Red noses replace red faces for the latest series of Great British Menu. MATT CLARK meets a North Yorkshire chef who promises a wacky take on gastronomy for next week’s shows

COOKING shows as a barrel of laughs? Come off it, Marco Pierre White’s Kitchen Wars are hardly a giggle a minute, Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares are just that and you won’t often catch Greg Wallace cracking a smile on Master Chef – unless it’s all going wrong, of course.

So it comes as a surprise that the latest series of the most po-faced of them all is being billed as having a Comic Relief theme.

Great British Menu is normally more red faces than red noses, and never more so than last year when Johnny Mountain threw a strop after Marcus Wareing gave him two out of ten for his strange fish dish.

Better still, the blurb tells us the chefs will be creating a menu that is not only playful, but funny. Well the Scottish chef’s dangly doughnuts hanging from a line of kilts may have been whimsical, but it’s hardly side-splitting stuff.

But Rudding Park’s consultant chef Steph Moon says that’s all about to change.

London, Scotland and the north west have all decided who’s going to cook at the Red Nose Day banquet and next week she’s taking hoping to win the heats for the north east.

Steph is back for a rare hat trick of appearances in the competition and she promises to deliver a silly starter, funny fish and a playful pudding.

It should be a treat because Steph doesn’t do precocious, as anyone who has seen her on stage at the Great Yorkshire Show will tell you.

“I enjoy having fun with food. People don’t want to eat something that’s so far up itself and as a chef you have to be able to laugh at yourself.

“For me the main thing was coming up with dishes that weren’t too tacky.”

Steph’s starter is based on the oldest joke in the book – Why Did the Chicken cross the road?

“It’s a corny joke but this is not a corny dish. It looks sharp but is presented in a funny way that isn’t over the top.

“The idea is when you see the dish it makes you smile but also with a sense of theatre and grandeur.”

Next up is the fish dish and Steph is cooking Whitby Crab Custard Pie served on a porcelain hand.

“Custard pie was an obvious one to do as a dessert, but I decided to make a sort of refined crab quiche with fresh wasabi topped with a light foam. The hand was made by a friend of mine and it really does look ready to fly.” However, there is a sober side to Comic Relief and Steph reflects that with her main, Serious Game which is Venison T-Bone steak from York with a winter savoury sauce.

But laughs aplenty are back for the desert, Raspberry Blower.

“This is really good fun; a giant red nose and inside are raspberry chocolate and vanilla flavours. It’s a monster.

“I remember as kid watching the Two Ronnies and I loved the Phantom Raspberry Blower of old London Town and I got to thinking red nose, raspberry blower: how can I do this?”

Technically, though, it’s a tour de force with nine components and only a couple of hours to put everything together.

“You have to be game for a laugh because that’s the point of the show. Yes it’s an extreme thing to do but this is an exclusive club and it’s about going for your boundaries.

“Playing safe is not my style.”

• The Great British Menu, BBC2, 7,30pm nightly from Monday