![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ventaYesterday, while in the gym, I was half-watching an ITV program called Dinner Date.
Dinner Date is a dating show, which aims to help its contestants "find true love through the love of food". Well, I can't fault that as an idea.
For those of you who are as ignorant of daytime TV as I usually am, it works as follows:
1. Five cooking-contestants each put together a menu for a three course meal.
2. One dining-contestant selects three of the menus, and goes in turn to the house of each cooking-contestant to have the menu cooked for them. Dining-contestant critiques the food.
3. Dining-contestant selects the favourite cooking-contestant.
4. All three cooking-contestants get dolled up to be taken out somewhere for dinner by dining-contestant; two will answer the door to find someone presenting them with dinner-for-one on a silver salver, the third will find dining-contestant waiting to take them to a restaurant.
At least, I think it does. I've half-watched it a few times, in five-minute chunks, with the sound off and ITV's rather bad auto-generated subtitles. I may have misunderstood something, or indeed got it totally wrong.
Now... I don't like stage 4, I think it's unnecessarily humiliating for people to wait for a knock on the door, then find themselves all dressed up with no place to go. Then again, I find an awful lot of TV unnecessarily humiliating.
My real gripe with it, though is that (as far as I'm aware) the cooking-contestants are female and the dining-contestant is male. Every time. Now, I don't watch it regularly so there's a chance that every other episode/series a girl gets to select her favourite from five guys, but somehow I doubt it. If they ever do one like that, I expect it'll be with a big fanfare: Dinner Date SWITCH!, in which OMG a MAN operates a COOKER! Hilarity might even ensue.
Anyway. I'm willing to pass over a whole bunch of other stuff (it's a dating show, what do you expect) but that does bug me. Having said that, ITV's pitch for it does describe dining-contestant as a "person", so maybe it is more unisex.
However. If you gloss over minor problems like, say, going on a blind date in someone else's house - which probably isn't a very good idea - I think cooking dinner for someone would be a great idea for a date.
The bit that actually interested me the most was the initial five minutes, when our Man reads through the five menus he's been offered and chooses three of them. In yesterday's episode, one menu was immediately discarded because it featured bobotie and he didn't know what it was. I didn't know what it was either, but I'd have considered that a reason to go for that option. If I were putting together a menu, I'd be tempted to include something unusual just to weed out the finickerty eaters.
There does seem to be a definite theme to the menus: something fishy or prawns for a starter, lots of red meat for a main course, and something in the chocolate/strawberry region for pud. I'd be interested to know whether that would change if the cooking-contestants were boys.
So... imagine a blind date were coming to your house. How would you decide what to cook[*]? Would you go mainstream middle-of-the-road to suit all comers? Would you make it as weirdly interesting as possible to check their adventurousness? Cook your own favourites? Try to second-guess what a 37 year old actuary from Much Wenlock might like for dinner? Would you, in fact, approach the menu problem any differently if it were a date or a friend coming round?
My main consideration is, I think, that I'd aim towards things where a lot of preparation can be done ahead. I cooked for two dinner parties close together earlier in the year: the first featured beef Wellington, which was already assembled and chilling in the fridge when the first guests arrived an hour early. The second involved risotto, which was a daft choice because it needs constant attention for ages while people are arriving. Definitely Wellington is, for convenience and lack of last-minute panic, the way to go. Although it does mean I'm conforming to the big-lump-of-red-meat stereotype.
One thing I do rather fail at is putting together a menu. What starter/pudding goes with this main course? Obviously I wouldn't follow steak pie with apple pie[**] but the finer details are always a bit lost on me. Any advice on how to learn this skill greatly appreciated :)
[*] I arbitrarily decree that your blind date has exactly the same eating restrictions as you. So if you're vegetarian/Coeliac/keeping kosher/allergic to dairy produce/bound by an ancient family curse to eat only acorns, then so are they.
[**] Actually, it's pretty likely *I* would. But I accept my guests might not also be deranged pie obsessives. Wanting pie at every opportunity does not constitute an "eating restriction", as described above :)
In utterly unrelated news: I feel vaguely wrong listening to The Tea Party now. They are not (as far as I'm aware!) connected with the political movement.
Dinner Date is a dating show, which aims to help its contestants "find true love through the love of food". Well, I can't fault that as an idea.
For those of you who are as ignorant of daytime TV as I usually am, it works as follows:
1. Five cooking-contestants each put together a menu for a three course meal.
2. One dining-contestant selects three of the menus, and goes in turn to the house of each cooking-contestant to have the menu cooked for them. Dining-contestant critiques the food.
3. Dining-contestant selects the favourite cooking-contestant.
4. All three cooking-contestants get dolled up to be taken out somewhere for dinner by dining-contestant; two will answer the door to find someone presenting them with dinner-for-one on a silver salver, the third will find dining-contestant waiting to take them to a restaurant.
At least, I think it does. I've half-watched it a few times, in five-minute chunks, with the sound off and ITV's rather bad auto-generated subtitles. I may have misunderstood something, or indeed got it totally wrong.
Now... I don't like stage 4, I think it's unnecessarily humiliating for people to wait for a knock on the door, then find themselves all dressed up with no place to go. Then again, I find an awful lot of TV unnecessarily humiliating.
My real gripe with it, though is that (as far as I'm aware) the cooking-contestants are female and the dining-contestant is male. Every time. Now, I don't watch it regularly so there's a chance that every other episode/series a girl gets to select her favourite from five guys, but somehow I doubt it. If they ever do one like that, I expect it'll be with a big fanfare: Dinner Date SWITCH!, in which OMG a MAN operates a COOKER! Hilarity might even ensue.
Anyway. I'm willing to pass over a whole bunch of other stuff (it's a dating show, what do you expect) but that does bug me. Having said that, ITV's pitch for it does describe dining-contestant as a "person", so maybe it is more unisex.
However. If you gloss over minor problems like, say, going on a blind date in someone else's house - which probably isn't a very good idea - I think cooking dinner for someone would be a great idea for a date.
The bit that actually interested me the most was the initial five minutes, when our Man reads through the five menus he's been offered and chooses three of them. In yesterday's episode, one menu was immediately discarded because it featured bobotie and he didn't know what it was. I didn't know what it was either, but I'd have considered that a reason to go for that option. If I were putting together a menu, I'd be tempted to include something unusual just to weed out the finickerty eaters.
There does seem to be a definite theme to the menus: something fishy or prawns for a starter, lots of red meat for a main course, and something in the chocolate/strawberry region for pud. I'd be interested to know whether that would change if the cooking-contestants were boys.
So... imagine a blind date were coming to your house. How would you decide what to cook[*]? Would you go mainstream middle-of-the-road to suit all comers? Would you make it as weirdly interesting as possible to check their adventurousness? Cook your own favourites? Try to second-guess what a 37 year old actuary from Much Wenlock might like for dinner? Would you, in fact, approach the menu problem any differently if it were a date or a friend coming round?
My main consideration is, I think, that I'd aim towards things where a lot of preparation can be done ahead. I cooked for two dinner parties close together earlier in the year: the first featured beef Wellington, which was already assembled and chilling in the fridge when the first guests arrived an hour early. The second involved risotto, which was a daft choice because it needs constant attention for ages while people are arriving. Definitely Wellington is, for convenience and lack of last-minute panic, the way to go. Although it does mean I'm conforming to the big-lump-of-red-meat stereotype.
One thing I do rather fail at is putting together a menu. What starter/pudding goes with this main course? Obviously I wouldn't follow steak pie with apple pie[**] but the finer details are always a bit lost on me. Any advice on how to learn this skill greatly appreciated :)
[*] I arbitrarily decree that your blind date has exactly the same eating restrictions as you. So if you're vegetarian/Coeliac/keeping kosher/allergic to dairy produce/bound by an ancient family curse to eat only acorns, then so are they.
[**] Actually, it's pretty likely *I* would. But I accept my guests might not also be deranged pie obsessives. Wanting pie at every opportunity does not constitute an "eating restriction", as described above :)
In utterly unrelated news: I feel vaguely wrong listening to The Tea Party now. They are not (as far as I'm aware!) connected with the political movement.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-21 11:10 pm (UTC)Pshaw.
I managed to smash a pot of chocolate spread all over the floor, scald one finger to blistering point and throw soup across the floor and I was only cooking for a chap I live with.
I also sheared a bolt off changing a car battery, but that was earlier in the day.
The jury's still out on whether the CD player's lasers becoming misaligned and the building's electronic locking system imploding were my fault.