have “beef olives”, a sausage wrapped in slivers of beef which resembled a fir cone fallen out the coal scuttle. Dad’s speciality, meanwhile, “cheese soufflé”, comprised slices of cheddar cheese with an egg cracked over them, incinerated. The resulting crisp-topped spongiform circle was then picked out gingerly from the cracks in the broken plate.

We never ate in pubs or restaurants, a takeaway was known as “the chippy”, while pudding was normally a plate of tinned stewed apples with a rich tea biscuit placed on top and a slurry of milk.

Today, British food is more than just as good as the rest of the world’s, with gastro-pubs specifically something of a cultural envy; the term was invented in London in 1991 and is now acknowledged as the UK equivalent of the French brasserie. The owning of one is the dreamiest goal of many a Masterchef hopeful.

We’re so far away from “just like mama used to make” we’re into “anything but what mama used to make”, and actress Bette Midler is the undeniable proof. Midler, who has doubtless seen, done and eaten everything, announced her 2008 family holiday was spent driving through Britain, literally because of our gastro-pubs. “Your food,” she blared, “has improved immeasurably.”

Even Liam Gallagher, a former fan of sardines, now cooks salmon using a personal recipe. “Pre-heat your oven,” he instructed. “Get your salmon wrapped in some tin foil. Oven for 15 minutes. Take it out, bit of stir-fry, loadsa soy sauce. Top dish, no mess, sweet!” The producers of Celebrity Masterchef, when it returns this summer, need surely look no further