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There's a male Gucci model in the kitchen. He's svelte and suave. He whips up a variety of mouth-watering meals - all of which won't add a single inch to your waist.
No, ladies, it's not your favourite fantasy. Daniel Green is for real. Meet the Model Cook, as the 37-year-old is known.
Green's story is your fat to fab tale magnified to astounding proportions. He was a fat kid who, one day, decided he'd had enough of 38-inch jeans.
He began to experiment with healthier ways to prepare food, and, over a period of three years, lost 65 pounds (30 kg) - without having to hit the gym.
So what did he do? He became a model.
"I just felt, I've achieved so much by losing the weight, I wouldn't mind getting my picture in a magazine," said Green, who was in town for the launch of Asian lifestyle channel Li.
Li is a 24-hour lifestyle television channel in high-definition available on SingTel mioTV that offers content encompassing food, home, wellness, travel and style, with programmes like Iron Chef America, My Workout, Deserving Design and Dinner Impossible.
"My first job, I was a waiter for a Scotchguard advert, spilling wine down the table on people. And I did things like piano cruises, credit cards; I did an advert for Martini in Florida; I did something for Gucci; I did an advert with Claudia Schiffer. Some were glamorous and others were very, very non-glamorous!"
But food had always been Green's first love, ever since his grandmother gave him his first recipe at the age of five.
"Rice Krispies with Mars bars and butter that you melted and you put in the fridge. That was the first thing I ever cooked. That was disgusting," laughed Green, who recently designed a new airline menu for KLM.
Well, you won't see that recipe on his television show, Healthy Eating With Daniel Green. But what does it mean to be the Model Cook? Does he pose in the kitchen?
"Absolutely not," said Green, who is from London but now lives in Minnesota. "I like to think of it as the ideal chef, you know, making quick, easy food."
On his show, Green shares the recipes that helped him achieve his lean, mean, model physique. "I started developing flavour and thinking, it doesn't have to be low in fat and boring. A lot of the spices I used were Asian spices.
"When you use things like chilli and lemongrass, really powerful flavours; you've got so much going on. It just made it a lot more interesting than the kind of European food that if you don't have the cream, the butter, the oil, there's not too much else to make it that interesting.
"At the minute I can't live without miso paste; I'm using it in everything."
Catch Healthy Eating With Daniel Green on Sundays at 9pm on Li (SingTel mioTV Ch 22).
- TODAY/yb
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