Market Kitchen

Regular readers will know I'm an avid fan of crap tv cookery shows. Yesterday I decided to watch Market Kitchen, mainly because the Hairy Bikers were on. If anyone doesn't know, these are two er... hairy bikers, who travel around the world on motorbikes cooking. Generally big meaty manly dishes, cooked outside in Keith Floyd style cooking sketches. Anyway they are great, but Market Kitchen which is UKTV Food's* own home made daily show along the lines of Saturday Kitchen, is pretty shit. I don't know why really. It's got all the ingredients (unintentional pun alert) to be a great show, but somehow like Saturday Cooks/Daily Cooks on ITV they've just slightly missed the target.

Anyway, why is all that relevant to LazyView? Well. Someone on an internet forum I frequent just asked someone if they'd read a book and suggested they get it from the library. Brilliantly helpful I'm sure you'll agree. Anyway it reminded me of one of the annoying things they do on Market Kitchen. After every recipe they read out what ingredients you'll need to make it at home. eg.

To make Si's Scallop Spring Roll's you'll need

12 king scallops, 24 queen scallops - From the fishmonger
12 sheets of spring roll pastry - From the Chinese supermarket
pinch of five spice, powder - From your storecupboard

etc.

Now I'll admit that some things are slightly unusual and you might not know where to find them but then you have "From your storecupboard" what if I don't have any five spice powder in my storecupboard? Is my storecupboard inadequate? What if I want to replenish my inadequate storecupboard? Where do I get more five spice from? Presumably not from the dreaded supermarket. Ok so I do have five spice in the storecupboard but that's not the point.

And what about when they say

1 organic or free range chicken - From your butcher.

Chicken? From the butcher? Are they on crack?

3 lemons - From the greengrocer?

What!? Fruit and veg from the greengrocer?

It's annoying because aside from the stupid idea that you need to tell people where to get things like meat and veg, and the patronising way they do it, there is the repeated implication that whatever happens you mustn't get this stuff from your supermarket. Now even those of us with the best of intentions can't avoid getting stuff from the supermarkets sometimes. We don't all live in a wonderful leafy West London suburb surrounded by beautiful local butchers greengrocers and international delis (sadly). The local shops also tend to only be open when we're awake unlike the brilliantly convenient supermarkets. I'd love to go to the local butcher and pick up a chicken on my way home after work, but it's shut. Sometimes you can plan ahead, sometimes it's not practical or I just can't be bothered.

Just little things like this can ruin a potentially great program. Ah well. If you want to see for yourself The Hairy Bikers are on for the rest of the week, 8pm UKTV Food.

*specialist channel of the year!