Live food events must be fun for celebrity chefs, particularly when they are held in exotic locations: you fly in, do a few cooking demonstrations and socialise in the sun.
Lotte Duncan, on the other hand, could be the busiest person at the BBC Good Food Show in Dubai this weekend. And she prefers it that way.
“I’ve just come off four days at the show in Birmingham – it’s probably why I look so tired,” says Duncan, smiling, during a video chat from Oxford, England. “Forty three interviews in four days, all live. On Saturday it was back-to-back. Every 15 minutes, I interviewed another chef.”
Duncan’s cooking career has certainly taken some unforeseen twists in the past 30 years. A familiar face on British television, having worked on numerous successful – and less successful – food formats, the versatile chef is now a regular host at the popular BBC Good Food shows, and will be grilling chefs on the interview stage at the inaugural event in Dubai.
“I know them all – I’ve ether worked with them or cooked against them,” she says. “Every chef is different.”
Duncan’s story is certainly unique. As a teenager, she studied at Le Cordon Bleu, has lived in Switzerland and Los Angeles, took up teaching when she returned to the United Kingdom, opened a cookery school and a cafe, and now she runs the highly regarded Thame Food Festival.
But demonstrating dishes for students sparked another ambition. “Seventeen years ago, I decided that I wanted to do cooking on TV,” she says, “so I started writing to loads of producers, all the time.”
Her persistence paid off and Duncan took advantage of a TV cookery revolution, as stuffy old food shows were replaced by more lively, innovative formats and enthusiastic presenters.
“Before, it was very formal,” she says. “My first series was Simply Puddings, which was very popular, although I have nothing but hideous memories of it. I filmed 13 shows in four days. Usually that would take weeks. But that’s where we learnt our art.”
Duncan went on to appear on well-known cookery game shows in the UK and the United States, became a resident chef on the Food Network TV channel and has also moved into online content, where the potential “is huge”, she says.
But the live shows are a particular labour of love and can be surprisingly exhilarating. She recalls squeezing in a demonstration between interviews at a recent event, which overran: “I realised, ‘Oh my goodness, I’ve got five minutes,’ so I literally threw the dish together – ‘Bye’ – and ran back to the interview stage.”
The ebullient presenter adds: “I love ‘live’, but a lot of [food] people don’t” and these enormous shows must startle chefs who usually work in confined kitchens or television studios.
The high-profile guests for the Dubai event include UK television stars Paul Hollywood and James Martin, and they often attract many hundreds of spectators. Can that be unnerving, as you demonstrate a tricky dish?
“I don’t get nervous now,” says Duncan, “but people love a disaster – it shows you’re human. I was once making mayonnaise, telling everyone, ‘Luckily I’ve only curdled it once in about 25 years,’ getting all cocky – and it curdled. So I went, ‘And now I’ll show you how to retrieve it.’ But you’ll always get that, because you’re working with volatile ingredients.”
The host is usually too busy to properly wander around and enjoy the festivals, but has a tip for new visitors.
“Plan it. I’ll definitely plan my schedule, see when my favourite chefs are on and thoroughly look at all the different producers, taste their food,” she says.
“Also, for the chefs, it’s a great opportunity to showcase in Dubai. And if they’re ill, I’ll jump up and whip something up. No problem.”
• BBC Good Food Show is at Dubai World Trade Centre from Thursday, December 17, until Saturday, December 19. Tickets cost from Dh150; for packages and pricing, visit www.bbcgoodfoodshowdubai.com
Defending English cuisine
Lotte Duncan is a passionate advocate for a cuisine that is often mocked: English cooking. How did a nation’s culinary habits become so stigmatised?
“The 1970s happened,” she says. “Lots of processed food, which I grew up on. We weren’t a rich nation until the 1980s. Food just wasn’t a priority.”
In fact, English cuisine started to lose its way more than a century earlier, as a result of several major conflicts – including the French Revolution.
“In Victorian times, English dining was fabulous,” says Duncan. “We were well known for these amazing salads – books were written. Women were very dominant in the kitchen, but they were pushed aside by all the French chefs coming in, post-revolution. So we lost all this history and knowledge.”
In the 20th century, two wars massively limited the British diet – food rationing introduced during the Second World war remained in place until 1954. But over the past 20 years, English food has enjoyed its own revolution, mixing the traditional with the radical.
The trendsetter was The Fat Duck, Heston Blumenthal’s converted 16th-century inn, which in the late 1990s began offering experimental, multisensory dishes. Enduring classics include Sounds of the Sea – shellfish served with headphones and a musical soundtrack – and savoury lollies. English cuisine became genuinely exciting again.
Meanwhile, those forgotten cooking techniques are also returning.
“We’ve got all these amazing producers nowadays,” says Duncan, “and a lot of them are using old recipes, which I love to see.”
* Si Hawkins
artslife@thenational.ae
