A nibbling feeling

Dermot Bolger sees a tasty chef, some brave vets, a sinking Shamrock Rovers and Cork in flames on TV this week

My father, who was a ship's cook on the Wexford Steam Packet, learned to cook at sea during the war while being frequently bombed by German pilots. As a consequence I have never been over impressed by fly-on-the-wall television documentaries about the terrible pressures on self-important chefs in the kitchens of posh restaurants. If they think that dealing with impatient customers and temperamental head waiters is hard, they should try coping with the Luftwaffe.

There are two types of television programmes involving food. The above mentioned ones have harassed chefs screaming in crowded kitchens and threatening to hunt down and bake the relations of their underlings. These are designed to make cooking look hard. The other genre involves delightfully spacious and empty kitchens where nobody ever has to wash up. These are designed to make cooking look easy. Personally – like with programmes involving sword swallowing – I always feel that they should carry a notice warning viewers against trying such things at home except under professional supervision.

Rachel's Favourite Food for Friends (RTÉ1, Wednesday, 7.30pm) is firmly in the cooking-made-easy genre. The presenter, Rachel Allen, has a huge kitchen and a way of saying "nibbed almonds" that makes grown men go weak at the knees. This show has already proved a huge international hit. Viewers in New Zealand, Australia, Israel and Italy and (via the BBC Food Channel) Scandinavia and the Middle East are all being exposed to the mysteries of nibbed almonds – Irish aficionados who can't last a whole week without it can see it again on BBC2 on Sunday mornings.

Within the genre of cooking in vast kitchens made easy, there are two sub-genres – presenters with aprons and presenters without aprons. Ms Allen is definitely a presenter without an apron. This week she told the nation how to conjure superb curries single-handedly. Normally such endeavours in the Bolger household involve two people – one to locate their walking shoes and the other to phone the take-out service of the excellent Jamuna Indian Restaurant in Drumcondra. I am taking notes however and soon there won't be an almond in Dublin safe from being nibbed.

If, after watching elegant cooks in vast kitchens, a bit of gritty reality is needed the look no further then Vets on Call (RTÉ1, Thursdays, 8.30pm), which has so much gore, muck and afterbirths that at times it is like an episode of All Creatures Great and Small directed by Quentin Tarantino. Whether dealing with a practice of good humoured and incredibly hardworking female vets in Co Clare or the working lives of vets in North Mayo, this is an excellent fly-on-the-byre series for viewers with strong constitutions. For others it might be wiser to let the nibbed almonds in your stomach settle first.

If there has been a sense that some documentaries on the Hidden Histories series have struggled to fully fill out the one hour slot available, this was not a case with Hidden History: The Burning of Cork (RTÉ1, Tuesday, 10.15pm). Instead, there was a sense that Neil Jordan (or indeed its own superb director, Conal Creedon) could fruitfully be let loose on the story with a twenty million dollar budget. Creedon's documentary told far more just the story of the night of December 11, 1920, when – enraged by their losses ten days previously at the Kilmichael ambush and by an attack that day at Dillon's Cross – the Auxiliaries (who were never a controlled force to begin with) went totally out of control. Starting out with the torching of cottages at Dillon's Cross they moved onto setting fire to the main shops in the city centre and then, later in the night, set fire to the City Hall itself. Firemen were shot at, fire hoses cut and as the city burned it slipped out of British control forever.

Only 20 years previously it had been one of the more loyal cities in the empire, regularly putting out bunting and Union Jacks for Royal occasions. 5,000 Corkmen enlisted in the First World War. Creedon's documentary was good in sketching in all the events on both sides that led up to that fateful night during which the city suffered more damage than Dublin had during the Easter Rising.

All empires crumble, be they Roman, Austrian or British, but even allowing for the shifts of history going back to the fall of Troy, who would ever believe that Shamrock Rovers would ever be sent down to the depths of the Irish first division? This second tier of Irish soccer is, of course, relatively new. It was established around the same time as the Vatican abolished limbo as that the concept of limbo would not fully go away. The coverage on Friday on Setanta Sport of the fall of the inbuilt house of Tallaght was excellent, with The Hub (various times) becoming an engaging and vital forum for another interested in Irish sport.