Better get this straight from the beginning, when I say ‘my‘ recipe, I really mean a recipe that I stole originally from Nigel Slater and adapted a bit. Now the rubbery faced one has gone and stolen it (albeit in a further adapted form) from me and Nige (admittedly more likely from Nigel than from mwnch) and (I’m guessing at this bit) sold it to Sainsbury’s where it now features on a Christmas commercial!

Outraged? – That’s not the half of it!

There is obviously a serious side to this and that is to do with the copyright on recipes.
(Just for the record…I’m not really that angry with Jamie, actually, I feel kind of sorry for him, following his early TV series that saw all his surfer type chums using him to do all the cooking at parties and now having to be Tony Blair’s pal.)

There has already been a fair amount of discussion of this on the web; to me this example demonstrates the potential minefield of such copyrighting. Whilst seemingly impossible, if this monster is allowed to rear its head, the big-boys with the big lawyers will end up owning every subtle, exciting and tasty combination of ingredients. Leaving us little guys with the few recipes that remain in the public domain (bread and jam anyone?) or are gut wrenchingly unattractive to the copyrighter (pilchard and marshmallow supreme?).

I’m pretty sure who’ll loose this one if it comes to a stand-up fight between me, Nigel and Jamie…

So, the recipe in question is my cider brandy camembert, reproduced below in all its glory, while I can still publish it…