There are times when, to my horror, I am hit by the overwhelming sense that I am rapidly ageing. This week, for example, I was asked to cook in the style of Jourdan Dunn, who I had never heard of but is one of the world’s most successful supermodels.
She is also a YouTube star, who has presented a series of cookery shows riffing on her surname: Well Dunn, How It’s Dunn, and Overdunn (I made that last one up.)
Dunn primarily cooks food that is high in protein and spice, and low in carbohydrates, like peri peri chicken, chicken satay, the generically named but actually tasty “spicy Asian beef” which is helpful, because after watching Dunn and her buddies from the world of high fashion and rap I feel bloated as well as rapidly accelerating towards death. The methods fall into the same broad outline: blend spices, add blend to meat, cook meat, with varying degrees of marinating time.
Dunn’s solo programmes are great fun: she is clearly having a ball, which offsets the fact that I am continually having to skip back on the video every time she mentions how long something needs to spend on the hob.
Trickier still are quantities: if it’s something like a shallot, then the words “one shallot” helpfully flash up on screen. Less helpful is the treatment of spices: “ginger” is one suggestion. How much ginger? Do I need to invade a small south-east Asian nation? Help me out here, Jourdan, seriously. However, you can’t go wrong simply copying what you see, and the learning curve is not so much gentle as entirely flat. Anyone who can hear and see what’s going on (I believe I mentioned “rapidly ageing”) will be fine.
More maddening are the “guest programmes”, in which Dunn is joined by fellow supermodels such as Cara Delevingne and Karlie Kloss and rappers like Wale and 2Chainz. The same problems – ingredients with no quantities, only names; cooking directions rattled off at light speed – are only heightened by having someone else chirping along all the time. Delevingne in particular I find a chore. 2Chainz, however, seems almost as unenthusiastic about the whole thing as I am.
As far as quantities go, I copy exactly how much Dunn has on screen, and end up with enough to feed not only myself, my partner, Dunn, Delevingne, both Chainz but doubtless a whole film crew too. I just hope my favourite rapper, MC Freezer, can look after it all for me.
- Photograph: David Yeo for the Guardian. Stylist: Stephanie Iles. Grooming: Nicky Weir.
