Daily Mail - Daily Mail Weekend Magazine
HALLELUJAH FO BRITAIN’S HOME COOKS
As Best Home Cook returns, Mary Berry and Claudia Winkleman tell Lisa Sewards it’s the camaraderie between contestants that sets it apart
As the competition hotted up last year in the first series of the BBC’S Britain’s Best Home Cook, overseen by head judge Mary Berry and presenter Claudia Winkleman, it soon became clear there’s some serious talent in the nation’s kitchens. To take the crown, eventual winner Pippa Middlehurst from Salford rustled up an ox cheek massaman curry with jasmine rice, grilled prawns and a Thai herb salad, followed by mango and raspberry cake, no less.
Unfortunately that serious cooking talent doesn’t extend to me – I like to spend as little time in the kitchen as possible – so you can imagine that cooking for Mary and her new judge on series two of the show, Michelinstarred chef Angela Hartnett, is nothing short of daunting. In this week’s first episode, Mary challenges the ten skilled amateurs to produce their ultimate Italian pasta dinner, and to give an insight into the pressure they’re under Angela’s thrown down the gauntlet to me too.
While the real competitors are dropped in at the deep end, making their pasta from scratch in dishes ranging from a classic lasagne to an adventurous squid ink tortellini and a very unusual surf ’n’ turf tagliatelle, I’m tasked with following Angela’s simple spaghetti alla puttanesca recipe – a rich sauce made with onion, garlic, tomatoes, capers, olives, anchovies and a pinch of chilli – with ready-made pasta dough, which just needs rolling out and running through a pasta-cutting machine. A piece of cake, no?
Angela earned her Michelin star at her Italian restaurant Murano, and her traditional Italian cookbook Cucina is a huge bestseller, so while her recipes may look simple even the smallest of errors could see me sent home pronto. Add in a dash of Claudia’s strict time-keeping – ‘Sorry for being bossy and scary. Go, go, go...’ – and I’m reduced to a bundle of nerves.
When push comes to shove though, we know good old Claudia always falls on the side of the cooks. And fortunately today so does Angela, sidling over to help as I grapple with rolling out the pasta dough and feeding it through the cutting machine. It’s a relief when I finally throw it into the saucepan of boiling water to cook.
But that’s not before I create the sauce, which seems so basic with its throw-all-the-ingredients-in-atonce instructions. Until I realise the anchovies are meant to be kept back for dressing the final dish. Will anyone notice when my effort is put before Mary, Angela and fellow judge Chris Bavin, the Eat Well For Less presenter and fruit and veg expert from series one?
Phew, they don’t mention the disappearing anchovies – now seriously mulched up – but Angela does pick up on the lack of spice. ‘I think you could have a bit more of a chilli kick in it,’ she advises. And there’s more. ’Watch that your strands of pasta aren’t too short, otherwise they break up. Look how Mary can’t fold them around her fork.’ Oh dear, a glance to the left and Mary is indeed twisting and turning in vain, struggling to get a mouthful secured onto her fork. Finally she manages it, and declares, ‘The strands are too short, but the thickness of the pasta is absolutely perfect. You’ve done amazingly well!’
It’s a huge compliment indeed from the woman Claudia describes as ‘the queen’. She admits she was nervous about meeting Mary ahead of the first series, but this year has been totally different. ‘We’re now in love and we live together,’ she jokes. ‘She’s magnificent. She’s the queen – it’s not Beyoncé, it’s Mary!’ Has Claudia been put to the pasta test herself? ‘Not a chance!’ she laughs. ‘You’re brave. I was thinking, “You can’t do that to her!”’
She’s an enthusiastic home cook herself though. ‘I love cooking but I don’t follow recipes, I’m ramshackle. I’m an, “Add more butter, add more salt” kind of cook. But I’d never make pasta from scratch. Somebody made a pie with a lattice top that almost made me burst into tears because I can’t make pastry. Mary’s tried to teach me so many times, but I can buy it.
‘I make quite straightforward dishes, lots of chicken. I like roasting and I also like pan dishes and one-pot dishes. I’m a bit of feeder, I want people to come round. Entertaining would be an exaggeration, unless you’re talking about a game of charades, but I like feeding people. I’d say my signature dish is chilli con carne. When I fell in love with my husband a million years ago, I knew he loved it. I was living with my mum – and I probably still would be if I hadn’t got married – so I learned how to make it.’
This year Best Home Cook (they’ve lost the Britain for this series) has a twist in that the ten contestants from across the country come together to live in a shared house while they compete for the crown. Each week they must make Mary’s Ultimate Home Favourite and then create an improvised dish based around a single ingredient (it’s a pear in the first episode) in what’s known as Chris’s Rustle Up challenge, before Angela’s Eliminator round decides who’s going to leave the competition for good.
But there’s a lovely sense of camaraderie on the show, and we see the cooks turning to each other for help, advice and even a shelf in their oven. ‘There are a few tears, but not on camera because that’s not really our thing,’ says Claudia. ‘Everyone would prefer to be in the Eliminator themselves than watch someone else go through
‘I do cook but I’m ramshackle, I don’t follow recipes’ CLAUDIA WINKLEMAN
it because they’re all living together. There’s nothing they don’t know about each other.
‘They all look after one another. The final is quite emotional in this show, but it’s a bit like Strictly in that these people spend an intense amount of time together trying so hard to perfect something. Chris might say, “That could do with a bit more salt” and you can almost hear the other competitors hiss. They have each other’s backs.’
Claudia is so openly protective of the competitors, in fact, that Angela has felt the need to be more lenient. ‘I’d get told off by Claudia if I make the Eliminator too hard,’ she says. ‘She gets so angry. She’ll come over, look at me and then walk off. She’s speechless.’
‘But they’re home cooks and you’re a Michelin-starred chef! I want them to enjoy it,’ says Claudia.
Mary agrees. ‘Claudia’s always getting angry if the tasks are too hard. It’s also very important that when things go wrong, we see how they cope. At home when things go wrong there are no tears, throwing things here, there and everywhere. You’ve got to pick yourself up and produce something and if it isn’t produced we can’t judge it. The aim is to encourage people to cook at home. For the Eliminator
round we’re tasting blind too, and that makes it very fair. Having been judging for quite a bit, I’ve learnt that in no way can you have a favourite.’
Mary says that getting people cooking at home is what she particularly loves about her role on the show. ‘Home cooking for me is making the most of what you’ve got – cooking things in season and encouraging my family to try new things. I’ve never had a takeaway, and that’s purely because we live a long way from the town. But why should I? I can muster things up very quickly. Although I have been to Mcdonald’s with my grandchildren and they enjoy that a lot.’
Does she miss Bake Off though? ‘I had six years on Bake Off and I absolutely loved it, it’s the perfect format. But I’ve gone to pastures new and I can’t tell you how much I’m enjoying this show because it gives such variety to the viewers, and it’s getting better and better. There’s a beetroot curry in this series, for example. It surprised me, I thought it unusual, but it was absolutely amazing.’
Apart from the contestants on her various shows, do people normally dare cook for Mary? ‘All of my close friends do. For true friends it doesn’t matter what you cook, it’s the company. And anyway, I love scrambled eggs, don’t you?’ she smiles. It’s certainly easier than rolling out fresh pasta! ■
Best Home Cook, Thursday, 8pm, BBC1.
‘Why get a takeaway? I can muster things up so quickly’ MARY BERRY