What a week! I've just come up for air… For the last 7 days our house has been filled with lights, camera and plenty of action. Filming for the next series of "Kitchen Hero: HomeCooked" started last weekend at the West Waterford Food Festival in Dungarvan. Unfortunately we got completely washed out of it on the Saturday but filming went on and a good few dedicated home cook's watched on, as I cooked up, Chilli and Lemongrass Chicken and Dungarvan Beer Batter Fish with Rosti Potato Cakes and Minty Mushy Peas. It was the first outing of Gertrude the very cool Citroen H Van (from littlepiggy.ie) I'll be traveling around Ireland in and despite the rain she looked great!
As soon as we finished up on the Saturday, it was back up the road to Dublin, to get set up for a weeks worth of studio shooting. I use the word "studio" quite loosely, as it's actually my own kitchen we film in, but the transformation it went through on Sunday, made it far more convincing. Andy, Marc & Mark, our camera men, piled in first thing on Sunday morning with camera's, cranes, tripods, lights, monitors and lots more and spent the whole day setting up. Myself and Sofie busied ourselves getting the set together and putting the finishing touches to the kitchen.
Most of the recipes we shot in the kitchen are baking ones, so there was a bit of a baking theme running through the set, with piles of cake tins, old bundt tins, baking books, some vintage Mrs. Beeton illustrations and my amazing new candy apple green KitchenAid named Martha! Martha arrived the week before last and was unpacked with some very manly squeals of joy! It was slightly sad to put Nora, my old Kenwood, into semi retirement but Martha was so shiny and new, I got over it pretty quickly…
Filming kicked off on Monday and we were straight into some fairly mammoth baking recipes, the kind of ones which are fine to make at home with nobody watching but the type that leave me wide awake at night wondering how I'm going to delicately assemble something like a Mikado cake with marshmallow frosting and smile into camera at the same time! Thankfully they all worked out a treat and looked really wonderful on camera.
The newest member to the production team was our dog Max, who surprised us all by keeping quiet through shooting and waited patiently each day until we were done so he could get his walk! He even tried his hand at some directing and took the opportunity while we were busy to get comfortable on our bed. We finished the week with some savory recipes which will serve all smaller insert recipes throughout the show. Now the clean up and eating of leftovers is currently underway and after a week of pretty much waking up on set, it is so nice to get out of the house and see friends. Our next filming date is coming up next Saturday at the Dublin Bay Prawn Festival here in my home town of Howth, where I'll be cooking up some tasty recipes, it's a great weekend with lots to see and do, so make sure you come down and say hello!
