How VERY dare they! An article yesterday in the Daily Mail saying female chefs are harder to understand than male chefs. Nigella Lawson and Delia Smith have come under fire recently for writing cookery instructions that apparently bamboozle most of us and the conclusion is that female celebrity chefs are harder to understand in print than their male counterparts. The article goes on to state that by contrast some of Gordon Ramsay's recipes are so simple they can be followed by a seven-year-old and budding chefs need a reading age of just 11 to follow the instructions of Nigel Slater. Now you might wonder how they’ve come up with all of this, and the verdict comes from a Government study in which experts looked at 35 recipes published by FIVE popular chefs and assessed their literacy standards layout, writing style and readability. It found that 5.2million adults in the UK would be unable to follow Nigella's cooking methods as she uses longer sentences and tends to write in a "chatty" style, mixing in personal observations with her instructions. I hate it when they do that! Good old Delia Smith gets it in the neck as well with her culinary teaching also being criticised for having too many stages and using measurements confusing for anyone with poor numeracy skills. The study suggests that male celeb chefs use a more direct approach and their recipes are easier to grasp. WOOHOO! Ramsey of course welcomes the findings: "As we all know, I am renowned for my direct approach to cooking and certainly don't like to hold back". Well that was to be expected wasn't it? Actually ive been watching 'Nigella Express' this past week. Her new tv show designed to make us want to COOK fast food rather than go out and just buy it ready made. She keeps saying "add a teaspoon" of this and "just about a teaspoon " of that, and I swear the amounts she's adding look more like tablespoons if not soup ladels on occassions. Perhaps its not that we're too complicated at all? Maybe its just our measuring skills....... Just how big IS seven inches anyway?Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Female Chefs Too Complicated?
How VERY dare they! An article yesterday in the Daily Mail saying female chefs are harder to understand than male chefs. Nigella Lawson and Delia Smith have come under fire recently for writing cookery instructions that apparently bamboozle most of us and the conclusion is that female celebrity chefs are harder to understand in print than their male counterparts. The article goes on to state that by contrast some of Gordon Ramsay's recipes are so simple they can be followed by a seven-year-old and budding chefs need a reading age of just 11 to follow the instructions of Nigel Slater. Now you might wonder how they’ve come up with all of this, and the verdict comes from a Government study in which experts looked at 35 recipes published by FIVE popular chefs and assessed their literacy standards layout, writing style and readability. It found that 5.2million adults in the UK would be unable to follow Nigella's cooking methods as she uses longer sentences and tends to write in a "chatty" style, mixing in personal observations with her instructions. I hate it when they do that! Good old Delia Smith gets it in the neck as well with her culinary teaching also being criticised for having too many stages and using measurements confusing for anyone with poor numeracy skills. The study suggests that male celeb chefs use a more direct approach and their recipes are easier to grasp. WOOHOO! Ramsey of course welcomes the findings: "As we all know, I am renowned for my direct approach to cooking and certainly don't like to hold back". Well that was to be expected wasn't it? Actually ive been watching 'Nigella Express' this past week. Her new tv show designed to make us want to COOK fast food rather than go out and just buy it ready made. She keeps saying "add a teaspoon" of this and "just about a teaspoon " of that, and I swear the amounts she's adding look more like tablespoons if not soup ladels on occassions. Perhaps its not that we're too complicated at all? Maybe its just our measuring skills....... Just how big IS seven inches anyway?
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