Boomer: Look what I got in Waterstones.
Gen Z: Another 600-page ‘unauthorised biography’ of Princess Anne to go on the coffee table?
James Martin’s book Cheese: 100 Ultimate Recipes For Cheese Lovers.
Ew, I’m lactose intolerant. And I literally sent you his Instagram: all his recipes are on there.
This is 224 pages of clear instructions, proper measurements and beautiful pictures. I’m salivating.
You’re always salivating over James Martin! Male objectification, am I right?
You’re one to talk. Drooling over that Italian bloke on the TikTok.
It’s just TikTok… never mind. You mean 26-year-old chef Manny HP.
The Daily Mail reported on his scantily clad ‘erotic pasta-making videos’.
He has 2.3 million followers and most of us aren’t thirsting. I’m there for his fire cacio e pepe recipe.
I take it you mean fiery, but anyway – I saw your comment: ‘I wish I was the pasta dough.’
Hacked. Totally hacked.
It looks like the start of a dodgy cooking-themed adult movie.
Don’t be a hater. A recent study found 72 per cent of us Gen Zers use social media to plan our meals.
It’s enough to have James Martin weeping into his baked camembert!
NielsenIQ BookScan’s most recent annual data shows only 556 cookbooks sold more than 100 copies, only 48 more than 5,000.
Hey, good cookin’: Tiktok star Manny HP
But what about the context? The stories behind the dishes? The prose?
Bestie, be real. As one Gen Zer wrote on Reddit: ‘Cookbooks are 90 per cent recipes I’ve no interest in making.’
Clearly never opened Nigella Lawson’s Cook, Eat, Repeat.
In which she lists caviar as a store- cupboard staple that readers surely have to hand?
A reasonable assumption for audiences like Nigella’s.
SMH. Anyway, like one Gen Zer told The Times: ‘TikTok recipes are so much easier to understand than a cookbook.’
You’d have more chance following basic instructions than I do decoding acronyms like ‘SMH’.
Shaking my head, then. ‘“Let the sauce reduce down” sends me into a meltdown,’ the Gen Zer added. ‘Reduce to what? Nothing?’
Well, I’d just ask my grandma if I didn’t understand Delia’s lingo.
Who needs grandma’s advice when, as The Guardian says, there’s an ‘explosion of effortlessly cool young chefs on TikTok’?
All making deconstructed fairy bread with artisanal Nutella?
YOU cover star Emily English, 29, has 15 million likes on her healthy TikTok recipes.
Classic dish: celeb chef James Martin
I’ve seen one of her clips and there are more shots of her pouting for the camera than of the actual dish she’s making.
Maybe Thomas Straker is more your vibe. The restaurateur’s fried eggs with sobrasada recipe has 600,000 saves. And as TikToks are only 15 seconds long you can scroll through 100 of his dishes in no time.
What the heck is sobrasada and how does anyone make a dish in 15 seconds?
It’s a Spanish sausage and nobody’s making the recipes. They’re just satisfying to watch.
Hang on. You’re not even trying to recreate these dishes?
I save them to my #foodporn album. Then I usually forget about them. I can never find sobrasada in Tesco, anyway.
So I’m grafting over a homecooked meal, while you’re scrolling through mindless clips.
I wouldn’t want to eat anything you’re making. Your dog-eared Betty Crocker has so many stains it could kick-start a new Covid variant.
Let’s not get into a stew.
Fine, but I’m keeping my TikTok chefs. They’re the recipe for my success.
And I’ll stick with James. Pantastic.
