Great British Menu is back for a 17th series

Great British Menu is back for a 17th series, although this time the recipe has been tweaked a little.

The basic idea is still the same – as in previous runs, some of the county’s most talented professional chefs will be battling it out for the chance to get one of their dishes to a prestigious banquet, which this year will be marking 100 years of British broadcasting.

Andi Oliver is also back as the presenter, but there have been some big changes in the judging chamber. Matthew Fort and Oliver Peyton, who have been the show since the beginning, and Rachel Khoo, who sat in for series 16, have stepped aside in favour of a new line up.

At least one of them will be familiar to Great British Menu fans. Chef Tom Kerridge took part in the competition in back in 2010 and 2011, winning the main course round both years, and returned again in 2012 as a veteran, helping to mentor and guide the chefs through to the judges’ table.

He’s joined by chef and restaurateur Nisha Katona, and the line-up is completed by comedian and food podcaster Ed Gamble, who is keen to point out that he’s the perfect man for the job.

He jokes: “Doing my food podcast for so long means that I am very qualified for this job and I know way more than Tom and Nisha who both kept complaining that nobody served chicken nuggets. (They might have edited that out). I can’t wait for people to see what the chefs have made this series – the brief is incredible and they really rose to the challenge. And I rose to my difficult challenge of stuffing my greedy face.”

However, before they can face the new judging line-up, the chefs must make it through to the finals of the regional heats. The first cooks to take up the challenge are all from the Central region, and they’ll begin with canapes, starters and the fish course.

Celebrating 100 years of British broadcasting seems like a fairly wide brief, so some viewers may be surprised to discover that two of today’s chefs have drawn inspiration from the same programme for their starters – the iconic wartime sitcom Dad’s Army.

The other dishes are tributes to the quiz show Blockbusters and the Birmingham-based drama Peaky Blinders.

For the fish course, the influences are even more eclectic – there’s an Absolutely Fabulous scallop dish, a risky souffle honouring the original queen of cookery Fanny Craddock, a dish dedicated to David Attenborough and another inspired by Birmingham comedy Man like Mobeen.

It’s up to a veteran chef to score the dishes and decide who will be going home, and who will make it through to Wednesday’s episode when mains, palate cleansing pre-deserts, and deserts are on the menu.

The remaining three contestants will serve up homages to Blue Peter’s time capsule, Fawlty Tower’s infamous Waldorf Salad episode and the famously appetising Bushtucker Trials from I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!

But which two cooks will make it through to Thursday, when their whole menus will be scored by Kerridge, Katona, Gamble and their first celebrity guest judge, Bafta-winning presenter and (fittingly for the Central Region) Brummie Cat Deeley?

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