From Casual Rubberneckers to The Recipe-Obsessed, DONAL’S SUPER FOOD IN MINUTES Has Something Tasty For Everyone

By BILL HARRIS Special to The Lede Irish cook, TV personality, and food writer Donal Skehan was presented with the theory that the potential audience for his new show DONAL’S SUPER FOOD IN MINUTES – which debuts Monday, May 3, at 9 p.m. ET on CTV Life Channel – can be divided into three groups. There are the people who don’t usually cook much at all, but simply watch the show for entertainment. There are the people who might not ever tackle Skehan’s specific recipes, but they’ll pick up some cooking tips or ideas along the way. And then there are the people who will try to follow along and replicate the recipes exactly as shown. Skehan agreed, but he suggested there’s actually a fourth group, which has become more pronounced and vocal during the pandemic-related lockdowns around the world. “Now you also have people who are looking so deeply into everything, you know, ‘What EXACTLY did you do there?’ ” Skehan said with a laugh during a video interview from Dublin. “You mentioned those three types of people who might watch the show, but now there’s the ‘super food fan’ as well – good title there! You know, someone who is baking sourdough bread to the point where even I feel like a novice, and it could be someone who doesn’t cook anything else at all, but they know how to pull off the most beautiful sourdough loaf. So you can add that group, for sure. The food obsessive!” The ultimate takeaway is that Skehan has the ability and experience to appeal to everyone, through his various TV series and cookbooks. But each of his shows or books has kind of lined up with a certain period in his life, and the recipes that really spoke to his needs at those times. Following the philosophy of Skehan’s best-selling cookbook of the same name, DONAL’S SUPER FOOD IN MINUTES focuses on real-life cooking with an emphasis on ease, health, and flavour. Each of the 10 half-hour episodes guides viewers through five delicious recipes inspired by global cuisine. All the recipes are crafted to be completed in a short amount of time, using a small number of ingredients, with only basic kitchen equipment required. “We’ve made a number of different shows over the years, and I love doing the travelogues, and I love doing the bigger projects, but I do feel that this style of show really serves a purpose for people, because it can be sort of a playbook, or a blueprint, that I provide,” Skehan said. “Because just like anybody else, I end up standing in front of the cupboard and saying, ‘What the hell am I going to make for dinner?’ I’ve written hundreds, maybe thousands, of recipes over the years, and it still comes back to that.” Skehan said that ever since he and his wife Sofie had children, everything has changed in terms of food preparation. “It’s not just what we make for dinner for ourselves any more, and there’s no opening a bottle of wine or whatever,” he said. “Now dinner has to be on the table at 5 o’clock, and it has to be decent, and it has to be nutritious as well. We did a series previous to this called MEALS IN MINUTES, and it was kind of really hearty, home-cooked food, whereas SUPER FOOD IN MINUTES is really veg-centric. It kind of came out of the fact that we had just been cooking for comfort after we became new parents. So SUPER FOOD IN MINUTES came as a result of us eventually saying, ‘We really need to get our eating habits into a better space.’ ” Skehan has worked all over the world through his cooking career, not to mention his previous life as a singer – his band Industry had two No. 1 singles on the Irish charts back in 2009. But has he ever been to Canada? “No, I haven’t, but I have a great link with Canada, because my uncle grew up on Cape Breton Island,” he said. “And so we had all these stories of Cape Breton, and my aunt used to go over. In fact, I have a banana bread recipe that is a Cape Breton banana bread recipe. That’s as close as I have to a Canadian experience so far.” More series from Skehan are slated to roll out on CTV Life Channel later this year. billharristv@gmail.com @billharris_tv