Wednesday January 04, 2006

The Fword

I have always thought of Gordon Ramsey as a bit of a chef yob. However I think all these big time chefs are bullies in their kitchens. Ramsey has with his recent Channel4 Fword brought a bit of a refreshing diversion to the usual food shows we got nowadays. The title of the show is clever; he would say the f stands for food others would say it stands for another four letter word frequently bleeped out of the series. It was based in a pseudo restuarant where he cooked one meal per show and showed you how it was done. The dessert was a special; that is he got a guest to cook the same dessert and blind tastings were then done to see whos was best. He very often lost. Some of his guests were excellent the best was either Martine McCutcheon or Gordon's mother. Some guests sucked; the terrible Jonathan Ross and Janet Street-Porter.

He also had a whole load of trainee chefs known as commies and one got sacked at the end of each show. He was tough with them but at the end if they were good but they still got sacked he told them to carry on trying to get that lucky break. The winner got a job in his restuarant. In the show he had a weekly item on a flock of turkeys which he had in his garden. His kids took part in looking after them. Apart from the time when the birds were killed Gordon made sure his kids were to know the link between Christmas dinner and these odd looking birds at the bottom of the garden. The birds were eaten during the last show. Each of the birds were named after other chefs eg Nigella Delia etc. There was no bird called Gordon! On the xmas show where the birds were eaten his guest was Hugh Fearnley-WhittingstallHugh who has his own food series. As usual Gordon lost the competition between his desert and Hugh's but I think that part was staged. There were other food related items eg pet hates in restuarants, people who scavenge and eat food from the disgards from supermarkets - which sadly looked like perfectly good food. So all in all a good series.