Cooking with the Stars
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**STRICTLY EMBARGOED UNTIL 00.01 TUESDAY 6TH JULY 2021** COOKING WITH THE STARS COOKING WITH THE STARS Hosted by Emma Willis and Tom Allen brand new series Cooking With The Stars, with co- funding by Marks & Spencer, will see eight celebrities, each paired with a professional chef who will mentor, teach and take them from passionate amateur to restaurant level chefs. Airing this Summer on ITV and the ITV Hub, the eight celebrities who will be putting on their aprons and heading to the kitchen are 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. Across a series of exciting cooking battles, the celebrities will be trained by their mentor chefs to produce delicious dishes that will be judged by the remaining professionals. The bottom two will then have to fight for their place in the competition, creating a dish without any help from their mentor. The result of this eliminator will be decided by a blind tasting judgement from the professional chefs. Unaware of whose food they are tasting, the greatest supporter could swiftly and unwittingly become the worst critic and vote for their protege to leave the competition. The professional chefs who are taking on the challenge 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, renowned chef and business owner Ronnie Murray, chef director Jack Stein, Korean chef and restauranteur Judy Joo, renowned chef and business owner Tristan Welch and Italian chef and restaurateur Francesco Mazzei. Each week the celebrities will be cooking up a storm in a bid to outdo their rivals but who will come out top? Time will tell who has got the skills of a pro chef and who’s getting the chop. Cooking With The Stars is a partnership between Marks & Spencer, ITV and South Shore. EMMA WILLIS - HOST Tell us about the show? So, in a nutshell, it’s a cooking competition where eight celebrities are paired with and mentored by phenomenal stand-out chefs. Each week the celebrities are challenged with a different cuisine and compete against each other to win our golden frying pan! 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! Who do you think will surprise and why? Well if I tell you, it’s not a surprise! Do you know what, though, I can imagine when you hear Johnny Vegas and cookery you wouldn’t necessarily think they go hand in hand but he was heaven to be around. He is so nice, so fun and I think he really wanted to go in there to prove people wrong. He kept saying, you know everyone just thinks I’m here as the joker but I genuinely want to come out of this and be able to have recipes to cook that I can pass onto my son and for us to cook together. Johnny really wanted to take something away from it and take something home. It was the same with Griff. He has done so much travelling, tried so many different cuisines and always used to cook but then he changed his diet and his wife took over cooking duties, so for like thirty years it’s kind of been all her. He is so out of the loop with cooking but came on the show because their 40th wedding anniversary is coming up and he wanted to do a really nice meal for her which is just lovely. Were the chefs competitive? The chefs wanted to win! There’s no messing with that. But they also wanted the celebrities to have fun and enjoy it. Because it’s their trade and they love cooking so much, they wanted the celebs not to be fearful - they kept saying ‘just feel it’. You can follow a recipe, and you can try and remember all the things they’ve taught you but you have to go with your instincts. AJ was amazing with that. She was like ‘it only says this much salt but I’m just going to put a bit more in’ and she would just freestyle. Were there a lot of accidents? Tom and I hadn’t really thought about accidents but then suddenly it was just blood everywhere. Harry, he’s a drummer, he barely had any fingers left! He just kept cutting himself and because they are panicking and rushing and they are on the clock, they do it even more. The medic was on camera more than we were on that first day! But the adrenaline - Harry cut himself so many times and he was like ‘I don’t care’. He’d be stirring and there would be a medic on his hand patching him up and he would just keep going. Proper multitasking, I was really impressed. Tell us about the cook offs? 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. How was it working with Tom? We’d never met before and actually only met on Zoom for the first time about 3 weeks before the show but I can honestly say I want to work with him on everything and we are going to have dinner soon. It was amazing because when you first work with someone, you never know if you are going to hit it off but from the minute I met him, I loved him. To the point where, when you don’t really know someone you kind of stick to your own room and focus on work but every meal time it was like ‘come in and sit with us.’ We had breakfast, lunch and dinner together so we literally spent all day and everyday together. I want to see him all the time, he’s so funny. Who does the cooking at home mostly? We kind of share it, Matt’s really good, he really likes it and he takes his time and he’s a bit of a perfectionist with it. He was really jealous about the show as well. He would have loved to have done it. If someone said to you, you are haVing eight people around. What would you cook? I would do a curry! I would stick to the medium temperature to try and keep everyone happy. If I’ve got a big group of people coming around I’d want to cook something big and easy. So, I’d do a big curry and plonk it in the middle of the table and let everyone help themselves. Do you haVe any guilty pleasures? Fish Finger sandwiches with brown sauce and salt and vinegar. I also like mashed potato sandwiches with pickled onion vinegar and brown sauce and chips, hot chicken and brown sauce. Anything with brown sauce, really! Do you know what’s really good as well? After you’ve finished your Sunday roast, your gravy and your mint sauce left, just a piece of bread plunk it in, mush it around, flip it over, soak it in and just eat it! That’s probably the worst one. TOM ALLEN - HOST Can you tell us about Cooking with the Stars? It’s a feel-good cookery competition featuring some very well-known celebrities alongside some of the nation’s best chefs. It's got glitz and glamour and is as competitive as the Olympics. 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. I’m so proud of it this show. I think people will find it entertaining and absolutely gripping. It’s so competitive, it’s like a battle of the ages. It’s an intense cooking competition with some lovely people and lots of fun along the way. After the year we’ve had, taking time to enjoy food and making food for our friends and our loved ones feels more important than ever. Celebrating the skills of professional chefs in a year when the hospitality industry has suffered so much is hugely important. We celebrate cuisines from the around the world and we have amazing chefs in this country who can cook all these different things and that should be celebrated.