Eggs, beans and expletives

The Metrosexual Male seeking his softer side has given way, in recent times, to machismo of a different kind: lifestyle channels abound in cookery demonstrations, culinary treasure-hunts, best restaurant guides and health food quests. Of these the reality shows import into their concept qualities of suspense and endurance in addition to the more common ones of imagination, creativity, execution and presentation. Everyone, from Hairy Bikers to intrepid travelers, is determined to ferret out every culinary secret there is and blossom (its more like exploding) into the most talented chefs/ owners of Michelin-starred wonders of gastronomic excellence.

 

Theirs is not an easy ride if one is to go by Reality TV shows like MasterChef, where Gordon Ramsay, the temperamental Scotsman, showers the contenders with the choicest expletives (there are so many bleeps covering the four-letter words that a full sentence will be a total shock,) and The Restaurant, presided over by the world-famous French chef, Raymond Blanc. In both shows tempers run high and the tension is more brittle than over-caramelized sugar but while Ramsay’s kitchen has the brutal force and white heat of a blacksmith’s forge, Raymond Blanc’s is a glassblower’s atelier that sharpens insight, business sense and the more comprehensive skills needed in the successful running of a restaurant.

 

Pressure is the watchword in this smithy and in the atelier but it is exercised differently in each context. MasterChef USA, for instance, has amateur cooks vying furiously to become the first Masterchef USA and win $ 250,000, and the publishers’ promise of a book of their recipes, not to mention the kudos of being Gordon Ramsay’s chosen one. There are a few women aspirants too but the majority are male, both impartially given to tears when the pressure gets unbearably high. This is one kitchen where heat comes not only from the stoves but the very ethos of the fight - blazing, blanching, steaming the guts out of every aspirant, pushing to breaking point. Aiming to ``bring back passion and flavour, not design”, as Chef Gordon demands of a candidate trying so hard to win the Masterchef apron that will give her the opportunity to compete for MasterChef USA. Authenticity, passion for cooking and willingness to excel are the base from which to leap forward to grab the prize.

 

In a recent episode 20,000 eggs were driven down to the spot in trucks while the turbulent Scotsman, his peers Graham Eliot, the youngest to become a 4-star chef at age 27, and Joe Bastianich, successful restaurateur, owner of vineyards in Italy and distributor of wine and olive oil, stand in line with inscrutable faces and suddenly throw out the terms of the challenge to the quaking contestants - they have to pick an egg, cook for only a minute and produce the best dish that their imagination and creativity can dole out. While there is a vegetarian who has never cooked an egg before and in her anxiety, dishes her oeuvre into a plate that is not oven-proof, another uses caviar and herbs to make it different. Pork, bacon, spinach, chocolate - all sorts of seemingly discrepant ingredients are made available and time is of the essence. Adrenalin rush or wilted-cabbage looks in faces a few minutes later, depends entirely on how much the candidates can take, as much as on their talents. In the midst of the measuring-boiling-peeling-poaching rises a bellow, ”The egg is the hero, remember,” a reminder not to smother the egg with more sophisticated and stronger tastes or smells. It is all aroma/presentation/taste produced with an almost perfect efficiency in its making. If found wanting a cutting Gordon Ramsay rebuke is sure to find its mark - as when the contestants had to cook to a Chinese theme, the failing cook was told “That’s as Chinese as my Mum, and she comes from Glasgow, Scotland.”

 

Four letter words abound and the show can therefore be aired only after 9 p.m. in the U.K. Here too the first time it is shown after 9 but gets repeated on afternoon TV with blanks for the swearwords. British viewers have been conditioned to this by watching him in the earlier “Hell’s Kitchen”. Decrying Ramsay’s language and its effect on what he says is the crude British culture that seems to be prevalent today, Christopher Hart writes in the Guardian Online, of Ramsay coming to India for a show, learning nothing graceful from this ancient land but taking “his full baggage allowance of Anglosaxon expletives and spraying them liberally.”

 

The Restaurant, on BBC Entertainment in India, is a different kettle of fish. Raymond Blanc, who runs the famous Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons in Oxfordshire, is the anchor here. Eight couples, amateur cooks yearning to own and run a restaurant of their own, are invited to show their skills at cooking for and managing a restaurant of their own. They come from all over England and Wales and the different accents are an added bonus to the culinary repertoire. One blogger calls it the most compelling show to appear on British TV in recent times. It has more human interest as the 8 couples striving to be chosen to run a restaurant financed and supported by the legendary French chef, not only bare their gastronomic skills and ambitions but bring little attributes of their own as in the possible homosexuality of Alasdair and his friend from University who try to make a success of their eating place, the Chinese husband and Welsh wife who call their place The Welsh Wok and the father-daughter couple who try to make The Blue Goose a success. Here too there is pressure - the pressure to do well, the pressure to create the right ambience, to provide food that would lure customers back. But unlike in MasterChef, where the cooks are combatants and the anchor, seemingly, throws verbal lances at them, Raymond Blanc is firm but very helpful, sharing his experience in little notes left at each venue or in advising aspirants face to face in the finer arts of front of house management, organization, having communication systems that work, choosing menus that give what the names of the restaurants (eg. ‘True Provenance’ or ‘Sorbet and Seasons’) lead guests to expect.