Food and Cookery
I am not a chef. I’ve never been taught to cook. And yet in 2020 I made my own cookery show. Lord knows why!
In 2019 I started writing for Foodtribe as a content creator. Which in my opinion didn’t make a great deal of sense. I had never really had that much of an interest in food that’d drive me to write about it. I enjoyed cooking and taking time to make dinner, but not so much that I’d spend time writing about it, let along filming myself doing it! And here we are. In the intervening time, I’ve reviewed tinned food, written about food in Ecuador and Croatia, written a column from a barstool in Bath, critiqued the Great British Pub Crawl, and hosted a cookery show.
23/03/21 - The Start of Series Two of Formula Food
Well, the second series of my cookery show is up and off with a little nostalgia trip. We have gone back to a recipe I concocted in series one and revamped it to create a vegetarian dish, as well as try a different style of biryani, resulting in some form of aloo biryani. I pushed myself to try some more stylistic shooting styles for this video and I’m very pleased with the results from it. Annoyingly the credits scroll at the end failed to render properly on my ailing laptop, and I wasn’t prepared to wait another two and a half hours for Premiere Pro to melt my processors to rectify the issue. Hopefully I will have enough saved up to buy a new laptop come April. Maybe I’ll have a job by then?
26/10/21 - 17 Episodes into Series Two
The season is doing well so far. Fitting filming into an increasingly hectic schedule has proven to be tricky, but with some strong planning, we got there. At this point, we’ve just finished the US GP and are planning to film the remaining episodes in the first week of November while we’ve got free roam of the house. Researching the recipes for the next GPs have proven to be insightful and educational. On the list of still to come; Arabic coffee, mole, machboos, thareed and many other bits. Not necessarily in that order.
In the meantime, check out the episode for Texas where we tuck into some ribs and fresh cornbread muffins.
Outside of Formula Food, I’ve been working closely with Fleet Street Communications promoting some products from the companies they represent.
From reviewing the edible and drinkable sponsors on the Formula One grid, to cooking along with the season, conjuring up a dish for each location the racing circus headed to in the 2020 season. At the moment a second series is being filmed and planned with the episodes set to be released as the season goes.
25/05/21 - 5 Episodes into Series Two
So far, so good. The feedback and interaction with this series is a lot stronger than it was last series. I feel my filming and editing style is progressing nicely, aided somewhat by no longer battling a dying laptop to get edits turned around promptly. At this point we’ve explored variations on ragù, finally nailed making fresh pasta, tried Portuguese salted cod, a new sort of chorizo, and made some Monegasque street food. With a changing season ahead of us I’ve had to do some rescheduling with the up coming parts of the series. I’m a little relieved to not have to cook for the Turkish GP again, as it wasn’t my strongest episode from the previous series, and I haven’t been able to practice the techniques and work with the seasoning and style needed to nail this cuisine. Instead we’ll be focusing on French and Austrian cuisine.
Big Articles - Lots of words, many thoughts.
Are we becoming a nation of outdoor eaters?
Beyond my F1-based cookery, I’ve also been squeezing in time to write about the world of food and eating out. Crucially, has lockdown changed the way we dine out? With the staggered reopening of our eating establishments, outdoor then indoor; have diners in the UK become more accepting of café culture and the Mediterranean style of eating outside come what may. A blend of Parisian coffee shops and the Great British Picnic.
“As autumn sets in here in the northern hemisphere, it's time to see what's going to be fresh in the fields.” I felt it’d be fun to do something slightly different and take a look at what foods can be sourced seasonally and from inside the UK each month. While it’s a little bit of a niche and privileged thing to write about, it does have some educational worth I feel.
Looking back on this now in 2022, it’s sad that FoodTribe died a death beyond my control and as did this series. Ah well. Better things were on the horizon.