The Food Programme

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The Food Programme: Kitchen obsessives: Why aim to cook the perfect dish?

Kitchen obsessives: Why aim to cook the perfect dish?

BBC Radio 4 - The Food Programme, Kitchen obsessives: Why aim to cook the perfect dish?

Leyla Kazim meets cooking obsessives Felicity Cloake, Bill Buford and Kate Ng.

Leyla Kazim asks why lockdown prompted so many of us to get stuck into complex recipes. Featuring Felicity Cloake, Bill Buford and Youtuber Alex (formerly Frency Guy Cooking).

March 2020. Supermarket shelves were bare, restaurants and takeaways were closed, schools and workplaces closed. Perhaps it's no surprise then that all around the world, people started getting creative in the kitchen. But as Leyla Kazim finds in this programme, some cooks took lockdown cooking to a whole new level.

Warwickshire cook Dan Fell made headlines for sharing his 'perfect' fried chicken recipe after spending 18 months testing it. In New York, journalist and chef Bill Buford became obsessed with cooking the perfect roast chicken. And journalist Kate Ng spent her days emulating the perfect crimps on her Grandmother's curry puffs. It seemed we'd become culinary perfectionists in our own kitchens.

For Leyla Kazim, lockdown was all about baking the perfect sourdough loaf. In this programme she wants asks why so many of us became obsessed with creating the perfect meal, and what the quest for perfecting a dish says about us. She speaks to long standing recipe obsessives food writer Felicity Cloake and 'obsessional' Youtube cook Alex.

Presented by Leyla Kazim.
Produced by Clare Salisbury for BBC Audio in Bristol.

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Kitchen obsessives: Why aim to cook the perfect dish?

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