Great British Bake Off finalist

The 5pm Dining blog chortled at the news that the Great British Bake Off finalist, Luis Troyano, has teamed up with oven makers Bosch to launch a ‘menu demystifier’.

The idea is that www.simplermenus.com takes complex terms from menus, recipes and cookbooks and translates them into everyday language.

Intimidating language

According to Luis, home cooks are scared to experiment with adventurous recipes because so much of the language of cooking is intimidating.

The terminology, he says, is off-putting and makes many cook books as inaccessible as instructions for flat-pack furniture.

Luis says: ‘Our online jargon buster cuts pretentious dish descriptions down to size.  You simply write the baffling word or phrase into simplermenus.com and the clever technology converts it into everyday language.

Cobblers on the menu

‘For instance, one menu I saw which featured “Roasted fillet of Australian Kobe beef nestling in a Kent garden puree, temptingly accompanied by a succulent spinach and onion compote, to die for triple-cooked Maris Piper chips and Indonesian long pepper sauce” becomes “beef, peas, spinach, chips and gravy.”‘

We can see how such an online tool would be handy but Luis’s example misses the point. A roasted fillet of Australian Kobe beef etc sounds rather more appetising than ‘beef, peas, spinach, chips and gravy’.

You can watch Luis put his Bosch oven through its paces while he dispenses tips on the Bosch Youtube channel.

Jus or Mop ‘n’ Slop

On a similar tip, we liked the instagram feed of chef Jacques La Merde who has taken to posting pics of convenience store foods plated up like Michelin star dishes.

Cheese strings go Michelin

This is a dish made with canned corn beef, crinkle cut fries, baby corn, Little Gem and string cheese tied into knots. The sauce is Guy Fieri’s Carolina No 6 Mop ‘n’ Slop BBQ sauce.