Celebrity Master Chef

Some days ago, there was yet another reality show that had had "celebrity" stamped on it. Cheap programming made slightly more expensive and washed up/out celebrities get to show their sorry face once more.

But there were some interesting things in the show. I don't know anything about the judges, to me they seem to be two ordinary blokes that pretend that they know about food. But they really seem to know what they are talking about.

One of the contestants started frying and shoved a large lump of butter in along with some oil and got a telling off. The reason being that you should use oil for frying and butter for flavour. Butter burns easily, so should be added at the end and not too much of it.

This is good advice, I think, particularly if you've watched celebrity chefs generously only use butter in their show off cooking. I mean, you can really feel the veins clogging up when you watch the show. Well, I do anyway.

Another observation I've made is if you don't have fresh herbs - and I'm guessing quite a lot of people don't - dried ones work fine, but should be added maybe 5 - 10 minutes earlier in the cooking. This will give them a chance to soak up some of the liquid and release their flavour. Some chefs recommend that you soak them in hot water before putting them in, this is pretty much the same thing, but gives you an additional dish to wash up afterwards and also a sieve, not an item in everyone's kitchen. I have only recently started using one myself.