So after my recent bold declaration that this Doctor’s brownie adventures are officially over, I was naturally confronted with all sorts of Facebook banter offering yet more tips and tricks for that thing I had just renounced. The most evil of these was a recipe which calls for cocoa powder dissolved in hot water (rather than melting chocolate), along with the suggestion that the water be replaced by booze (Nina, you know who you are).

Talk of booze in food often takes the turn of trying to discover how best to keep it in there. If you dissolve cocoa in a cup of bourbon, won’t it all just evaporate during baking (for instance)? In other words, how does one maintain the integrity of a truly boozy brownie?

Well since brownies were out, and I had recently spotted a recipe for white-chocolate-raspberry blondies, things quickly spiralled downhill. In the fridge: raspberries, no; dried strawberries, yes. In the freezer: vodka, yes. The strawberries looked very pretty in their vodka bath, and the vodka looked very pretty when I removed the strawberries a few hours later (it was, in fact, bright red, which leads me to seriously doubt the naturalness of the dried strawberries. But hey, colourful vodka cocktail coming up soon).

Worse: the blondies were dry, and not boozy at all. Had they been presented at tea time as what old Danish aunties call “sandkage” (this one you can work out for yourself), they would have been a hit. But as blondies, they were dismal failures.

I’ve made blondies before, and they were yummy and chewy and more-ish, so I blame the recipe. But I should have known better – it came from a British magazine, and what do the Brits know about blondies? Like, who would actually follow a Jamie Oliver recipe for brownies? (Don’t bother, I already did.)

Speaking of which, I believe Mr. O is now doing his very own 30-minute meals. This is amazing. Because that is exactly what Rachael Ray has built an entire empire on. He was even on her show earlier this year. So it’s not like they don’t know each other. Couldn’t he have called it “29-minute Meals”? Or, “Dinner In A Jiffy”? Or, “Pukka Nosh in Half a Tick”? Really. Anything but “I’m Just Going To Take Someone Else’s Idea And Hope That No One Notices”.

Then again, maybe it’s all the same anyway. As Michael Ruhlman put it not long ago,

‘Part of the problem is the magazine editors and television producers drumming us over the head with fast and easy meal solutions at home. It’s the wrong message to send. These editors and producers and publishers are backing the processed food industry, propelling their message. What I say to you magazine editors and producers, to you Rachael Ray and you Jamie Oliver and your 20 minutes meals: God bless you, but you are advertising and marketing on behalf of the processed food industry.’

Well, I don’t know about the God bless you part. And hey, I’m all for knocking things up in a hurry, and if the Ray and the Oliver can make that happen, then good for them. But when it panders to a public that (apparently) hasn’t got the attention span to realise that what Sir O. says is nothing new, then I’m off that bus.

Those people they create would probably even say my blondies were delicious.

PS. To clarify, when I first heard about the 30-minute meal venture, I tweeted the man himself to ask if RR hadn’t been doing the same thing for years. His response:

I guess we don’t all interpret “potential problem?” equally.

For my (to die for) “caramelized brussel sprouts with pecan nuts and blue cheese”, for instance, I would tell you that the secret is to add the garlic at the last minute of pan-time. That way you get a kick of fresh garlic to temper the sweetness of the sugar and nuts, but without the harshness of actual fresh garlic. (Because don’t you also find that if you add garlic too early, it loses its oomph?) You want garlic. But you want it just right. This is how, trust me.

(Excuse the photograph. My stylist is away watching Argentina getting thrashed by Germany).

If I were Jamie Oliver, I would tell you that this goes fantastically with small, crumbed pork cutlets (and a nice dollop of horseradish on the side), and then tell you how easy crumbed pork is to throw together. (Like this: bish bash bosh).

If I were Rachael Ray, I would tell you not to bother with the bish bash bosh, because I don’t have the time, and you don’t have the time or money to hop on your scooter, head down to your friendly (organic) butcher, have a chat about the missus, get some beautiful hand-reared, grass-fed, acupuncture-tenderised local pork, and neither do you have half a loaf of day-old sourdough lying around waiting to be whizzed into crumbs in the KitchenAid (which you don’t have either).

What you do have is Woolworths, and Woolworths will sell you a packet of (SIX) crumbed pork steaklets for R19.95:

Just throw those babies on a pan with a little EVOO, two minutes per side – in under 30 minutes, and for under R50, you have an amazing, delicious, nutritious meal! (Cue audience applause)

Or if I were Anthony Bourdain pretending to be Rachael Ray, I would say “See how cheap and easy it is? Even your dumb, lazy ass can cook this!”.

I could get into this being rich and famous business.

Especially since it took no thought at all. The brussel sprouts met pecan nuts and blue cheese because those were the only of its friends I could find in the fridge. And as for the brilliant garlic move – that was because I forgot to put it in in the beginning.

I suppose everyone who cooks knows that some of the best things we come up with are just delicious mistakes. Best to keep the rest of the world in the dark. (And it’s probably not really a good strategy to let on how much of the work Woolies does. I doubt there’s room for many more celebrity “chefs” who are basically showing people how to shop. Unless I get a job for Woolies…)

Let’s edit that a bit and apply it to Jamie Oliver’s American “Food Revolution” for a near-perfect description of what’s going on – ‘When a smutty work of Reality TV about a very serious issue gets the world talking ad nauseum, you can be sure it has touched something in the public mood’.

The ambiguity of “something in the public mood” is apt too, because even the fast-talking public can’t seem to figure out what exactly the issue is. The series (which no one outside the US has actually seen – except for me, perhaps, living as I do in a magic twilight zone where there are no broadcasting boundaries) is about “fighting obesity”. But the gamut of responses gives the lie to the possibility that it is about any one thing, which is exactly what most commentators seem to miss.

For television stations, the biggest news was that when it premiered on a Friday night, it was the highest-rated Adult 18-49 premiere for any network on the night (returning or new) since September 2007. (Even when it was rebroadcast that Sunday evening, nearly 1.5m people tuned in to watch Jamie rather than Desperate Housewives). With these kinds of numbers, who cares what it’s about, people are watching!

Early reviews criticized the show (which competes, let’s not forget, with Desperate Housewives) for regurgitating “the worst of reality TV pap“, and for not stressing “our culture’s politicization of food — the whole arugula divide, the high cost of eating right, the class issues over portion size, the constant character judgments strewn between a fine meal and the drive-thru.” Problem noted: Reality TV is not political enough.

The “our culture” in the above anticipates some of the most vehement “analyses” which postulate that Jamie’s problem is that he is a ‘pushy Brit‘ – or more accurately, that ‘Americans don’t take kindly to being reproached, particularly by one of their former colonial masters.’ Problem noted: Jamie is British. (Question: why are more people apparently listening to him than to their very own Rachael Ray, or Michelle Obama, both of whom are also “fighting obesity”?).

Another writer summarily debunks the British angle as ‘nonsensical and egocentric’ and offers her own take on Jamie’s “failure”, which has nothing to do with anything, really: ‘In truth, what makes America think Britain is small isn’t some limey guy falling on his face while dressed up like a pea; it’s Britain’s neurotic obsession with what America thinks in the first place.’ Problem noted: America and Britain have broken up.

Then there are the serious, “in-depth” analyses like this one which spends 6 pages explaining why the series has has ‘flunked out’ (I’m sure ABC would beg to differ). To the author’s credit, there are one or two intelligent statements like that ‘the “Food Revolution” is a failure because the entertainment narrative is unable to deal with complexities or systemic issues’. (Problem op cit: Reality TV is not political enough). But that would have been much more credible had it acknowledged the more general truth that Reality TV is probably not the place to deal with systemic issues in the first place – but that this example (like Jamie’s School Dinners before it) does indeed show that Reality TV might be a useful place to get people talking and maybe eventually making *some* kind of change. But this entire article is so stuck up the arse of the system that Jamie Oliver is trying to do something about that its lightbulb moment is acknowledging that ‘after the first two months of the new meals, children were overwhelmingly unhappy with the food, [chocolate and strawberry] milk consumption plummeted and many students dropped out of the school lunch program, which one school official called “staggering.” On top of that food costs were way over budget, the school district was saddled with other unmanageable expenses, and Jamie’s failure to meet nutritional guidelines had school officials worried they would lose federal funding and the state department of education would intervene.’ Problem noted: We don’t have time to wait for revolutions.

Meanwhile, someone who actually works with school lunches in the US responds with a depressing confirmation that the Reality aspect of the show (‘A high-school cafeteria that serves nothing but pizza, fries, spaghetti, and iceberg lettuce in the salad bar? A kitchen manager who drinks soda in the kitchen and seemingly spends more time complaining than working? Adults who think students won’t eat lunch if the meal doesn’t come with fries? A food service director with a permanent smirk on her face who appears to hope the whole experiment fails?’) are dangerously close to reality: ‘I’ll cut to the chase: yes. These scenes are tragically ubiquitous in our nation’s public school system.‘ Problem noted: Reality TV is too real. Lest I misrepresent her, she does actually ‘suspect that Oliver will ultimately be successful on some level, if not in Huntington, then in countless other American school districts’.

Marion Nestle at The Atlantic is similarly sympathetic, and refreshingly level-headed too: ‘Take a deep breath. Try not to get turned off by Oliver’s statement that “the food revolution starts here” (no Jamie, it doesn’t). Try not to cringe when he calls the food service workers “girls” and “luv” (okay, it’s a cultural problem). Remember: this is reality TV.’

Well, I could go on, but that would be boring. In fact the only piece I’d actually recommend reading in its entirety is this one from The Times, which impressively paints a good picture of how the Naked Chef found some clothes. It also contains the little gem that one of “best food moments” of Jamie’s life was at a “braai” barbeque in South Africa with people who “had nothing” – except, that is ‘chicks with their boobs out looking sexy and fellas looking all buff with their mirrored sunglasses. And the tunes going off and homemade hooch…’. His only regret, we are told, ‘was he didn’t have a film crew with him to capture it.’

Sigh. In South Africa we just have reality.

About half way through the film, we witness Governor Schwarze-muscle announcing one of the first bans on junk foods in schools – “This will be the toughest school nutrition reformation in the nation,” he proclaims. “We are going to terminate obesity in California once and for all.”

Then comes a scene which one reviewer describes as “Perhaps the most outrageous scene in Killer at Large….  The setting is the perimeter of an enclosed yard; it’s around noon.  A whole gaggle of kids, between eight and ten years old, are pressed up against a chain link fence, grasping through the links to procure some meager sustenance from altruistic aid workers who are unloading supplies of food from stacks of boxes. There’s a certain mad desperation to it all, like we are watching bare survival at its most primal and basic.”

“Is this some sort of refugee camp in a war torn Third World country?” he asks. “Some horrible prison for children in some benighted corner of the globe, far from America? In fact no, it’s an elementary school in California, and the adults handing food to the children are concerned parents. But the “who” involved is not the real shocking part – it’s what they are passing to them:  piles and piles of junk food – cookies, candy, soda, etc.”

Well, the “who” here does matter, I think. Because this particular scene is NOT from Hollywood High, as we are led to believe by the narrator. Here are a few shots from the actual movie (compiled with the aid of the snipping tool, my favourite new Windows 7 gagdet):

If, like me, you have been keeping up with the doings of a certain Mr. Oliver over the years, you’ll very quickly recognise this exact scene as that of the infamous “sinner ladies” who were demonised for selling “junk” to school children after they refused to eat the “healthy” meals that Mr. O helped to put in their canteens. It was The Sun that published the infamous picture in the UK in 2006, which unfortunately I cannot reprint here without permission (!!), but you can click here to see it for yourself.

This one is from The Daily Mail:

The other reason that this was so easy to identify (and therefore seriously sloppy plagiarism) is because Julie Critchlow, the short-haired blond woman, went on to become a bit famous for getting an apology from Mr. O for badmouthing her, and for becoming one of the main players in his Ministry of Food series. Here they are in the first episode sharing a spot of curry in her living room:

Jamie’s Ministry of Food was also, incidentally, the “inspiration” for his upcoming Food Revolution USA, which is basically him taking his Rotherham show on the American road. Well, actually on the West Virginian road, to Huntington, the “unhealthiest city in America” (all of which surely also helped to getting Mr. O this year’s TED prize). Watch the splendiferous preview here.

I digress. This is not about Mr. O (for once). This is about the sensational twaddle that is Killer at Large. Could I be overreacting? If we’re having a conversation about whether obesity really is a killer, and at large, then perhaps. There are some truths to those claims, and a small forged scene doesn’t detract from the facts.

But we have to seriously question ALL of the “facts” when it turns out that even one of them is manufactured. Yes, that scene did take place, but in a different time and place (on a different continent!), and it is dishonest and shameful to present it as otherwise. Also, you can’t help wondering why bother? If obesity really is the killer at large that the filmmaker sets out to “document”, then why the need to falsify evidence at all?

Misrepresentation and intellectual dishonesty (or just laziness) are the killers at large. How are we supposed to get anywhere with this sort of rubbish making the rounds?

“It’s beautiful!” I said.

“It’s beautiful?” he responded, with that sceptic’s smirk of his.

Well yes, and I dragged him into the kitchen to pull out this.

Well, not that. A better 3D copy of that, complete with a mind-numbing smell of roast chicken. It’s a bit like toast, or popcorn, or bacon. Just yum!, as Roger Webb may say as Jeremy in the excellent Peep Show.

Not being one of those people who has a roast chicken in my weekly repertoire, I had to look for a recipe, so I confess this was as easy and delicious as the one who will not be named promised it would be.

But that’s not the whole truth either. This bird, you see, had also been injected – via my new favourite gadget, the Williams Sonoma Flavor Injector. Thanks to that large syringey thing on the right, this chicken was pumped full of sherry, garlic, herbs (thyme and rosemary), a bit of dijon and a touch of maple syrup. Sweet baby Jesus succulent juicy chicken breast.

Tomorrow’s chicken and chorizo risotto will rock like a rocket.

In other news, I’ve committed myself to reading a complete stranger’s blog, only because in it she chronicles the unbelievable stupidity of actually living according to Michael Pollan’s food rules for a year. I should be saying yawn, but instead I am plotting my next book. It will be a chronicle, to borrow Rob Lyons‘ excellent phrasing, of ‘organic, cattle-produced fertiliser: bullshit.’ Oh, and of this excellent revelation: ‘The only reason privacy ever existed was because Facebook didn’t.”

I’ll call it Addicted (with Security Settings) to Virtual Bullshit.

I’ve watched a lot of Jamie Oliver over the years, for many of the same reasons that millions of others do: his food generally looks good, and he puts on a good show. But unlike many others, I am strangely indebted to him for giving me enough to think about to churn out an entire doctoral thesis on the celebrity chef phenomenon. I could even say that were it not for Jamie Oliver, you wouldn’t be talking to Dr. Rousseau today. (Scary, but true).

After all that watching, thinking, talking, and writing, I thought I’d seen it all. But after watching the bacon show, I was left pretty much speechless. What he’s done, and what he’s able to do, is truly astonishing, in all the best and worst ways.

The show is hosted in a studio fitted out with the usual podium for the star to stand on, surrounded by guests and fans. But this studio also hosts a number of pigs (no surprise there): there’s a stall with a sow who’s recently given birth; another with a sow who proceeds to give birth to thirteen piglets during the course of the show (the first piggy assisted by a vet who we watch sticking his entire arm up the mommy pig’s gwat), and perhaps most disturbing of all, a door leading to the “Pig Brother house”, in which four human beings are (voluntarily) locked in small cages that supposedly simulate the conditions of industrially farmed pigs under the worst welfare conditions (little space to move, bad food, and toilets. By the time we are introduced to the human piggies, Jamie’s friend Hugh has explained to us that contrary to popular perception, pigs are not only super-intelligent, but also very clean, and hate to shit where they sleep. So this set-up is decidedly unconducive to natural piggy behaviour).

The point of the show is to convince consumers to buy British pork, rather than the cheaper stuff imported from the EU, where pig welfare conditions leave much to be desired. The main problem, according to the wel(l)-farers, is the use of sow stalls – essentially the real version of what the human piggies were locked into: no space to turn, scratch, play, or do anything but gestate piglets while becoming fat, weak, and developing some combination of porcine depression and aggression. These contraptions were banned in the UK in 2003, but continue to be used in the vague space of the EU, which in this case was represented by Denmark, where 20% of pork production uses sow stalls (interestingly, this seems to be the percentage of Danish pork that is exported to the UK – presumably the Danes save the better stuff for themselves?).

It is about animal welfare – we were treated to some fairly disturbing footage (no surprise here), including a visibly horrified Joanna Lumley (whose face lends itself remarkably well to looking sad, despite her main expertise in playing the drunk) – but the bleeding heart stuff is really for British pork farmers whose livelihoods are under threat from the nasty EU, not to mention from British consumers who would rather buy cheap than happy pigs.

So that’s all fine and well. It’s a real problem, and therefore a good cause (and this is where Jamie’s bacon show trumps Hugh’s chicken spectacle, which never really made it about consumers and industry as much as trying to make everyone love their chickens before they roast them). And judging from the world’s reaction since Thursday when it was originally screened , the show was a major success. Sales of cheaper cuts of British pork had gone up by 20% by Monday, claims the Telegraph.  The very morning after the show, supermarkets were told to start revising their labeling policies (this was one of the major loopholes Jamie identified: consumers aren’t sure what’s British and what’s not). So what’s my problem?

Probably what it’s always been, and what I spent a bulk of that thesis trying to make sense of. Not that it’s Jamie Oliver (I have due respect for his various talents, including cooking good food and getting in people’s faces), but that it’s a chef. Five years ago when I watched him behaving like a rock star – just ‘avin a larf, bit of pukka this and that – I asked the question: doesn’t anyone think it’s weird that this is a chef? Now, as a climax to everything that began with school dinners, and his own chicken story, when a once-off 90 minute show can potentially save an entire industry, change the way people shop, cook, and eat, influence government legislation (and very likely wake up the Danes to something too), I’ll ask again: huh?

Of course it’s about much more than ‘a chef’, or even the power of celebrity, though it is about those things too. It’s also about media, and about trust: media as a platform to reach the kinds of numbers of people that need to act to make a difference, and the very strange power that media has to induce a sense of trust because it looks transparent, even as everyone knows it is a construct. I mean, there Jamie was wearing a SUIT in a studio with a bunch of pigs. But also with a bunch of very important people – government representatives, supermarket representatives, farmers, EU legislators – which he in turn got to pledge, on screen, in front of the 2 million people who were watching, to support British pork, so by the end of the 90 minutes he could sum up and say all these people have “promised” to do something. It was a piece of fucking first class bullying.

(Here we stop for an interlude of several hours, including lunch with a glass of wine, some decent limoncello, a nice massage, a good cup of home-brewed coffee).

So to wrap up, what I find remarkable about Jamie saving various bacons is not really the specifics of who’s doing it, or the fact that the most lucrative piece of bacon on the set is Jamie himself – these all confirm what I have suspected all along, and which brings us back to the issue of trust. The spectacle that he put on is just more evidence of a very real paradigm shift that is occurring at this very moment (but that many of us will miss because we are too mesmerised by the show). It’s about how things are mobilized in this society, and who we trust to be at the wheel.

We may be in the new age of Obama’s America, where millions of people have renewed faith in a politician’s powers of salvation (and real believers may even anticipate something of a revolution), but the powers of mobility have – or certainly are – shifting hands. There was a day when philosophers could write books with real power. Governments could, through generating fear or making promises, incite real change. And I sure as hell hope they still can. But I’m no longer convinced they’ll bother without being shamed into action by a figure who is now as likely to appear on the front cover of Newsweek as of People magazine. (Here’s an important non-trick question: which of those do you think has more readers?).

Perhaps the scariest thing of all is how something as momentus as this will slip silently into history as if it was meant to happen all along. I won’t be holding my breath for this year’s lists of the 100 most influential figures. I just hope that Obama at least makes it into the top 10.  (And I’m not talking about his action figure).