It's very simple...

Are you a fan of cookery programmes? We love 'em. Being children of the sparse Fanny and Johnny/Galloping Gourmet TV era, the veritable banquet of such programmes today is like beluga caviar to people like us.

But there's one thing that gives us indigestion. I challenge you to watch one of these programmes without the chef telling you, at least twice or fifteen times, "this is very simple to make ..." as they assemble 23 ingredients, 8 bowls, two whisks and several gadgets that no domestic kitchen could ever even source. Take Ray White for example, tonight I watched him prepare a 'very simple' dessert of apple soufflé served in a hollowed out, lined and baked apple. As if it wasn't enough to watch him preparing this simple dessert in a matter of TV edited moments, he then suggested serving it on a fluffy cloud of sabayon and garnishing it with small pieces of caramelised apple - very simple to make - and small dollops of apple jelly - an absolute doddle apparently if you happen to have apple juice, agar flakes and several spare hours to hand, a quenelle of exquisitely home made apple sorbet (which is simplicity-on-a-plate if you happen to own a professional ice-cream maker) and all this garnished with a wafer thin apple crisp - so simple that he didn't even show us how to make it. I put it to you that this dish would take a normal person around seventeen hours to prepare. Oh s'il vous plait Monsieur Blanc! Voilà, anyone could do that.

A couple of Saturdays ago, James Martin on Saturday Kitchen must have told us nine or ten times how very simple the dish he was cooking was. I can't remember what it was now. I sort of lost the will to live at the fifth simple saucepan and eighteenth simple ingredient.

We indoors like to think we can cook (although those who saw our inaugural TV appearance a few weeks ago may disagree) but like Shirley Conran, I think life really is too short to stuff a mushroom, hollow out an apple or fashion an espresso cup and saucer from liquid chocolate.

How the hell, I often wonder, do these chefs define the word 'simple'? So come on you cheffy guys, just stop it with all this ridiculously simple stuff. You can take the heat, you're in the kitchen! Show us what you're made of and cook something really complex for a change. I can hardly wait ...