No cheeky chappie brandishing a whisk, no bosomy gastro-porn, no foodie-travelogues in foreign parts, no al fresco cooking sketches of dishes we are unlikely to try, no rants, no back-slapping, no slurping or faux bonhomie. Simon Hopkinson, aka The Good Cook on BBC 2, is the best thing to happen to TV cookery programmes since Delia Smith a generation ago.
The idea is simple. Put a great restaurant cook in his home kitchen and get him to show us how to make all the dishes we most enjoy eating. You know, dishes like steak and chips, coq au vin, salade Nicoise, sticky toffee pudding, rhubarb crumble… even the much abused Quiche Lorraine. No fancy production frills, just a careful, thoughtful demonstration of how to execute these recipes… to perfection!
I first met Simon in the early 1980s when he was cooking in a small South Kensington restaurant called Hilaire. It became my favourite London eaterie. Then, in 1987, he joined forces with Sir Terence Conran to open Bibendum in the old Michelin building a few hundred yards up the road.
For me, Simon Hopkinson was one of three seminal spirits of that era who shaped the future of modern British cooking. The other two were Alastair Little and Rowley Leigh. (You can read about them – and others – in my two volumes of Great British Chefs, published in 1989 and 1995. Find them on Amazon).
In The Good Cook, Simon turns his back on TV cookery as frothy light entertainment. What he gives his audience is the quiet, practical authority of a seasoned chef whose approach is based on the twin pillars of Elizabeth David and Jane Grigson. Substance and comfort in a time of uncertainty. Forgotten values made familiar once again.
More please BBC 2!
Kit Chapman, proprietor of The Castle at Taunton and author of My Archipelago.
Kit Chapman's Blog 