Chicken a la Chocolate. No, not a novel new way of trying to make children eat their protein, but one of the improvised dishes created on RTE's new cookery programme, Pot Luck. Presented by the ubiquitous Carrie Crowley, Pot Luck is airing Monday to Thursday at 5.30 p.m. The first of 51 programmes in the series went out on Monday.
The programmes come in halfhour portions, in a form billed as a "cookery game-show". Among the chefs participating in the series are: Rory O'Connell of Ballymaloe House; Michael Martin of The Tea Rooms; Lucy Madden of Hilton Park; Johnny Cooke of Cooke's Cafe; and Michel Flamme of The K Club. There is also an appearance by Damien Berney, representing Network Catering at Heuston Station - perhaps not a venue the public will have previously associated with fine cuisine. Two chefs participate in each programme, which comprises a cook-off between them.
Tuning in, viewers may initially be fooled into thinking they are watching the twice-weekly selection of the Lotto numbers, since the five main ingredients for each chef are selected at random using numbered balls that swirl around in a clear plastic dome and then go tumbling down a chute. The number on each ball corresponds with a particular ingredient.
"It's the luck of the draw," Carrie Crowley says. "Someone could get three carbohydrates, like noodles, potatoes and rice. The challenge is to come up with a dish in half an hour from your five ingredients." Each chef has an assistant, as well as access to kitchen cupboards with "basic ingredients" - balsamic vinegar, creme fraiche, wine, and fresh herbs (not a tin of baked beans or a bottle of malt vinegar in sight).
If a chef wishes to swap one of his five ingredients for something else, he may opt for a red herring card. This substituted ingredient could be as welcome as sole, or as contrary as quail, squid, smoked cod's roe, chocolate, brains or sweetmeats. The chef must then prepare and cook his dish within half an hour with those five basic ingredients, under the gleeful rather-you-than-me eyes of the studio audience.
This is the most interesting part of the show, observing chefs perform publicly under pressure of time, all the time struggling politely to inform Carrie Crowley about their cookery methods. You can get the impression none of these chefs would ever normally tolerate all that long, loose hair and pestering for cookery tips in their own kitchen. Still, Crowley manages the unenviable task of commuting between both chefs and the studio audience with considerable aplomb.
"It's all about being inventive with your ingredients," she says. "And you do pick up all sorts of really useful tips along the way. Like, I used to always salt my meat before cooking it. One of the chefs on the shows told us that you only salt it once it's cooked, because salt draws out the juices."
Once the allotted time comes to its conclusion, the studio audience counts down the final seconds, while the chefs and assistants go into a silent frenzy of garnishing and gnashing of teeth. Then it's the turn of the Gourmet Gallery to give their judgement.
The Gourmet Gallery consists of five members of the audience, who are invited to sit at a table and sample, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, each of the dishes. Food and studio audiences can be a bit of a wild card - although presumably the most negative comments can be edited out. Comments such as "far too garlicky for me" stay in.
It's all a bit anti-climatic in the end. The five happy eaters sit at the table and Carrie Crowley asks them to vote for the dish they like best by putting up their hands. Watching the first programme, was it my imagination, or was there that slight pause and furtive glancing at each other by the Gourmet Gallery before hands went up; nobody wanting to be the one to get the question wrong?
There's no prize the chef or dish deemed the best, other than winning the public humiliation battle. Nor is there enough analysis by the Gourmet Gallery as to why they like or dislike the dishes, which could have been very interesting.
Still, we can look forward with an element of voyeurism to seeing the reactions incurred in a future programme by members of the audience tucking into a nice dish of brains.