Andrew Kay on his new role presenting food programmes for Latest TV
Telly tubby
Some of you will have seen me performing live on stage at the Brighton and Hove Food and Drink Festival. For ten years now I have been hosting and presenting events and running the Live Food Stage, where great chefs join me in the kitchen to demonstrate their dishes and cooking skills. It’s a role that I have grown into, and love; that interaction with chefs and audiences who are keen to see how professional chefs work, learn how they conceive new dishes and how they deliver them to diners.
When the boss told me that we were moving into TV he also flippantly suggested that he wanted me to be the new Nigella. Well, I have some of the curves, nowhere near the same (very public) dramas, but I do have the same love of food. When people suggest that I might be just a tad overweight I reply by saying that it’s not fat – it’s a CV!
So now my career takes yet another turn and I am making TV. I have already talked about my very exciting International Chef Exchange project, which simply goes from strength to strength. We will have episodes, an hour long from Maastricht, Rotterdam, Den Hague, Guernsey, Sicily and Sweden – call me jet setter from now on, please. The food is sublime, really exciting, as are the producers that we visit along the way.
Whilst loving my restaurant foods and my chef friends, I am also a passionate cook and lover of great home cooking. With this in mind, and working with my foodie mate Nick Beddowes, we have created a second programme called Cook It!.
Cook It! is about home cooking, it’s about gaining confidence in your own kitchen, about learning how to understand seasonal ingredients and basic cooking skills that will help you to make great and affordable dishes for your family and friends. We will also be making food that kids will love to both make and eat; simple and satisfying dishes with the emphasis on foods that are good for you. I will always place pleasure in eating high on my wish list, but I can also see that we need to strive to be healthier as a nation as we move forward and to cut down on the profligate waste of food.
In addition we will be building a stock of essentials – cupboard, pantry or larder, call it what you will – and these will be the basics that will form the start of your life as a home cook, and take away the sting of shopping from recipe books where the peripheral ingredients can outweigh the central items.
Last week we built our studio, in the catering department of Brighton’s City College, and filmed episode one. It was a joy to be in the kitchen with the Latest TV crew, and Nick. Our guest chef was Ed Heller, AKA that chef bloke who cooks up a storm at The Brunswick in Hove. The lovely Laura Lockington, long-time foodie friend and ace writer joins me on set for seasonal tips, and for episode one Shoshana Plail, founder and director of Child Friendly Brighton and Hove, brought in her delightful kids, Shula, Isaac and Charlotte. I was scared about that bit, but they were pure gold and they loved my alternative to deep fried chicken that is both low in salt, tasty, and cheap – plus easy and fast to make. In fact, apart form cutting the chicken, they did the rest themselves.
Cook It! will appear on Latest TV Channel 8 from July this year, and week on week we hope to bring you the very best chefs, tips and seasonal ideas to give you confidence in your own kitchen.
Follow me: latestandrew
