Battle of the Saturdays again

Battle of the Saturday’s again
I thought I’d check the two Saturday food offerings again and compare and contrast. AWT’s Saturday Cooks has Momma Cherri, Gino D’Acampo and Ching He-Huang. Gino cooks tomato sauce – fortunately I have a fast forward button. Next the newly named Meals on Reels (the ingredient randomiser), is pulled and chooses for Gino - turkey, red pepper and vanilla pod, Ching gets lamb chops, water cress and Parma ham and AWT gets tuna steak, radishes and walnut. I think I’d rather have Ching’s option. Momma cook’s her favourite Fourth of July dish – bar-b-q chicken wings (with loads of tomatoes) and Gino uses his tomato sauce in a Chicken Arrabiata and pizza Napoli. Ching makes a kind of Thai spag bol. Thai-style meatball and noodle salad. The BBC option is looking much more attractive for me at the moment! AWT makes a potato salad but unnecessarily (I think) uses loads of mayonnaise. And if that wasn’t enough it was coleslaw testing for the supermarket test. Clearly they didn’t want me to watch the show! At least the very pretty Ching’s recipe for the mystery ingredient was chosen though of course she added the ubiquitous soy sauce. She whipped up a terriaki style glazed lamb chop with crispy Parma ham and watercress salad.
James Martin has John Torode and Oliver Rowe. John cooks a halibut, butter bean and chorizo dish. The programme excerpts started with Rick Stein lovely French Odyssey with creamy clams and steak tartare in Bazas. Yum! Jamie’s bit was making the chocolate pots and the ‘Jamie breakfast’ for his wife and her clubbing friends, the Hairy Bikers were in Namibia and Delia concocts some cold almond and garlic soup and ginger ice cream. James Martin took the steak tartare and turned it into an inside out cheese burger with Tallegio. Oliver made a very interesting chicken, creamy spatzel and cabbage dish. Oliver does his spatzel with a piping bag and not through a colander like I saw on another food show. It looks a much quicker way to make them. Oliver and John compete in the Top Gear sty-le fastest omelette challenge and John wins but is slower that Paul Rankin’s 57 seconds omelette last week. The fast-forward didn’t really get used in Saturday Kitchen at all. Finally, Arlene Phillips from the Strictly come dancing programme is forced to eat her hell dish of onion gravy and Yorkshire Pudding instead of her heavenly chicory jam, goat’s cheese and beetroot salad. So in conclusion and I am sure with no surprise, with the much superior food choices and the lack of adverts, Saturday Kitchen wins hands down! And I also managed to catch Gary Rhodes’ doing his savoury dishes – smoked haddock lasagne (mmmm, no nasty tomato!), home made baked beans (many, many tomatoes!), oat meal fried salmon slice, really gorgeous looking mushrooms and pesto and melted Gruyère on toast, my favourite Eggs Benedict, sardines on toast and to finish, homemade digestive biscuits to go with cheese. Really a veritable feast of savouries! It is lovely to see the like of Gary Rhodes’ repeats on BBC as of course when they’re repeated on UKFood they have to be annoyingly edited to accommodate the adverts. It is only when you see them like this that you’re reminded of how much gets cut. BBC wins again!