Rick Stein

I am not really into the whole celebrity chef thing. I find it amusing that on the one hand we are constantly reminded of the obesity crisis and that we shouldn’t eat this, drink that and do lots of exercise and at the same time we are inundated with cooking show. Most dishes celeb chefs cook up are quite high in calories because they use proper ingredients such as salt and butter – it just makes the food taste better. Low fat is a fallacy – try to live on a low fat diet – you won’t last long. Products are often spiced up with lots of sugar/salt and you’re always left hungry and reach for more. But I digress – my diet rant is reserved for my diet category.

Rick Stein is a celeb chef I have a lot of time for – if I could afford it (and nag my husband enough) I’d love to eat in his restaurant. I love his programmes and was sad when his loyal dog Chalky died. He was such an important part of the programme. I don’t think I have ever heard Rick Stein swearing (well at least not as much as Jamie Oliver, whose “Save the British bacon” was well worth watching; or Gordon Ramsay whose maine vocabulary seems to just consist of one word) which is very rare these days.  I just checked his website http://www.rickstein.com/ and realised that you can actually attend cooking classes – how fab is that?

I have just added Rick Stein to my long list of people I’d love to meet and interview. I could imagine that a profile about him would be interesting to German readers. I always wondered about his surname, Stein is German for Stone, but didn’t realise until yesterday, when I watched him on “Who do you think you are”, that his father was German. His family background is quite interesting. I was quite shocked when he talked about his father’s family being intimidated for being German during WW1. His mother came across as a very strong and determined lady. The story of her grandparents, who spent 20 years stuck in hostile Canton as missionaries, was really sad.