The whole celebrity cooking pot thing is starting to get a bit strained. Every chef who has a book or a tv show seems to feel the need to leverage their profile to usurp some pennies from their audience. When I got a Jamie Oliver flavour shaker for my Xmas a few years back it was a bit of a novelty for me.
I think the whole flavour shaker thing was a novelty for everyone! It was an encapsulated pestle and mortar: bung in some oil, vinegar, some herbs etc and bash away as if you were starring in a cookery version of Cocktail. Negate the fact that the seal was rubbish leading to dousing in soy sauce and a simple drop led to the largest chips I’ve seen out of plastic since my “shatter proof” ruler at school. But the core reason I was given it was because my mate saw I’d cooked dinner from one of the early Jamie Oliver cookbooks (the good ones) and thought I’d like it! And I did for ten minutes on Xmas morning but quickly lost all faith in it. The trout with jammy lemons recipes is still favourite in my household.
Anyway I can now see that almost every cookware brand has a celebrity chef lined up. I’m sure some use the products that are endorsed – Henckels knives are often seen on the Great British Kitchen but does anyone believe that Ken Hom actually uses the Wok you can buy in the supermarket or that Rosemary Connely (not even a chef I know) actually used her George Foreman grill rip off (see review here). American Universities have even published papers written on the whole rise of celebrity chefs which runs parallel to the issue I have with whole phenomena.
My core interest is do celebrity chefs actually use the products they promote?
- Do the hairy bikers user the tagine they promote?
- Does Nigella Lawson use her branded flame ware casserole dishes?
- Would Gary Rhodes really use the presentation juicer upon which his name is emblazzoned?
Truthfully I don’t think so but I could be wrong.
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