BBC News presents Stefan Gates
In conversation with SARAH BAXTER, WANDERLUST MAGAZINE
Date: Saturday 1st March at 12pm and Sunday 2nd March at 2pm
Stefan Gates is a gastronaut. An epicurean desperado prospecting for flavour in the culinary hinterland. He loves wild culinary quests, weird foods and hardcore feasting, and he positively revels in destroying the kitchen every time he cooks. His approach to cookery is irreverent, eclectic and occasionally repulsive, mainly because he sees food not as fuel, but as a catalyst for adventure, revelation, laughter, war, sex, love and hate. He is rather prone to experimentation in the kitchen, which can be both unpredictable and unsettling when you’ve just dropped round for a bite to eat.
For some reason, Stefan feels that it’s his responsibility to pack as many gastronomic experiences as possible into his short time on earth, even if it makes him sick. He does have serious moral and ecological earth-saving reasons for this but they are tenuous at best. Basically, he’s a thrill seeker. It is to his eternal chagrin that cannibalism has been discredited as a popular branch of gastronomy, but if he were a cannibal, the person Stefan would most like to eat is Nigel Slater (and he means that in the nicest possible way).
Stefan is a BBC comedy producer/director turned oven-monkey whose entire career in film and telly can be traced back to the mistaken impression that walkie-talkies are cool. He was also a presenter on BBC2’s mould-breaking primetime show Full On Food, which launched in November 2004. Stefan’s first book Gastronaut: Adventures in Food for the Romantic, the Foolhardy & the Brave, was published by BBC Books in 2005. Stefan has also written features for food magazines including Waitrose Food Illustrated (2006). He is currently writing a tie-in book for Cooking in the Danger Zone.
Stefan co-presented Food Uncut for UKTV Food throughout 2006 and BBC2 aired his series, Cooking in the Danger Zone, in a primetime slot and following it’s amazing success he has just completed filming series 3 of Cooking in the Danger Zone.
Interviewed by Sarah Baxter:
Sarah Baxter is the deputy editor of Wanderlust, the UK's leading independent travel magazine. When she's not ensuring that the magazine is packed with top travel features, she's writing award-winning articles, scaling Mount Kilimanjaro or learning how to carve her own tent peg on a girl's only bushcraft course.