Masterchef is one of my favourite TV programmes; it has different formats but basically it is a cooking competition between number of chefs. There are three different series, professional,amateur and celebrity… and I like them all! At the moment it is the turn of the professionals. The contestants are divided into four groups f eight chefs and are put through a series of challenges and by a process of elimination over several weeks, the winner is decided. We are at the preliminary stage at the moment where we are meeting the contestants and beginning to get some idea of what they are like… you can’t always tell because sometimes one is overcome with nerves at first and doesn’t show their best, others might be very competent but not be able to raise their game and just remain the same cook as they were to begin with. Like all these sort of show, we viewers are sometimes very critical of the judges decisions… but on the other hand, we only see what the editors choose to let us see, and we don’t taste any of the food to really be able to judge.
Yesterday, the first time we met this tranche their test was to cook something from seven ingredients (using some or all of them, plus a ‘larder’ of everyday foods)They were challenged to make a dish using a selection of seven ingredients: pork sausage, spinach, squash, Gorgonzola, walnuts, apples and almonds. Well… most of them made a right old mess, one of them didn’t even manage to cook the sausages properly and they were inedible because they were raw! The winner used the squash to make a panna cotta… which was original, and looked nice, and apparently tasted nice.
SO what would I have made… I was thinking this as I was walking to meet some friends and I decided I would have made a soup from the squash, and served it with either Gorgonzola and walnut scones, or little home-made breads with melted Gorgonzola and floated it on the soup similar to the way French onion soup is served. I would also make some tiny, tiny sausage-meat balls, spicing it up with lots of pepper, and putting them in the soup once it was in the serving dish so they were visible as little round brown mouthfuls of yum to contrast with the sweet soup… I’d have garnished with whatever fresh herbs were in the ‘larder’… and that is what I would have done!
In reality I would probably have been so overcome with nerves that I would have made as much of a mess of it as the chefs did on the programme!
Lois Elsden 