3 posts tagged “masterchef”

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QotD: On "American Idol"

Jan 15, 2008
15 comments

The seventh season of "American Idol" premieres tonight. Will you be watching, or are you over it?

No, but you know what I am getting excited about, Vox, you American-centric loser? THE RETURN OF MASTERCHEF ~~GOES LARGE~~. Hang on - it's just called Masterchef now. It only needs to go by one name, much like Madonna or Shakira. John "Material Girl" Torode and Greg "Hips Don't Lie" Wallace are BACK and BIGGER THAN EVER.

Key phrases to learn this year are:

"This competition JUST GETS TOUGHER";

"If there'd been a Mars Bar to hand would you have thrown that in as well?" (this season's "your dish is too busy");

"It's good hearty British cuisine but it needs refinement";

"That tastes like a Jammy Dodger run over by a steamroller".

I might live-blog Thursday's quarter-final if my laptop hasn't gasped its dying breaths before then. BBC2, 8.30pm, Monday-Thursday. Ch-ch-ch-check it out.

Masterchef Done Gone

Mar 16, 2007
15 comments

It was the grand final last night and it was another emotional rollercoaster featuring a lot of SHOUTING (John; Greg), cooking (the contestants; John when it all looked a bit hairy) and crying (the contestants; me). Some of the highlights:

- Cheese Shop Owner Ben being told by a French chef that he must make love to the customers with his food;

- Flamboyant Chef Steven doing strange things with foil and baby turnips (this is not a drugs reference, although Baby Turnips is an excellent name for a street drug);

- Hearty Cook Hannah not crying - not even once! Well done, Hannah! Good girl!;

- Me nearly being sick when I saw them cooking sea urchins. They look like hedgehogs filled with glue;

- Flamboyant Chef Steven not understanding what a French waiter shouting "table deux!" at him meant, and staring at him for several minutes slowing repeating the foreign syllables as though his personal babelfish would eventually hiss "table two, you spanner!" in his ear;

- John and Greg touching each other a little more than was strictly necessary. It was all a bit Brokeback Kitchen.

Overused words and phrases: Masterchef journey, tuille, keeping her nerve, I LOVE it, we've reached judgement day.

Anyhoo - Ben blew it by making a orange mousse dessert (yum) with olive wafers (erm...) and caramelised fennel (just no), the dirty little experimenter. Hannah made a fabulous starter and dessert but ruined her main course by undercooking her lamb. If only she'd read my previous entry where I advised 20-25 minutes per rack. Shame.

So that leaves Steven, who made three near-perfect plates of food - I forget what the starter and main course were as I am really all about the desserts, and his was an excellent Poire Hélène which apparently tasted like "floating away on a chocolate-and-ice-cream stream." Yum. He was rightly declared winner, at which point he jumped up and down a lot, Hannah smiled, Ben cried. The losers were whisked away and presumably left in a padded room to sob over the gaping realisation that their dreams were in tatters. Steven drank champagne and looked like he would never stop grinning.

My evenings are empty now.

In other news, Irish Cousin L rang me up to inform me she's booked me a double room for her wedding in August. I protested that I only needed a single but she was adamant that I "might find someone" before then and that she really hoped I brought "someone special" because she wouldn't want me standing about on my own at the reception, cluttering up the place and possibly infecting passers-by with my singledom, now would she? Hmm? No, she would not. Please compare and contrast with my family in Pakistan. I am a simmering broth of cross-cultural beliefs.

Masterchef update

Mar 11, 2007
9 comments

Just to let you all know - Geordie David is out, as I predicted. They all produced fairly disastrous plates of food on Friday but Geordie David's were clearly the worst, largely because he sweated copiously all over them and made bread ice-cream. Bread ice-cream! I ask you. It looked like glue.

Anyway, he sobbed when he heard he was out, the other contestants cried and I might have had something in my eye. Masterchef is an emotional rollercoaster. I do love how it doesn't try to teach the viewing public anything about cooking - no recipes scroll rapidly across the screen and you can't send off an SAE for a fact sheet. I'm revealing myself as a child of the 80s by mentioning fact sheets, aren't I? Nowadays it's probably all "websites" and "downloading".

The final is on Thursday so if no-one could ring me between 8-9pm that would be great, ta. I will be devastated no matter who wins because I hate seeing people lose. This is why I can't watch quiz shows or athletics.