Lure of being a social media chef means youngsters forgoing classic training, Michelin star cook warns
Scroll through your timeline of choice and it won’t be long until you land on a video posted by a social media chef trying to send their recipes viral.Such is the popularity of cooking videos that everyone from Michelin star masters to self-taught beginners like Brooklyn Beckham are setting up tripods on their kitchen counters to capture the perfect cut, cuisson or crust on their culinary creations.But the lure of social media could, according to some industry figures,be causing young cooks forgo the formal training of a catering college.Will Murray, who worked at the double Michelin-starred restaurant Dinner by Heston before opening his own critically acclaimed venue, Fallow, said social media cooking videos sometimes stretch the boundaries of what is possible.“Social media has helped people get into cooking.
Do I think that’s necessarily the best way to do it? I don’t.The difference right now is there is so much more cooking content online that people look to get their knowledge elsewhere other than old school methods, the traditional gateways into it,” he said.“If people think it’s easy because they saw it on Instagram, that might set someone up for a hard entry into a kitchen.”Murray said that some of the apprenticeships are finding it difficult to find young people who want to do the traditional cookery courses: “A lot of apprenticeships are struggling up and down the country to get young talent.I don’t think cooking is any different, it is hard to get people inspired.
”Murray is a judge for the San Pellegrino academy and said these competitions help forge people’s skills.Applications for the academy are open, and the Roux scholarship winner has just been announced.Twenty-eight-year-old Harrison Brockington, head chef and owner of Gather in Totnes, Devon, won the prestigious award with a Mediterranean-inspired “Surf & Turf” dish and won a three-month apprenticeship at a three-star Michelin restaurant.Murray said: “We’ve put quite a few people through competitions at Fallow.It’s a proper pressure cooker, it teaches you to work at such a high level and for young people to be exposed to that is brilliant.
”It has been easier for him than other restaurant owners to hire chefs; his restaurant has 1.5 million followers on Instagram and the team is constantly posting videos of their interesting recipes, including a whole cod’s head bathed in sriracha butter.Emily Roux, Michelin-starred chef at Caractère restaurant in Notting Hill, is the daughter of celebrity chef Michel Roux Jr.She is also judging the San Pellegrino awards and is involved in the Roux scholarship.She said the competitions help test skills in the real-life and high-pressured environments of cooking for other chefs, and allow cooks to learn skills they may not have had before.
“It is also a great life lesson, it is putting a little bit of pressure on yourself going through a competition.They’re never easy.I think they help with skills, you can learn from the other candidates there, there is a lot of waiting involved when things are being judged, and a lot of chatting.”The new MasterChef judges Anna Haugh and Grace Dent have complained about the proliferation of unrealistic cooking videos on TikTok in the buildup to the new series.Haugh said in a recent interview: “Some of the stuff you see on social media, it breaks my heart as a chef, where I’m like: that’s not true, that can’t be done.
”Dent added that her feelings on social media recipes “have become much more nuanced recently”,She said: “On one level, I’m absolutely aware that a lot of those recipes don’t work, because I’ve been foolish enough to try them,Like, this cake only takes two and a half minutes, it only needs bicarbonate of soda, a frying pan and an egg,”
Dozens of MPs oppose Streeting’s new power to say what NHS pays for drugs
Dozens of MPs are opposing Wes Streeting’s decision to award himself power to dictate what the NHS pays for drugs amid growing concern the move may be illegal.Thirty-one MPs have signed a House of Commons motion voicing their disapproval of the health secretary being handed the power to override the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence’s (Nice) judgment on how much the NHS should spend on individual medicines.They fear that the change is a “power grab” that undermines the role Nice has played since its creation in 1999 as the arbiter of which medicines constitute value for money for the NHS to buy – and thus which patients can receive – in England and Wales. Nice is widely viewed internationally as a model of how to protect against drug companies charging excessive prices.Labour, Green, Liberal Democrat, Independent, Scottish Nationalist and Plaid Cymru MPs have backed a “prayer”, tabled by the Labour ex-shadow chancellor John McDonnell
Key figure in Mandelson vetting scandal will not give evidence before MPs
A key figure in the row over Peter Mandelson’s appointment as UK ambassador to Washington will not appear before a parliamentary committee of MPs to give evidence.Emily Thornberry had requested that Ian Collard speak to the foreign affairs committee (FAC) on Tuesday, but confirmed on Saturday that he would submit written answers instead.The committee has already heard from Olly Robbins, the Foreign Office’s top civil servant who was forced out of his post last week after the decision to fail Mandelson during his security vetting was overruled by his department, and the Cabinet Office permanent secretary, Cat Little. Keir Starmer’s former chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, is due to appear on Tuesday.Collard, who has given evidence to the select committee previously, is a former ambassador to Lebanon and Panama and was appointed the Foreign Office’s chief property and security officer in March 2023
Security vetting stepped up after MP is given bodyguard with far-right links
The security company that provides bodyguards for MPs has tightened its vetting processes after it sent a bodyguard with far-right links to protect a politician who was under threat from extremists.Mitie, which has a £31m contract for the work, is updating its CPO (Close Protection Operative) vetting processes to include regular social media checks. There will also be random checks on the social media activity of those already taken on.Concerns about the threat to MPs from extremists – including Islamists and the far right – have risen, with elected representatives facing a level of threat not seen since the campaign mounted by Irish republican terrorists in the 1980s and 70s.Mitie’s contract followed the assassination of the Conservative MP David Amess by an Islamist terrorist in 2021
Partygate v Mandelson: Keir Starmer faces attack from his own playbook
The lexicon of a British parliamentary scandal is arcane.As Keir Starmer fights to remain prime minister, he has had to respond to a “humble address”, had his judgment picked over during an “emergency opposition day debate” and now faces the ignominy of a “privilege motion”.Close observers of UK politics will, however, recognise these terms as familiar: they are all parliamentary tools used by Labour in opposition as they tried to hold the Conservatives accountable at various points – not least during the Partygate affair that helped bring down Boris Johnson.At first sight, the two controversies are very different.Johnson was ousted in the wake of allegations that he had attended parties in Downing Street during a pandemic lockdown he presided over
Unlucky chancellor? Iran shock hits Reeves just as UK seemed to turn corner
Donald Trump’s war on Iran is “folly”; shadow chancellor Mel Stride should be “lined up for the sack”; and the Liberal Democrat Daisy Cooper’s plan for managing fuel shortages is “fundamentally economically illiterate”.Rachel Reeves has always relished a political fight, but in recent days she has been swinging at her opponents with what looks very much like enjoyment.Her team say the chancellor’s righteous anger is calculated. The consequences of the conflict may still be being felt in many months and she wants to hammer home two claims: that “we did not start this war and we did not join this war”, as Reeves told MPs this week; and that before the bombs started falling, the UK economy was on the up.“We have got to win the argument that the economy was turning the corner before the war and there was momentum behind it
‘Nigel is mad to accept his money’: who is Christopher Harborne, the mystery billionaire bankrolling Reform?
A crypto tycoon is giving record-breaking amounts to Farage’s party. But little is known about his motivesShortly before Christmas 2022, Chakrit Sakunkrit, owner of the Kamalaya Wellness Sanctuary on the Thai island of Koh Samui, invited 200 guests to spend a few days celebrating his 60th birthday. One sultry afternoon, Sakunkrit and a small group gathered around a table near the shore, surrounded by the burgundy foliage of Good Luck plants. To his right, dressed down in a polo shirt, sat Nigel Farage.Since Brexit marked the achievement of his life’s work three years earlier, Farage had fizzled
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