What’s cooking on reality TV?

Jenny Morris, judge of the LG Life Tastes Good Cooking Championship, watches over contestants Gerdi Scholts and Aart Verrips.

Jenny Morris, judge of the LG Life Tastes Good Cooking Championship, watches over contestants Gerdi Scholts and Aart Verrips.

Published Aug 24, 2011

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Television viewers are being treated to two new local reality series focusing on cooking by amateurs, one of them being the LG Life Tastes Good Cooking Championship, now in its third year, which is being broadcast for the first time on DStv’s Home Channel (channel 182).

The other series is a South African version of the hit British programme Come Dine With Me, for which auditions for local contestants were finalised recently.

The LG Life Tastes Good Championship takes 32 amateur chefs, adds them to a steamy kitchen, increases the pressure and watches the temperature rise as they are slowly reduced, week by week. The aim is to find the final top amateur chef team whichwill represent South Africa in the LG Life Tastes Good Cooking Championship international final in Turkey later in the year.

The show encourages amateur food wizards to enter their finest recipes and, with a partner, prepare their dishes for the judges. There are 16 teams in this year’s competition.

The competition is judged by one of South Africa’s most loved food personalities - Durban-born and now Cape Town-based Jenny Morris, also known as “The Giggling Gourmet” - and is hosted by 702 radio personality Kieno Kammies.

The first of 13 episodes aired on August 13and saw the first eliminations as four contestants got cooking for a spot in the quarter-finals.

Sisters Tsholofelo and Lesego, of Team One, prepared a roasted chicken with tomatoes, mushroom sauce and sweet and sour curried carrots to challenge Team Two, Norman and Malcolm, who offered roasted lamb shank with roasted vine tomatoes and butternut gratin dauphinois.

The final episode of the series, aired at 7.30pm each Tuesday, is scheduled for November 8.

The prize for the top team includes a kitchen appliance for each member of the team, R30 000 and the opportunity to represent South Africa at the Middle East and Africa finals in Turkey.

“Food and the art of cooking is such an important part of South African culture and with the championship open to all food lovers, we are bound to see an assortment of culinary creations and recipes,” says Bronwyn Hume, a spokesman for the show.

* Getting back to Come Dine With Me South Africa… it will be produced locally by Rapid Blue and pre-production on the series has begun.

The show will debut at 9pm on October 12 on DStv’s BBC Entertainment (channel 120) and will also air on BBC channel networks across the Middle East, Scandinavia and Poland.

Shooting for the 10-part series will take place in Durban, Joburg and Cape Town.

Come Dine With Me South Africa follows five strangers competing for the title of the ultimate dinner-party host. Each night for a week they will take it in turn to cook up their idea of the perfect evening.

As well as cooking, the rival hosts snoop around each others’ houses and go to bizarre lengths to win the competition.

At the end of the evening, the host is judged by their guests and scored out of 10. The contestant with the most points at the end of the week wins a cash prize.

Come Dine With Me is a consistent ratings hit with audiences in the UK and the format has become equally popular with international broadcasters. The format has been sold into some 30 territories across the world, including Iran, Australia and France.

Ian McDonough of BBC Worldwide Channels said: “Food programming has proven to be immensely popular on our channels and Come Dine With Me unites an exciting cross-section of contestants from all social and cultural backgrounds - not to mention ages and genders - through their love of food and entertaining.

“Creating a local version of this hugely successful British format signals our ongoing commitment to the region and to our audiences.”

* Keeping things cooking, note that a new 10-part series, Rachel Allen’s Dinner Parties, is scheduled for 8.25pm and 8.55pm on Thursdays, on DStv’s BBC Lifestyle (channel 180), starting next week.

Everybody wants to be able to throw the perfect dinner party, and in this stylish new series Allen shows exactly how that is done.

In each episode a different group of people, who regularly host and attend each other’s dinner parties put forward one of their number to join Allen in her kitchen for the ultimate hands-on dinner-party cooking lesson, so they can host their own great meal.

“Rachel outlines the menu she has devised for them. She cooks the starter and the main course master-class, with our willing student eagerly collecting the tips they’ll need to recreate Rachel’s dishes to perfection,” says a show spokeman,

“Rachel then sends our host-to-be home, promising that she’ll prepare the dessert course and have it delivered to them on the big night.”

“Rachel also sends an interior stylist to the home. Having prepared the room, the stylist leaves, and then we’re into the party itself. We’ll see the host’s culinary efforts and their guests’ reactions to the setting, the starter, the main course, and the surprise dessert which Rachel delivers.” - Independent on Saturday

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