Home Cooking Made Easy

(BBC2)

If the saintly Delia is Queen of the TV chefs then Lorraine Pascale is clearly the heir to the throne.

She returned to our screens last night with the first in what will undoubtedly be a number of series of Home Cooking Made Easy.

Not aware of her work? She shot to fame earlier this year with her first series Baking Made Easy in which her love (and indeed not inconsiderable skill) with cakes and all manner of puds announced a new talent.

Lorraine mixes glamour (and an absolutely winning smile) with culinary skill.

The 39-year-old was the first black British model to appear on the cover of American Elle and she also found fame in Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue in 1998.

Not that Lorraine is in anyway some sort of ‘model bimbo’ fronting a programme for her looks – her culinary CV is pretty impeccable.

After giving up modelling she took a Prue Leith diploma cookery course before working in some of London’s top restaurants.

The book that accompanied that series was second only to the latest Jamie Oliver offering in the bestseller charts. Home Cooking Made Easy is, obviously, the follow-up and, once again, it’s driven by Lorraine’s massive enthusiasm which is really pretty infectious.

Now she confesses to loving eating but quite how she can make food like this and still look that good really is beyond me.

This week’s theme was comfort eating, so last night we were treated to a roasted butternut squash soup with chilli and ginger. That was followed by black pepper pasta with mushroom and parmesan sauce made from standby ingredients – not to mention an interesting use of a coat hanger which doubled up as a pasta drier.

But the real stars of the show were the two rather delicious looking puds – and if they don’t put a few extra inches round the waist you really must have a fabulous metabolism.

Firstly she tucked into home-made chocolate marshmallow fudge and then she made a cake by lining a bowl with slices of shop-bought Swiss roll and then filling it with four or five tubs of expensive chocolate ice cream – nice work if you can get it.

It promises to be a cracking series and, of course, there is a new book out to accompany it. Just make sure you take out a new gym membership when you buy it.

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I thought it was going to be a good week for foodies what with Nigel Slater returning to our screens on Friday – as well as I’m a Celebrity winner Gino D’Acampo fronting a new series called There’s No Taste Like Home. The series, which is on every day, sees three people each day cooking a ‘heritage’ dish – in other words, one passed down from their granny – for a local restaurant.

The winner gets their recipe on the menu for a month. Sadly the format doesn’t hold an hour’s worth of scheduling and Gino’s a bit leaden as a host – for me it’s not going to be the next Ready, Steady, Cook.

By Tim Walters