“Thoroughly over-excited” doesn’t even begin to describe Tom and Henry Herbert, stars of Channel 4’s latest attempt to get Britain’s men into the kitchen. They never sit still, they never stop talking, and they have taken speed cooking to a whole new level. And what these boys are dishing up is proper bloke food - chip butties, steak sarnies, curries, even doughnuts and chocolate sauce.
The fact that these two are brothers with “a murderous sense of rivalry” makes every show a never-ending competition. What’s faster to make – a toastie or a pizza? Who will win the weekly “pie-off”, where each brother makes a hearty, macho pie to try and satisfy hearty, macho guys such as farmers or firemen? Cue shameless gloating from the winner, while the loser looks ready to throw himself in front of whatever monster vehicles the taste testers are driving.
Watch Henry The Butcher Carve Up A Cow
The kitchen is absolute guy heaven – big wood-fired oven, huge bags of flour so you can just grab a handful when necessary (weighing scales are for wimps!), industrial-sized measuring jugs, jumbo herb chopper, and of course the crowning touch, a long-handled cleaver for when you REALLY want to slice your pizza with pizzaz. It’s a bit surprising to see they have something so mundane as a sandwich toaster to whip up their peanut butter, banana and chocolate delight – what, no blow torch?
The closest thing they have to a cheffy ingredient is sherry vinegar, and, like most cooks nowadays, have no qualms about using ready-made puff pastry. Being an award-winning baker Tom does indeed take pride in his bread, and makes kneading positively manly rather than tedious and time-consuming. In short, there’s pretty much nothing your average guy with limited experience in the kitchen can’t tackle.
The Days Of The Cavemen Are Well And Truly Back
While the boys are certainly easy on the eye (sorry ladies, they’re both married), there’s not much else to appeal to female viewers. The testosterone is overwhelming, and lines like “killer recipes guaranteed to wrestle even the most humungous hunger pangs to the ground” or “Nothing left but to do what we do best – stuff our faces” do nothing to dispel the overgrown schoolboy aura of the show.
The Fabulous Baker Brothers (Wednesdays, 8.30pm) is the second half of Channel 4’s “cooking for guys” hour. There’s certainly plenty of machismo as Heston Blumenthal brandishes his dry ice or blow torch in How To Cook Like Heston, but it’s much more interesting in terms of the appliance of science. With Tom and Henry, food comes a poor second to the male bonding.
Arlene Kelly - Born and raised in a small prairie town, by the time I graduated high school I decided I’d had enough of Manitoba winters and headed ...
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