Here’s a first look at ITV’s new TV show Cooking With The Stars.
Hosted by Emma Willis and Tom Allen the brand new series sees eight celebrities paired with a professional chef.
The celebs will be mentored by their chefs in the aim of taking them from passionate amateur to restaurant level cooks.
The celebs taking part comedian and actor Griff Rhys-Jones, Strictly’s head judge Shirley Ballas, DJ and songwriter Naughty Boy, performer and presenter Denise Van Outen, actress Catherine Tyldesley, McFly’s Harry Judd, comedian and actor Johnny Vegas and TV presenter AJ Odudu.
Meanwhile the chefs helping them are British chef and TV presenter Rosemary Shrager, food writer and restaurant owner Nisha Katona, culinary expert and regular chef on This Morning Joseph Denison Carey, Michelin starred chef and author Mark Sargeant, chef director Jack Stein, Korean food expert and TV chef Judy Joo, renowned chef and business owner Tristan Welch and Italian chef and restaurateur Francesco Mazzei.
With the help of their mentors, the celebs will produce delicious dishes that will be judged by the remaining professionals.
Each week the bottom two ranked celebs will have to fight for their place in the competition by creating a dish alone which will be judged blind by the remaining chefs, including the celebs’ own mentors.
Unaware of which dish belongs to witch celeb, the chefs could end up voting for their protege to leave the competition.
Emma shares: “Some of the celebrities had never cooked anything before and some of them had cooked a bit so it was interesting to watch how competitive people got and how they really upped their game.
“While the celebs are cooking, the chefs are in the room watching and they’re not allowed to interact with them. At times it’s almost like there’s Gordon Ramsay-style steam coming out of their ears when they want to try and stop something they are doing wrong or take something off boil that they’ve left too long and it’s like mush in a pan. So, it was brilliant from an observational point of view as well because there was so much going on!”
Tom adds: “I didn’t anticipate how seriously these celebrities would take their cooking, but it makes perfect sense because they spent so much time with their chef/mentors and have developed such a strong bond, they want to do the best for them.”
And Emma continued: “The celebrities prepare everything they are going to cook with their chefs, but in the cook off there is no preparation. They will be given a recipe that they have never cooked before and haven’t practiced and then they don’t see the recipe or what they are cooking until they arrive on set.
“The first one was baked Alaska and I don’t think they’d even eaten a baked Alaska before let alone prepared one –plus you only have forty minutes. I mean, that was a bit of a disaster.”
Cooking With The Stars will start on ITV on Tuesday, 13 July at 9PM and continue weekly.
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