Michele Hewitson: Gimmicks on the menu

There were hailstones the size of golf balls further up the island. It was Saturday and at our place there was wind and rain. It was summer in Auckland. We had the heater on. We didn't mind. It was cosy. What were we going to have for tea?

This is a thinking exercise which can take up the best part of a day. I thought a nice thing to do on a horrible day, while thinking about what to have for tea, would be to watch the new Food Television channel on Sky.

I'd watched a bit earlier in the week - you can never start thinking about what to have for tea on a Saturday too early. I watched, or sort of watched, while reading my ratty old Nigel Slater cookbook for the 100th time, some stupid thing about a chef billed as The Surreal Gourmet.

This chef was, not very surreally, doing candied yams. They looked like kumara to me. This chef was cutting them into star shapes. It didn't matter, he said, if they were a bit wonky - they could be cartoon stars.

I always aim to make my food look like cartoon food. Like the stuff they construct on Muck in a Minute, my favourite cooking show of all time - so a big thank you to the person who signed me up to receive their recipes via email.

But I do think Muck in a Minute needs a new gimmick. The Surreal Chef cooks out of a silver caravan with two big bits of brown stuff popping out of the roof. This is supposed to be, surreally I expect, a giant toaster.

The food channel is all about gimmicks. These are, except for the toaster man, borrowed from the reality genre of television. There's a kitchen make-over show called Kitchen Accomplished and I'd rather eat a potato pom pom pizza than watch that one again. There's a show for morons (actually, there are a number of shows for morons) called How To Boil Water. I couldn't bear to watch that one for longer than it takes to boil water.

There's Iron Chef America in which two chefs have an hour to make a meal using one secret ingredient, and hundreds of other not-secret ingredients. On Saturday it was pizza dough. One chef made the dough with brown sugar and wrapped figs and gorgonzola in it. And, mozzarella balloons as a garnish, anyone?

This was riveting stuff which takes place inside a studio called Kitchen Stadium. The dialogue is brilliant: "Chef is using the back of that pan!" "Yes, indeed he is!" "The ice-cream maker has been activated!" And so on.

One of the judges was Jeffrey Steingarten. Jeffrey Steingarten! Who wrote two brilliant books about food. Brainy Jeffrey Steingarten as a judge on this nonsense. Yes, indeed he is!

Good old telly, eh. It shatters your ideas about your heroes until they are but broken meringues. I still haven't got over seeing Rachel Griffiths on Who Wants to be a Millionaire? where she turned out to be an airhead.

Oh well. There is always Cooking Under Fire which is billed as the search for the next great American chef. But I have no great hopes for this. Nothing could be as good as the search for America's Next Top Model.

Did you see Tyra have a meltdown last week? Now that was good telly. I'd rather watch those silly, skinny bints attempt to pronounce "Lacroix" than Gordon Ramsay's temper tantrums any day.

For tea we had chicken stew and apple crumble.