Cooking with attitude: Tall orders

The Nosh Brothers madsods@aol.com

It seems you can't watch a food programme these days without some energetic oik of a chef in trendy headgear building up a tall pile elaborately on a plate, in front of a bewildered audience. Artistic?... possibly. Interesting viewing?... maybe. Credible? ...doubtful

Over the years, television chefs have risen to prominence as the interest and demand for cooking-as-a-spectator-sport has increased. Philip begat Fanny who begat Graham, and Graham "The Galloping Gourmet" Kerr begat Delia, Delia begat Keith, Keith begat Gary - it reads like something out of the chronicles from Mose's time. A fine and regal pedigree.

But an alien gene has entered the bloodline. Like a rash, it has spread from the nouvelle cuisine kitchens, where it had lain dormant for years, and now threatens to infect the watching public - the main symptom being easy to spot - presenting food in a ridiculously tall quivering pile.

Diagnosis is easy. The offending chef (often giving no quantitative guide to ingredients so you have to buy the inevitable book accompanying the series), doctors an extra-wide white plate with mounds of squishy food topped with crunchy discs of food, topped with more squishy... and so on, with dressings drizzled (their word, not ours) around the edge of the plate in blobs. More often than not, it's piled high with some deep- fried and crispy leaves. The resulting tower is more of a homage to their aspirant reputations than to their culinary abilities. In restaurant reality, few waiting staff are able to manoeuvre these wobbling mountains and deliver such a summit intact to the customer.

The prognosis? A bleak plague where the public, ever hungry for inspiration try to emulate their peers and pander to this epidemic of phallic envy. Just imagine millions of mothers presenting their kids' suppers with alternating layers of potato waffles and baked beans, topped off with cheese and onion crisps, drizzled with a HP sauce tapenade and a ketchup coulis!

What we need is a vaccine. Failing that we'll have to remove the carrier, permanently. After all, it would be mercy killing

The Nosh Brothers will appear as part of Carlton Food Network's `Twelve Chefs of Christmas' series on Friday 19 December at 1.30pm

The Nosh Brothers book `Entertaining' is available in book shops or from Macmillan on 0181- 324 5700.

`Winter Nosh' their new television series, will be transmitted on Carlton Food Network from 8 January `98.