Simon Cowell and ITV are tossing their hats into the cooking world.
It's going to be a culinary TV game with a show that will attempt to find Britain's favorite home-cooked comfort food.
Cowell's ITV1 series, Food, Glorious Food! – also called "Eggs Factor" by production insiders – will see amateur chefs from around the country compete to create the winning recipe.
Cowell has a real fondness for home-cooked food – in interviews he praises his mum's roast potatoes, shepherd's pie and Cornish pasties.
On the application website, it reads: "Every recipe tells a story. And every family has a special recipe that tugs at your heart strings, makes you smile, brings back memories and sums up all that's great about food. Now it's time to share that dish with the nation!
"Food, Glorious Food! will scour the country in search of one very special dish that everyone across the UK will, for the first time ever, be able to buy and eat. A dish that's not just good… Not just great… But glorious."
"We are looking for the best comfort food that will cheer everyone up in these straitened times," said a production source. "We want original recipes but ones cooked by ordinary people with love, ones that have been handed down the generations."
Apparently, the winning dish will be marketed by Marks & Spencer and will be put on the retailer's shelves sometime next year. The winner will also take home £20,000 (a bit more than $39,000 dollars)
Cowell is unlikely to appear on screen and in many ways this will be quite a modest show – there won't be big bright lights and limos.
The show will be made by Cowell's company, Syco Entertainment, with production beginning next month, once a presenter has been found. The series is expected to air on ITV1 in a midweek peaktime slot next year, possible as early as February.
