Mark on Rachel Allen's Home Cooking TV show
The ‘Rachel Allen: Home Cooking’ programme on the Good Food (formerly UKTV Food) channel observes the UK’s most skilled, imaginative and entertaining chefs cooking at home for their own families. The series is a co-production between Good Food and RTE (in Ireland) and will also be shown on RTE and BBC 1.
For Mark, a Masterchef of Great Britain and the proprietor of the renowned Baumanns Brasserie in Coggeshall, the show – which aired on September 24th 2009 – gave him the opportunity to reveal another side to his cooking.
Mark said: “As a busy chef it’s really important for me to take any chance I have to cook for my family and enjoy a great meal together. Just as in the brasserie, the secret for me is great ingredients and so I used some fantastic local produce in the dish they filmed.”
Mark prepared a traditional cottage pie, assisted by his wife Fiona with daughters Milly, 10, and Charley, 12, at their home in Feering. He used locally sourced beef from the Dedham Vale, along with peas shelled fresh from their pods and locally grown baby carrots.
“This is just the sort of thing we would eat at home as a family. But will it appear on the menu at Baumanns? I’m not sure! I think when people come to a top restaurant they’re looking to try things they wouldn’t usually prepare.”
The programme’s host, celebrated TV chef, author and journalist Rachel Allen, spent the day with Mark and his family. She said: “We want to show that even the top chefs know the importance of honest, home cooked food. It’s easy to imagine they go home and feed their children foie gras and quail, but that’s absolutely not the case!
“We want to show that you don’t need a kitchen that looks like a science lab to create great home cooked food – the professionals do it just as well at home!”
This is the latest TV appearance for Mark who has already starred in his own ITV series ‘Baumann Goes to Market’. He is also a guest presenter on Good Food's flagship programme Great Food Live and has featured most recently in The Hairy Bikers’ Food Tour of Britain. He has also authored a book, ‘Posh Food for the Common Man’ and runs the very popular Baumanns Cooking Academy courses in Earls Colne.
