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January 31st, 2012

Daughter, daughter.

17 comments

But YOU want a TV show!’

‘Of COURSE your piss is pickled! But no one else cares- she has great rack and sultry eyes! You’re just jealous cos you’re not purdey’.

I’m not you know. Jealous. Or for that matter,  pretty.

I’m sad. Actually sad, depressed, disillusioned and royally ticked off…… Because I want my own TV show? Not entirely. But, well, yes- of course I do- let’s be honest here- would you rather sweat your knackers off, cooking for people who don’t care, earning not much more than an hourly minimum wage, or prance around on telly earning some big bucks, with a book deal tied in? It’s a no brainer. Don’t judge me- ask yourself the same question. It’s so English not to admit what you want. I want a telly show- primetime telly. I want all the cash and an adoring public. I want a book deal that bears absolutely no correlation to the quality of my knowledge and writing ability.  And I don’t want to get up at 6.30 any more to start lunch prep. Oh. It turns out I am jealous. Who knew.

But I don’t have perky tits, a (mildly) famous father and ABSOLUTELY no moral qualms. In short I am not the fragrant Laura Zilli.

Here is the article that I read yesterday http://goo.gl/INoKX . Have a look. But do come back, I’m just warming up.

Have you read it? How do you feel? Do you have a tingling fury in your very marrow? I do.  About every crapulous sentence. The NAME for Christ’s sake. ‘High Class Cooker!’  Really? REALLY? You are going on telly promoting yourself as a whore. A slut. A prostitute. That’s nice. What a lovely message for the kids. What is she going to cook? Slag Aloo? Who is advising the poor girl? Her famously media savvy ‘celebrity chef’ father Aldo Zilli perhaps?

 HIYA everyone!!!! I’m a High Class Hooker! An Expensive Slut! A Pricey Whore! It is mind boggling. Isn’t it? Am I being priggish? I’m not usually.

Is it her fault? Probably not. She’s just another fame hungry wannabe of the X factor generation. She has already appeared on the laughably awful Channel 4 ‘documentary’ ‘Seven Days’. Her Biography for that programme states thus:

 ’Laura is pursuing a music career and is as (sic) a singer songwriter With a large circle of friends, she loves to socialise in London and is often seen at exclusive events. Laura’s a country girl at heart and spends most of her weekends riding her horses. She is currently in a long distance relationship. Her father is renowned celebrity chef Aldo Zilli’

How’s the music career going Laura?

No?

Oh well. I mean you only had prime time advertising on Channel 4 and your father’s connections. It’s tough out there and you wouldn’t want to lower yourself to being Cowell fodder or, you know, gig.

I know! Do some food telly!

Look. I’m sorry, this is just turning into a mean spirited attack on Miss Zilli and I have never met the girl. I’m sure she is quite charming. But why is she getting a food programme? Why? Because her father has a chain of mediocre to awful restaurants and plays the ‘celebrity’ card at every opportunity? Or because she is quite nice looking?

Both?

I’ll tell you some reasons that weren’t discussed in that particular commissioning meeting. Has she ever trained as a chef? Has she done double shift after double shift shucking oysters until her fingers bled? Has the energy of a professional kitchen caused her to succumb to drug abuse, depression or insomnia? Is she engaging on television? Likeable? Humble? Can she write an informative, fascinating and ground breaking book? Does she really CARE about food? Could she hold her own in an in-depth debate, with chefs about seasonality and provenance? Does she have a single recorded opinion about food or things culinary that is not contained in that Mail article?

Or is she a failed singer/songwriter with a pretty face and a Dad who once upon a time cooked average, overpriced food in Soho.

It’s a joke. A bad one. And it REALLY, really matters. And it’s not fair.

I feel sorry for people like Lorraine Pascale and Gizzie Erskine, who will get tarred with the same brush as Miss Zilli. Did they get on TV because they are beautiful? Well yes, that  probably helped. But they went to catering college; they have both worked in top restaurants. They both live and breathe FOOD. You can just tell. Laura Zilli just wants to be famous and you shouldn’t let her get away with it.

The average chef in this country earns £19,000 and works harder than you could possibly imagine. Depression and suicide is rife within the profession and Miss Zilli’s message to the lowly plebs is that it is OK to cook in Louboutins.

 This isn’t about misogyny (though calling yourself a ‘high class cooker’ surely opens oneself to certain lines of criticism); it’s about modern life and everything I abhor about it. Hugh’s ‘Three Hungry Boys’ nonsense upset me greatly. And don’t get me started on those bloody Baker Boys. This isn’t about Laura Zilli being a woman. This is about Laura Zilli having no qualifications whatsoever and demeaning the profession that I so love with a tawdry piece of tabloid twattery that should never ever have seen the light of day.

 

 

 

 

Note: If you would like to see Aldo Zilli a. forget my name on live telly and b. admit that he cooked frozen broccoli in his awful (now defunct) vegetarian restaurant then google our names together.

Posted in Luke's blog
January 28th, 2012

Date

6 comments

Last night I went on a date with my fiancee. And on the 16th of September 2010 I wrote half a blog that I never finished and never published because it was sad. I have just found it.  On the 15th of September 2011 I asked someone to marry me. In 364 days everything changed.

‘Being single in your thirties is a funny thing. Not funny ha ha. Or funny peculiar, particularly. Just funny in a ‘funny sort of fits’ lazy writing kind of way. I believe the kidz today are saying Meh..? Because right now, on this day, I am largely indifferent to being single. But last week I was desperate to be in a relationship. Today I am focused on the exciting new path my career has taken recently and the fact that tomorrow I am seeing most of my best friends for an old school day of fun and frolics. But on Monday I might well start working out how old I will be on my first child’s 18th birthday if I don’t have one in the next five years.

And thinking that it is a bit weird to be single when you are thirty three. I can’t quite see past that. It does mean that something hasn’t quite worked out. This might just be that you ‘haven’t met the right person yet’ but it might (might it?) allude to something more? something more difficult to accept or even admit? I am fairly sure that I am a difficult boyfriend in many ways and I suspect am becoming more so. I work funny hours, like reading the paper in peace and quiet and really hate doing things that I don’t want to do. Like going for lunch at your parents house when I have a hangover or going clubbing in Shoreditch for your idiot friends birthday.

I was the one in my late teens and early twenties who always had a girlfriend, pretty much constantly from 18-23. I thought at 23 that I was going to marry my girlfriend. We had a little garden flat, a cat and for a time an amazing thing. But she came home one Sunday night, said she wanted to break up and that was that, I never, ever saw her again, to this day. I think we still have a joint bank account somewhere. And I wonder sometimes if the brutality of that break up, the near insanity that I experienced over the next 6 months has affected my ability to be in a grown up relationship now.

Since then I have flitted in and out of various relationships, six months here, a year there. Had hundreds of blind dates, internet dates, one night stands and two week flings but never come remotely close to knowing beyond all doubt that this was the mythical one. And in that decade, that decade, Jesus, nearly all of my friends, cousins and peers have done it. Have found another person that they want to spend all of their time with. And the older I get, the more cantankerous and set in my ways that I become, the more unlikely it seems that I will even want to spend my time with any one.

But we repeat the single person’s mantra about not having met the ri…blah blah blah. And we get drunker at weddings than everyone else and we go home to mums and sleep in a single bed whilst our younger married siblings take the en-suites.’

It’s amazing. I had given up hope- I know that I wrote it, because it is saved in the ‘drafts’ section of my blog, but I don’t recognise that person, that ennui, bordering on despair. Thing is, I was right. There probably is something wrong if you are in your thirties and single. There is something wrong with you. There was something wrong with me. But that’s OK, because somewhere there is someone with something wrong with them too, but it’s your kind of wrong. And you make each other better. And that’s just fine. Three days after I wrote the above, I met Sara and last night we had dinner in Quo Vadis and laughed until we cried. She’s my kind of wrong and I’m hers.

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Luke's blog
October 27th, 2011

Private

3 comments

The Secret diary of a London private chef

10pm:

I sit on the warm mahogany toilet seat with my head between by knees and count to ten as a bead of sweat runs down the bridge of my nose and falls in slow motion before detonating on the heated terracotta tiles beneath my damp be-clogged feet. I must stand up. Take control. Ice-cold filtered water cascades into the solid granite Tarn basin and I submerge my face and the panic subsides and my resolve is hardened. It was the gelatine you see. The evil, stupid, temperamental gelatine.

That morning. Early:

My troubles seem so far away. I love Borough Market. This is work as play. I am shopping for food at my favourite place in the world, with other people’s money. My mind races with ideas, ingredients, flavours and textures. My client wants grouse. Of course she does. It is September in Holland Park and the evenings are drawing in. The children are back to school, the gaudy Puglian villa has been shuttered up for the Winter, and her thoughts have turned to indoor tennis, charity boards and entertaining.

I stroke the downy feathers of a hung pheasant and ask Jake, the butcher where and whence they were shot. The grouse are beautiful: speckled and plump. I pack eight into my rucksack and meander through the madding crowds. I feel a sense of superiority and self-importance. I am not like the tourists and the daters and the myriad other bewildered visitors. I am a professional! A Chef! I am here to work! In a karmic flash my rucksack begins to bleed and children point as I blush and stumble down an alleyway to fix. I am immediately stricken with humility and bathos.

7pm:

I arrive. Georgian pillars bestride the coal-black door. I will pop out later and steal some bay leaves from the pristine trees atop the steps. The house keeper lets me in; She is Filipino and the very arc-angel incarnate. My box of food is hoisted shoulder-ward and she trots down the stairs, her five foot frame bearing the weight that had buckled me, not two minutes previously. I am agog at the kitchen. It glows like burnished silver under moonlight. If a kitchen can be gorgeous, then that is what this must surely be. 

The Hostess descends. She is fifty and stunning. An aura of control, spirit and class exudes from every pampered pore. She kisses my cheeks and I am heady. I break eye contact and show her the grouse. She is pleased. 

8pm:

My waitress arrives. She is twenty-two, a trainee surgeon and smarter than I could ever hope to be. She sees me only as old. Such is the decade between your twenties and thirties. Strangely, The Husband chooses this moment to appear. He was going to be a surgeon once. Oh yes. But some chaps in the City made him an offer that he could simply not refuse. He is less interested in my grouse and me. My surgeon/waitress polishes cutlery and bats him away with a charm and tact bequeathed to only the most beautiful and talented.

8.30pm:

A terrine of Poulet de Bresse, foie gras and morels looks wonderful on the plate. A final shine with some truffle oil, a pinch of sea salt and away. I am pleased. The mostarda that I sourced specifically for this dish will, I know cut through the richness of the foie gras and offset beautifully the earthiness of the mushrooms. I cook the grouse well. Maybe a touch too pink? Too late. Confidence, Luke. The bones come back clean. I up end my rhubarb jelly moulds and take my poppy seed and honey parfait from the freezer. The jelly collapses. I adjourn to the downstairs wet room.

10.03pm:

Think. I heat the jellies in a pan and add some mulled wine spices that I find in a drawer. The Surgeon finds me some shot glasses and thus a new dessert is born. I am summoned to the dining room. The contrast between hot, sharp, spicy rhubarb and cold sweet parfait is the highlight of the meal. They are in raptures and I sidle out sheepishly. Such is the life of a private chef. You make your mistakes, you splash filtered water over your face and you keep calm and carry on. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Posted in Luke's blog
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