Too Many Cooks – Part 2

To Part 1... What could be gained from denying the world these pioneers of the pantry? And without them, who would ever think of combining pears with pine nuts and popping it on a pork chop? This time around the victim was Jordan Fancy — the seething, pock-speckled English chef from Kitchen Death Wish. Kitchen Death Wish (or KDW to its devotees) pitted wannabe chefs against other in three rounds - an appetiser, a main and a dessert. Hardly the most original concept but producers in the genre were becoming complacent.

Too Many Cooks – Part 1

It was early when I got the call. Way too early. Half asleep I slapped the trilling menace from its cradle and it landed with a crack on the maple of my bedroom floor. I picked it up. “Moocjheenie”, I croaked. “It’s happened again”, an electronic voice, altered, robot-like, “you know the drill”, then a click to dial tone. I blinked the crust from my eyes and focussed on my watch; 3.16 a.m. and 23 seconds. A force of habit. In my line of work the difference between success and failure is so often in the minutiae. It was the third call I’d received this week. All at the same unearthly hour. The fifth since the start of the month. The world’s celebrity chefs were disappearing, one by one. Kidnapped without ransom. I’d have an email waiting for me in my in-box, of that I was sure. Another stanza in a sick sonnet from one twisted puppy.