His practised fingers with black painted nails dig into the beige mass as his voice booms through the tent, explaining the steps in the recipe. He trades quips with the audience and throws the dough ball into a cooking pot decorated with iron spikes; then he stirs chilli sauce in a bowl, grinning devilishly as he lets the blood-red mixture drip off the spoon. As he works, he explains why he became a YouTube chef: “I just wanted to show as many people as possible how easy it is to make really good meals from purely plant-based ingredients.”
Black hair and corpse paint
On closer inspection, the smell of fried vegetables and garlic wafts through the air and the speakers are playing an uncompromising industrial black metal mix produced by Manowitz himself. To create some atmosphere, plastic skulls, candles and other accessories have been put up in the plain white tent, but the audience is absorbed by the display going on in the open-plan camp kitchen. The hardcore cook – all black hair, chainmail, shoulder armour, and corpse paint – has peppers and courgettes going in a pan as he kneads seitan dough.