Great British Menu 3

[adey73]

I wish they were, that would have brought back fond memories of cheekily schnaffling them out of the fridge as a child.

It was supposed to be rose petal cream and redcurrants, no-doubt made by a distant minion and was sub-Kipling in quality. Rest of the food was good though.

GP at the pubs must be much, much higher than at Northcote methinks.

Edited May 13, 2008 by adey73 (log)

[BertieWooster]

Yeah he doesn't have the Little Chef-like photos at Northcote either. Shame.

[ernustus]

NNNNOOOOO!!!!! Ballbag wins

Well i know where i'll be eating next time i'm down in the south west (Nathan Outlaw) but after that i'd rather Elisha's than giving money to preacherman

←

i couldnt have said it any better myself

[Andy Lynes]

Chris Horridge's starter scored 29 out of 30 to come top of the judges scoreboard last night and so will almost certainly be served on the big night. Probably rather pointlessly, I voted to Glyn Purnell's trifle which ended up in 5th place according to the judges (viewers votes are yet to be taken into account, although the voting for the starter is now closed). He'd tinkered with the recipe apparently and it was overly sweet - damn shame in my opinion.

[wackychef]

Chris Horridge's starter scored 29 out of 30 to come top of the judges scoreboard last night and so will almost certainly be served on the big night. Probably rather pointlessly, I voted to Glyn Purnell's trifle which ended up in 5th place according to the judges (viewers votes are yet to be taken into account, although the voting for the starter is now closed). He'd tinkered with the recipe apparently and it was overly sweet - damn shame in my opinion.

←

Voted the same way Andy imagine serving a trifle as the starter how very British.Thought Tom,and Jasons dishes looked good to.Have actually worked 2 days with Horridge,he gets worse when the cameras aren't on him.........

[Matthew Grant]

Did Horridge used to be obese or have a major health scare? I'm trying to think why else he would preach so much. The guy is a first class dick. I guess he hasn't got too many friends and spends weekends alone in a dark room crying whilst wolfing down vast quantities of sugar and cream. Probably beats himself up using sugar canes afterwards by way of punishment.

[JudyB]

Did Horridge used to be obese or have a major health scare? I'm trying to think why else he would preach so much. The guy is a first class dick.

I think that they said during the SW heat that a relative (his mother?) had died from cancer and that was his motivation for promiting healthy eating.

However, I do agree that his "preaching" is way over the top and I think that he would be much more likely to get the public vote if he shut up.

[Duncan]

Did Horridge used to be obese or have a major health scare? I'm trying to think why else he would preach so much. The guy is a first class dick. I guess he hasn't got too many friends and spends weekends alone in a dark room crying whilst wolfing down vast quantities of sugar and cream. Probably beats himself up using sugar canes afterwards by way of punishment.

←

See this article from the Times which implies that part of the influence was his mother's death from cancer and part was recovering from an operation whilst he was in the RAF.

The problem I have is that a lot of his preaching comes across to me as inaccurate. He's jumped on a bandwagon and wants everyone to follow him when he should actually be concentrating on his obvious strong points: flavour and presentation. For example, from the same article:

To kick off every meal at the Priory everyone is given a red pepper and mandarin sorbet, with fennel pollen on top. “It’s full of digestive properties to get your stomach ready for what is to come,” he says. “The red pepper has more vitamin C than an orange, and carotenes, which may help to fight cancer, while the mandarin has vitamin C, plus betacarotene and lycopene, which are antioxidants.”

If we assume his appetizer has at least 60g of red pepper (otherwise it would have less vitamin C than a 150g orange) the resulting 75mg of vitamin C is more than the UK RDA but unless his customers have scurvy they are probably getting more than enough vitamin C already.

Besides there is no conclusive evidence that vitamin C does actually help to prevent cancer, and it has been shown that antioxidant supplements, at least when presented in pill form may actually increase your chance of dying:

Overall, the antioxidant supplements did not seem to reduce mortality. A total of 17880 of 136,023 participants (13.1%) randomised to antioxidant supplements and 10136 of 96527 participants (10.5%) randomised to placebo or no intervention died. In the analyses of the trials with low risk of bias, beta-carotene, vitamin A, and vitamin E significantly increased mortality. There were no significant differences between the effects of antioxidant supplements in healthy participants (primary prevention trials) or participants with various diseases (secondary prevention trials). Randomised trials with adequate bias control found no significant effect of vitamin C. In some of our analyses, selenium seems to reduce mortality.

The current evidence does not support the use of antioxidant supplements in the general population or in patients with certain diseases. The combined evidence suggests that additional research on antioxidant supplements is needed. The evidence on vitamin C and selenium was not conclusive. Future trials could focus on vitamin C and selenium and should assess both potential beneficial and harmful effects. Conduct of additional primary and secondary prevention trials on vitamin A, beta-carotene, and vitamin E seems questionable, at least in the dosage range examined.

[Gary Marshall]

interesting episode last night, very pleased to see glynn finally get the honours though on concept and presentation i thought jason atherton might be challenging, but not much he can do against 3 10's from the judges!

i was very suprised by nigel haworth's dish, it looked like a badly executed, poor pastiche of a tony flinn dessert, which i think was rolled cream cheese from memory.

[David Naylor]

interesting episode last night, very pleased to see glynn finally get the honours though on concept and presentation i thought jason atherton might be challenging, but not much he can do against 3 10's from the judges!

i was very suprised by nigel haworth's dish, it looked like a badly executed, poor pastiche of a tony flinn dessert, which i think was rolled cream cheese from memory.

←

Aye ...... it's all about concept and presentation with you isn't it Marshall, driving ya posh car round our village whilst we wait for the only bus of the day. IIRC Jason scored 12 out of twenty.... accused of lacking substance

Hey if only Tony had made it to this stage he would have done much better than Nigel

David

[Gary Marshall]

interesting episode last night, very pleased to see glynn finally get the honours though on concept and presentation i thought jason atherton might be challenging, but not much he can do against 3 10's from the judges!

i was very suprised by nigel haworth's dish, it looked like a badly executed, poor pastiche of a tony flinn dessert, which i think was rolled cream cheese from memory.

←

Aye ...... it's all about concept and presentation with you isn't it Marshall, driving ya posh car round our village whilst we wait for the only bus of the day. IIRC Jason scored 12 out of twenty.... accused of lacking substance

Hey if only Tony had made it to this stage he would have done much better than Nigel

David

←

which underlines the pointlessness of the public voting for dishes they can't taste, jason dish looked great and had a british theme (unlike stephen's pannacotta or the semi-freddo that tom did) obviously tasted bollocks though!

interesting thing is that the judges voted through a lot of traditional cooking in the earlier rounds such as nigel over tony and then are now saying the cooking is not modern enough for the gherkin

[David Naylor]

which underlines the pointlessness of the public voting for dishes they can't taste, jason dish looked great and had a british theme (unlike stephen's pannacotta or the semi-freddo that tom did) obviously tasted bollocks though!

interesting thing is that the judges voted through a lot of traditional cooking in the earlier rounds such as nigel over tony and then are now saying the cooking is not modern enough for the gherkin 

←

I agree about the voting, i commented last night that the voting element was a diabolical con, how can people make a valued judgement on appearances alone?

Furthermore how can the chefs celebrate at the end of each show if the public can cast their own vote, what if there are millions of people who vote because they like the look of a cup of sweet tea and dinky sugar cubes and nobody votes for the burnt cream in a egg shell?

[Gary Marshall]

i've not watched this series before so i don't know to what extent the public vote matches the judges.

I'd expect the housewives favourites (well my wife's) such as jason, tom & glynn to do better and for chris horridge in true eurovision stylee to get 'nul points'

[Scottf]

interesting thing is that the judges voted through a lot of traditional cooking in the earlier rounds such as nigel over tony and then are now saying the cooking is not modern enough for the gherkin 

←

I rate Fort as a judge but the other two are appalling for this competition. I've given up with it.

[Time]

I couldn't agree more, I want to beat Oliver Peyton repeatedly, he's so inane and contradictory and he doesn't know what arctic roll is?!?!.. but only after I've gagged Jennie Bond.

[Gary Marshall]

interesting thing is that the judges voted through a lot of traditional cooking in the earlier rounds such as nigel over tony and then are now saying the cooking is not modern enough for the gherkin 

←

I rate Fort as a judge but the other two are appalling for this competition. I've given up with it.

←

i like routine, it's been on for so long it's become part of my life

[Duncan]

i've not watched this series before so i don't know to what extent the public vote matches the judges.

I'd expect the housewives favourites (well my wife's) such as jason, tom & glynn to do better and for chris horridge in true eurovision stylee to get 'nul points'

←

In previous years only the judge's top 3 have been eligible for voting. That makes much more sense to me as then they can weed out any dishes they think are truly weak. The public voting has then pretty much along the judges' lines (I'm not sure if any dish placed first by the judges has ever failed to be the winner).

Also in previous years there has been an option to vote online, but this year it is premium rate phone number only. I'm not sure whether that counts as unfair against Tom (how can they expect me or my countrymen to vote for him under those conditions! ).

[CalumC]

I reckon chris's starter is going to get knocked down by the public vote, based on the fact hes a tosser.

Would you like at that, i was right. Fantastic. Interestingly he made a bit of a political speech about it, "chips and ketchup thrown at the screen" so he obviously knew.

Hasn't made me feel any happier with him...

Edited May 23, 2008 by CalumC (log)

[erica graham]

Do you mean that hhis starter didn't make it through to the gerkin?

[CalumC]

Do you mean that hhis starter didn't make it through to the gerkin?

←

Yep. It was jason's starter, steven got fish, jason main and dessert is glyn.

I'd say thats a frigging good menu and its representative of our cooking i think. I wasn't so impressed with the judging generally, oliver and prue have no concept of modern food. i think that the menu would be better with the eel fish course, its not a canape, if they could understand modern cookery then they would have seen that.

[insomniac]

Do you mean that hhis starter didn't make it through to the gerkin?

←

Yep. It was jason's starter, steven got fish, jason main and dessert is glyn.

I'd say thats a frigging good menu and its representative of our cooking i think. I wasn't so impressed with the judging generally, oliver and prue have no concept of modern food. i think that the menu would be better with the eel fish course, its not a canape, if they could understand modern cookery then they would have seen that.

←

agree it's a good menu however I can't quite see the Brit in a BLT and croque- monsieur, preferred the beetroot/apple eel 'canape'...would definitely order the main...

[Andy Lynes]

If only someone had picked up the phone two months ago and made a booking for 50 at Maze we could all have saved ourselves a great deal of time.

[RDB]

Constant celebrity chef endorsement i.e. Gordon Ramsay and a public phone vote. Sounds a bit suss to me

[Bapi]

Just a heads up as the Gherkin meal is being screened tonight. I haven't looked but would assume it is in either the 6pm or 6.30pm slot.

Cheers

[PhilD]

Just a heads up as the Gherkin meal is being screened tonight. I haven't looked but would assume it is in either the 6pm or 6.30pm slot.

Cheers

←

My TV guide has it for 6:00pm on BBC2 tonight - although strangely my Sky box has decided it is on at 11:30am on Sunday - I assume this is a repeat.

Edited June 13, 2008 by PhilD (log)