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Post by RedMoon11 on Oct 4, 2020 17:26:16 GMT
Only 34 days until my book of idiots’ recipes comes out. Pre-order to ensure disappointment.  |
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Post by RedMoon11 on Oct 4, 2020 17:33:12 GMT
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Post by RedMoon11 on Oct 4, 2020 17:37:38 GMT
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Post by RedMoon11 on Oct 4, 2020 17:49:19 GMT
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Post by dit on Nov 3, 2020 20:21:39 GMT
Food: James May on the release of his debut cookbook
By Herald Magazine The best of our weekly guide to everything happening in Scotland
James May is not on a mission to become a celebrity chef, regardless of the fact he has - against type, and against the odds - written a cookbook, and nabbed an Amazon Prime cookery show to go with it.
He has however, "become very sympathetic to them" as a telly species. "I used to occasionally watch a cooking programme and think, 'Oh Gordon, stop being such a big diva, standing around swearing'. But now I've had a go at doing it, I realised what the problem is," says Bristol-born May, 57.
That problem, he continues, is everyone on set sticking their oar in. "Everybody has a view on cooking because most people do it," he says. "This is not true if you're making a programme about science or engineering or car history, where you have some authority, but I'm working on a cooking show, where I avowedly can't cook anyway, so everybody is part of the advisory committee and it does get bloody annoying, quite quickly.
"Every time we do something, somebody in the eight or 10 assembled people in the room pipes up with, 'Have you thought about doing it like that? Well why don't you do it like this?' I just think, 'Well, why don't you just shut up?'"
Admittedly, watching the series back, he says he comes across "quite bad tempered, which I never am normally. I'm slightly ashamed of it," he adds, "but that's what happens when you try and cook on TV."
The book itself - Oh Cook! - is less fraught (although May does share his ire for chefs who go on about using 'freshly ground pepper' - "You don't need to say it EVERY time," he says with a sigh). In essence, Oh Cook! is "not about learning recipes. It's about learning the basics," which you can then apply to everything else. After all, "once you can roast a chicken, you can roast anything."
He says it's "not for accomplished chefs, or celebrity chefs or people who collect recipe books. This is a book designed to be propped up on the worktop and used like a Haynes Manual for beginners, and once you've made the stuff in this book, you should give it to Oxfam and move on."
Had there not been a lockdown though, the book probably wouldn't exist at all. "I'm very good at putting off writing, because I find it quite painful," says May ruefully. "I couldn't go anywhere or do any of the things I normally do to distract myself, like riding motorcycles and playing around and so on, so I sat at home and did this book."
And like the rest of us, he also ended up doing far too much home cooking. "To the point that I was told by Sarah, my other half, to stop cooking because she was getting annoyed with me."
"It's very easy to do, get fat and drunk because you're stuck in the house - I tried to avoid doing that," he adds. "I didn't do so well at avoiding drinking all the wine, but I did manage to eat quite healthily."
The healthy eating has not quite translated to him joining the grow-your-own movement - yet. The former Top Gear presenter has a "little hobbity cottage" in the countryside in South Wiltshire, where he has recently embarked upon buying the field next door, "just because I've always quite fancied having a field". Plus, "if I buy the field, it means nobody can build anything ugly on it", he points out. To his happiness, it comes with a tractor. "I thought I might plough a little bit of it and have a go at growing potatoes or parsnips, something that I imagine would be quite easy - it probably isn't."
For a man who, in normal times, spends a lot of time on the road, he would, you'd assume, be a car snack aficionado - but no. "I'm against eating in my own car because I hate crap in the car, and I hate greasy fingerprints - I go a bit nuts about it," says May. Although when filming and not in lockdown, he's all about packets of nuts and fruit, cereal energy bars and the odd packet of Liquorice Allsorts. "On our Grand Tour film shoots, we can be in the car for eight hours a day, or sometimes more, and yes we snack a lot," he explains. "TV does encourage the eating of crap unfortunately; our diets are very poor."
His Top Gear and Grand Tour days have not been entirely fuelled by Liquorice Allsorts though. "We've eaten everywhere," says May, recalling the fanciest business hotels to little roadside shacks. "And often the roadside shacks are the more interesting thing. One of the standouts was a little place doing kebabs by the road in Jordan, and another kebab place at a market in Syria, and India is fantastic for that sort of thing. You just stop and find someone making dhal and chapattis, or a little tomato curry that costs 25p or something."
It is, he says, "a privilege and it's quite exciting. It possibly informs your palate in some way - but I'm in danger of sounding pretentious and like a foodie." And he is anxious to not sound like one of those.
In fact, "somebody has already pulled me up on this book," he says with a start. "I must've let my guard down." Turn to the black pudding hash recipe and the first word of the method is, 'Blanch'. "That was a terrible word to use," says May, genuinely disappointed in himself.
May grew up on Seventies fare: "A roast on Sunday. Quite a bit of fish. Egg and chips. Meat and two veg. The occasional Chinese takeaway - but that was a very rare treat. Macaroni cheese with sausages..." And he's still partial to Spam, although rarely, and admits it is "a bit of a schtick" that's become part of his brand. Hence why there's a roast block of Spam recipe in Oh Cook!.
"I do have a secret fondness that goes back to when we used to make Spam and beans when I was a teenager," he remembers. "It used to be a camping food staple and we used to do camping a lot when I was a child, so it's partly sentimentality, plus Spam is a funny word. And the block of Spam is funny. [And] the tins are beautiful."
While there are more Grand Tour episodes ahead, May has - alongside his newfound telly cheffing career - just bought "half a pub". He's now the co-landlord The Royal Oak in Swallowcliffe (near his cottage), after its fate appeared to be in peril. "I thought, 'I really like this pub'," he explains, and so helped save it. "I don't want to be in a village where there isn't a pub within walking distance, that would make life utterly pointless." And no, he won't be found in chef whites out the back.
Oh Cook! 60 Easy Recipes That Any Idiot Can Make by James May is published by Pavilion, priced £14.99.
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Post by dit on Nov 13, 2020 22:39:26 GMT
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Post by RedMoon11 on Nov 18, 2020 9:44:19 GMT
I watched 3 of them Saturday night after dinner with my family and we all enjoyed them. I am glad to read he intends to make more.
13th November TV preview: James May ventures into the world of home economics
"As far as I know, I've never given anyone food poisoning," says James May, hesitantly.
"Repulsed? Possibly. Disappointed? Definitely. But not actually, technically ill."
It is a reassuring prospect given the Grand Tour presenter's latest venture into the world of home economics.
Swapping car grilles for kitchen grills as part of new Amazon Prime series James May: Oh Cook! - a play on his now famous 'oh cock!' catchphrase - the show sees May, 57, set out on a culinary journey of grand proportions.
There is one small catch, however, in that May, by his own admittance, cannot cook.
"I've never actually had any cooking lessons of any sort, ever," declares May, almost triumphantly.
"I'd never learned to cook at home, I didn't do cooking at school, I can't remember cooking when I was a student, I think we just had toast.
"And for a lot of my adult life I didn't really do any cooking.
"I learned to make shepherd's pie and cheesy pasta and the rest of the time it was takeaways, eating out, cafes - probably quite unhealthy, in many ways."
It goes without saying that commissioning a cooking show hosted by an automotive journalist without a single culinary credential sounds like a disaster waiting to happen - and May seems to agree.
"Someone's at least been daft enough to put it on the telly," he says.
"It wasn't entirely without precedent but I wouldn't be your first choice if you suddenly thought as a TV executive 'I know, we'll do a beginners' cooking show and we'll get James May to do it'."
Aided by domestic economist Nicky, May is charged with learning fundamental knife skills and simple cooking hacks capable of transforming even the most basic bowl of pasta.
Each thematic episode has the presenter tackling a range of dishes, taking viewers on a gastronomic tour that encompasses the local pub alongside the exotic delights of Asian-fusion cuisine.
"It's posh YouTube in a way," May explains.
"There's no trickery, I am just standing in the kitchen cooking stuff.
"The weird thing about making food on the TV - I suppose it's also true of driving cars on TV - but the two things that are so vital to your appreciation of food are smelling it and tasting it, and none of those come across on television.
"Which is maybe why a lot of food programmes on TV have ended up producing very artistically presented food, photographed and filmed in a very clever-dick way, with shallow depth of field, with strange angles and clever lighting and steam coming off - because you have to make up for the two things you can't do which are smell it and touch it."
He adds: "Television has got it completely wrong and cooking on television ought to be a waste of time but it's becoming ever more popular.
"Five years ago people were saying 'oh, we can't have another cooking show, that's been exhausted' but it turns out it hasn't, because even I can do one."
With filming for the series coinciding with creation of May's cookbook, Oh Cook! 60 Easy Recipes That Any Idiot Can Make, the presence of publishers and TV executives on set was an added pressure for The Grand Tour presenter, affectionately dubbed Captain Slow.
"They are expecting me to be good at something I've not really done before, which is why I fall out with them a bit," May says.
"They're telling me how to do it and then they start telling me how to say it and how to present it and I want to go 'look, f*** off, that's the bit I can do'.
"I can tolerate a certain amount of you telling me how to cook but don't start telling me how to enthuse about it because I ... I got quite cross with them - it was the only time on TV I've ever got cross with the crew - but they are bloody annoying, especially because they can all cook."
Having written and presented shows including James May's Big Trouble In Model Britain and James May: The Reassembler in recent years, it is safe to deduce the presenter has a penchant for detail.
It is a precision-oriented approach that traditionally lends itself well to the kitchen but May appears far more concerned with the gadgets involved than accurately measuring out ingredients.
"You're being quite polite," May says.
"You're saying that something about rebuilding lawnmowers is quite, sort of, anal. I quite like that sort of thing, I quite like precision and doing things right.
"I do get a strange pleasure from things like getting my knives sharp and then very accurately cutting some vegetables and then very gradually peeling the skin off the outside of the clove of garlic - it's such a fantastic sensation.
"I love all that - it's slightly surgical and unnecessarily perverse."
He adds: "I've always argued - and I argue in the book - that cooking isn't engineering so exact weights and measures aren't that critical.
"If you get them roughly right, you can guess a lot of them and you will come out with something edible."
Now, given the nature of the show and with the global pandemic restricting many to the confines of their homes, the timing could not be better to launch the new series.
"Quite coincidentally, we produced something that was very relevant to lockdown, i.e. cooking," May says.
"It was a very happy coincidence - and almost looks as if we knew lockdown was going to happen but obviously we didn't ... I can't pretend we planned it."
James May: Oh Cook! launches on Amazon Prime Video on Friday November 13. Oh Cook! 60 Easy Recipes that Any Idiot Can Make is out now.
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Post by RedMoon11 on Nov 18, 2020 9:51:05 GMT
Two bits from the Times
James May: Oh Cook!
Amazon Prime Video
“Hello, viewers, I’m James May and I can’t cook. Welcome to my cookery show.” The premise is little more than that as Amazon gets in on the TV-chef format (of the sort presented by Nigella, Nadiya, Jamie et al) while giving one of its Grand Tour signings something to do.
The hook with this brand new series, as suggested by May’s introduction, is that he isn’t even trying to pretend that he’s an expert in the kitchen, even if he then goes straight on to knock up an impressive-looking Asian chicken soup, some “Spamen” (a mix of ramen and, yes, Spam) and a glazed salmon dish. That’s because he has been prepped by his “boss” here — a real culinary whizz called Nicky, whom May occasionally lets out of the pantry to help. Overall, the show has a simple, knockabout approach — a lo-fi show done on a big Amazon budget — being filmed in one kitchen with May talking away to camera much as he did in his series The Reassembler. Expect erudite throwaway remarks such as “chicken soup is what William Langland would have called the font of peace and the most precious of virtues”, which isn’t the sort of thing you tend to hear from Gordon Ramsay. Sloshing back sancerre in Floydian style, May also likes to involve the camera-people as he attempts to learn the art of making a cooking show itself. Yes, this is all very self-aware. “Thanks to a very expensive cameraman, there will be enough slow-mo shots of really great food to stimulate your gastric senses,” he rambles, and he’s not wrong. Middle-aged male viewers have a new culinary hero to help to make them masters of their kitchen.
Ben Dowell
Saturday November 14 2020
This was a week that urgently needed light relief, so cometh the hour, cometh the James May, erstwhile Top Gear amigo, the id to Richard Hammond’s ego (with no prizes for guessing who the super-ego might be in this formulation).
You know where you are with May. Even when we find him in unusual surroundings (the kitchen), it’s reassuring to think that he has probably only made James May: Oh, Cook! to make a play on what may well be his favourite word for willy. Just the ticket.
“I’m James May and I can’t cook . . . welcome to my cookery show,” he snickers at the start. But, actually, he can cook, surprisingly well in fact, rustling up some quite decent pies and lasagnes. And then, in case we get the wrong idea, he makes tinned alphabet spaghetti on toast, explaining that the final ingredient is made “in the toaster”.
It didn’t take long to realise that this was an extended piss-take of Jamie, Nigella, Nigel, Delia et al, and quite a good one at that. Deliberately, defiantly, overwhelmingly low-wattage May insouciantly shows how easy it is to make decent grub with bonus asides on Fellini, Philip Larkin and William Blake, which you certainly don’t get with The Hairy Bikers. But should he be doing this?
When he deployed a rotary cheese grinder, it wasn’t just the fact that this utensil has been in his life for decades (so much for him not being a cook) that struck me, it was the fact that he has forgotten how many times he has taken this thing apart and reassembled it. Yep, just like a car.
He’s a very good broadcaster, but he needs to be in a garage or cracking gags about Teslas and Lamborghinis with his amigos, not doing this flambéing lark, which, as far as he’s concerned, is clearly a load of old cook.
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Post by RedMoon11 on Nov 18, 2020 10:48:15 GMT
James May: Oh Cook | Teaser Trailer | Prime Video
'Oh Cook' is a cooking series but from the perspective of someone who can’t really cook, so this is exciting! The 7-part series will launch on Prime Video 13th November.
James May Reviews Kitchen Gadgets... Without the Instructions | Prime Video
Now that James May has embarked on his new cooking adventure, it was only a matter of time before he tried out some strange kitchen gadgets! But there's one question that only James May can answer: Are they even useful?
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Post by RedMoon11 on Nov 18, 2020 11:12:07 GMT
James May Gets Impatient and Hangry With The Film Crew | Exclusive Clip | Oh Cook! | Prime Video
On the menu today, James cooks what he describes as "A fusion of Asian ideas with themselves", sounds like he knows what he's doing...
James May Carves A 'V' In Nikki's Worktop | Oh Cook! | Prime Video
It's okay, he knows about woodwork. She'll never even notice.
James May's Michelin Star Dish with Your Ingredient Suggestions | Prime Video
The people of Twitter come together and choose some *great* ingredients for James to make into a Michelin Star-worthy dish... yum?
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