Central Coast Mum wins mega cooking competition

MasterChef is about to reclaim its crown as the best reality show on television. Controversial call, I realise. And possibly more hope than prediction on my part.

Some will argue that 3.2 million fans of The Voice can’t be wrong, and admittedly, those blind auditions were sensational. But after Monday night’s battle round episode, where the judges backed the sexy, but much less talented Prinnie Stevens over the larger Mahalia Barnes – who they pretty much admitted was the better singer - the show has lost its unique selling point.

It’s clearly not just about rewarding the best vocal performance any more, which means it’s in danger of becoming a glorified Australian Idol, with stranger rules and a faster eviction rate.

Continue reading "MasterChef will eat The Voice for breakfast" »

Christmas is over, the hangover from New Years has receded and instead of having a New Years resolution of giving up smoking or losing weight, you have decided you want to be a reality TV star.

Whether it is to be famous, or just to have an interesting unique experience, here are some tips that will get you closer to hearing “lights, cameras, action”! Being sexy, humorous or able to cause conflict may help you get on the show, however, all shows need a diversity of people to make it interesting and to keep it real.

1. Decide which show you are best suited for.
If you can’t sing or dance forget the talent shows like The Voice, The X Factor or Australia’s Got Talent. If you can cook Masterchef Australia, and My Kitchen Rules are possibilities.

Continue reading "Top tips for becoming a reality TV star" »

Just another night in suburban Australia and the natives are hungry.

What’s on the menu? Stir fry, spaghetti bolognese, meat and three veg. Repeat.

For a nation of smug, telly-watching food obsessives, we’re sure doing a bad job of actually cooking the stuff.

Continue reading "Taking Spag Bog beyond the bog standard" »

Bee Wilson stood transfixed in the fridge aisle; so many choices, so little time. 

Did she want the ice and water combo or the stainless steel double door? And would either one go better with the splashback they’d chosen?

If that scenario sounds familiar, you are not alone. The British food blogger who fell in love with her fridge, is just a product of a new generation.

Continue reading "My gleaming, stainless steel little room of joy" »

“She deserves to be here,” sobbed Dani, with her big puppy dog eyes and glossy black hair.

What a tragedy. Cleo, one of the most popular chefs in the Masterchef kitchen, had ignored the rules to prepare both her toffee dish and her chocolate ganache at the same time. Her elimination was inevitable. Her dream was over.

And we all sniffled too, as the ever-stoic Cleo departed the Masterchef kitchen and returned home to her miniature poodles. Ad break. News headlines. Oprah.

Continue reading "Save your empathy for real people with real problems" »

For years, I avoided The Sopranos because I thought it was a show about high-pitched singers. When I realised it was actually about mobsters, I never missed an episode. Who doesn’t love gangster shows?

Until recently, I also avoided MasterChef, as I don’t much care for cooking shows. Then I learned that it, too, is in fact a show about gangsters. Now I’m glued to the thing six nights a week!

What’s this, you say? MasterChef really is actually a cooking show? Sure. And Kyle Sandilands is a good bloke. Without question, MasterChef is a show about gangsters. Let’s examine the evidence…

Continue reading "GangsterChef!" »

I have a challenge for the foodies of Australia.

Yes, you - the ones out there who’ve been glued to Masterchef, thrilling the neighbours with your medallions of immature ovine, steeped in a garcon’s thimble of the reduced subcutaneous oleaginous lipids of the common or garden canard, garnished with a frisson of cresson.

I think it’s time we stepped it up a notch. You may think you are adventurous, perhaps even original. 

Continue reading "A sustainable foodie future - let them eat bugs" »

Chocolate is the latest product in our foodie, got-to-have-it, made-to-order craze.

Arno Backes, a Melbourne based chocolatier says there’s growing popularity and interest in the way chocolate is made, with more and more us demanding fine European couverture and a specific cocoa content.

“We’ve ended up with a real chocolate culture,” Backes told The Age.

Continue reading "We’re fooling ourselves if we think we’re real foodies" »

At least once a week, when I open the newspaper there seems to be some fresh new panic about the tsunami of childhood obesity that is crashing on our golden sandy beaches which a generation or two ago were filled with healthy bronzed young men and women who were either training for the next Olympic Games or about to pull on a pair of battered Dunlop Volley sandshoes, borrow a beaten up old wooden racquet and fly off to win Wimbledon.

Yep, every time a politician opens his or her mouth (usually on the way to a four course five star lunch at a taxpayer funded Parliamentary Dining Room) they sadly shake their heads, wobble their double chins and lament the rise of the TV obsessed Generation XXL.

If you ask most people who they blame for this sad decline, they would nominate a man who might be best described as Richard Nixon, Colonel Sanders and Hannibal Lector all rolled into one. I’m talking of course about Ronald McDonald. He’s there, supersizing our kids against their better judgement till their belts burst open.

Continue reading "There’s no such thing as junk food, only junk diets" »

The other day I was at a pub, which is not unusual in itself. The pub also had a $10 steak menu, which is also not uncommon. Incredibly, I decided to have a steak.

The woman behind the counter dutifully took the order and then asked what sauce I would like with it.

“I’ll just have gravy,” I said.

Continue reading "Why doesn’t anyone just eat normal food any more?" »

I was spending some quality time with channel 10 the other night. It was blathering on about how good it’s life is now, and I was only half listening. But I did hear it accidently say Masterchef’s name when it was talking about its new friend, Jamie Oliver’s Road Trip.

You see, Channel 10 needs us, guys. In recent times it was on top of the world: Masterchef was the most watched non-sporting event in Australian television history, with the finale reaching a peak of over four million viewers.

It was raking in sponsorship and commercial money, there’s book royalties to look forward to, it seemed like things could never go wrong.

Continue reading "Filling the Masterchef void" »

The headlines: Courtney had to leave Masterchef. The most discussed topic of the evening on Twitter was Masterchef. In federal election news, if you had to call a winner today, you’d have to say it was, er, Masterchef.

Not even the looming opportunity to exercise what the PM grandly terms “Australians’ birthright” to decide their government can interfere with the national obsession with this show. The main parties have agreed to pull the televised debate between Tony Abbott and Julia Gillard back an hour so it doesn’t have to go up against the Masterchef finale, expected by some to be watched by 4 million people on Sunday.

Smart move. By comparison the debate ratings would have been embarrassing and probably drawn commentary about the malaise in Australian democracy when a cooking show can trump a debate between the alternative blah blah blah. If you are a fan, or know someone who is, you will know Masterchef is not just another TV show. Watching it is almost a religion. But Masterchef ratings clash or not, have Australians tuned into this campaign yet in the first place?

Continue reading "Campaign countdown: And the winner is… Masterchef" »

Poor old Alvin Quah got eliminated from Masterchef last night after mucking up a cake he said you’d need a PhD to know how to cook.

I’m not sure at the bottom of which cornflake box you’d find such a qualification, but as much as I liked Alvin, and was sorry to see him go, I have to say, don’t be such a baby. What Alvin (after all this time seeing him every night I feel I can call him Alvin) said was:

Short of them making the contestants cook under water next year, I really don’t know what they’re going to do. It’s mad - they put us through the ringer. Can you imagine anything more difficult than what we went through in this series? I can’t.

Continue reading "Election-Free Zone: Is Masterchef too hard?" »

There is a wall of federal election coverage out there today. This isn’t more of it.

A glance at the list of most popular stories on any major website shows Australians are talking about a bunch of other things aside from politics. So alongside our daily campaign coverage we’ll be bringing you a daily potted summary of the non-election issues grabbing voters’ attention, trying not to draw unnecessary parallels with federal politics unless it involves budgies, forward movement, or other parallels too obvious to resist. Today, let’s start with sporting WAGs.

What makes a good WAG?

Continue reading "Election-Free Zone: What makes a good WAG?" »

After a week in which the country went into a collective meltdown following the eviction of someone called Marion Grasby, it’s easy to forget there are actually people who don’t watch MasterChef.

Perhaps it’s time for those of us who have somehow managed to miss the entire series to form a self-help group.

I can’t have been the only one left feeling completely bewildered by overhearing spirited conversations about satay sauce everywhere I go. Can I? I’m not sure fans of the show understand how bizarre lengthy debates over the finer points of Thai cuisine cook-offs sound to their hopelessly uninitiated friends and colleagues.

Continue reading "My name is Sarrah and I don’t watch MasterChef" »

I wish to make it clear, first of all, that this was not planned. I never saw it coming. It wasn’t premeditated.

You know those affairs where you just stop in at the pub on your way home for a quick drink, and before you know it you’re waking up handcuffed to a bed in a Taree motel next to a harelipped Slovenian wrestler? That’s how it was with me and MasterChef..

I had always been one of those men who loathed cooking shows in all their manifestations. Every time I saw one of those grinning loons drizzling things, or rubbing spices into the intimate sections of other species, or plunging their disgusting greasy hands into mounds of dough, I would go into a violent rant that nearly drove my wife to distraction, huffing and puffing about the degeneration of modern television and how in my day we had quality programmes like The A-Team and Vidiot but these days all we seemed to have was fat men opening cans and Nigella Lawson dripping her juices all over various puddings.

Continue reading "My name is Ben and I’m addicted to MasterChef" »

Update 8.08pm: Joanne has just been eliminated from Masterchef

Whoever triumphs tonight, Australia is the real winner because it means one of Masterchef’s least-liked chefs will be ushered out the door faster than prawns left in the sun.

There is even a facebook group (well there was, until it got pulled down) dedicated to the hating of Sydney contestant Joanne Zalm.

Some of the slurs have even been about her cooking in the Masterchef competition!

Continue reading "The other great Australian spill going on - Masterchef" »

In a Courier Mail article this week Karen Brooks wrote that there was a lot of cyber hate on Twitter and Facebook directed at Masterchef Australia contestants.

She alleges Masterchef nice has been turned into Masterchef nasty on social networking sites, and some of these remarks were sexist, racist and homophobic.

As prolific tweeter I must be on a different stream as the majority of tweets I see are witty, and commenting mainly on what is being shown on the screen.

Continue reading "Don’t blame the armchair critics for Masterchef attacks" »

Watching people slice bread is officially the best thing since sliced bread.

According to the Daily Telegraph this week, MasterChef is “the most powerful television show in Australia”. With $100 million worth of industry around it and almost two million viewers, it has even out bigged Big Brother.

But as we mark the show’s halfway point with an oyster terrine and a joyful high-five, there’s no escaping the sad fact that our MasterChef pales in comparison to the UK version. And not just because Australian contestants are hell bent on crying their way to the title.

Continue reading "Our MasterChef does a poor imitation of the British" »

Did anyone else find Masterchef last night incredibly patronising towards blue-collar workers?

In case you missed it, the troupe of budding young chefs were given the challenge to cook a goat’s cheese-based vegetarian dish for “six of Australia’s biggest meat lovers”.

And who were these esteemed judges? True blue Aussies: tradies, truck drivers, a fireman and a farmer. Seems blue-collar types don’t have refined enough tastes to appreciate a good vegetarian dish… or even know what goat’s cheese is.

Continue reading "A true blue, dinki di bit of patronising television" »

Watching Matt Preston last night pull ridiculous faces like he was going to vomit when he got a bit of grit in his shell fish it crossed my mind his behaviour during Sunday night’s invention test might just have ruined Masterchef for me.

His delicate sensibilities never bothered me so much before. Everyone knows reality shows, even much loved ones such as Masterchef, are manipulated in the editing. But the scene in the video above just takes the piss, out of the contestants and the audience.

All the tension, all the skill and all the emotion that made last year’s series such a hit is under threat from this kind of histrionics and it’s such a shame.

Continue reading "Matt Preston’s “best new talent” status is wearing thin" »

Sure, he might have a quirky sense of personal style, last seen on Keith Floyd, circa 1970.  And you’d be hard pressed to find anyone fussier in the kitchen, but would you really call Matt Preston a wanker?

Ralph magazine certainly seems to think so. They’ve put Preston at the top of their annual list of 100 wankers - beating Kevin Rudd, Tony Abbott, Brian McFadden and even Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano.

“The guy needs to chill out and eat some cheese on toast once in a while,” Raph editor Pintado Santi told News.com.au.

“He’s pompous. And he’s everywhere, is there anything he’s not selling at the moment, he’s got CDs, cookbook.” 

But to be fair, the guy’s also done a lot for the way Australians look at food. Not since Gabriel Gate has a bloke been more willing to go on national television and stick up for high standards in the kitchen.

He may like colourful scarves, but he’s making a convincing case for why it’s important to put some effort into what we eat and how we cook it. What’s so bad about that?

The danger in identifying a formula for success is that you can very quickly find yourself accused of being formulaic.

As a passionate convert to the first series of Masterchef, I’m starting to side with those viewers who are finding that series two is becoming increasingly manipulative and confected, as the producers wring every last drop out of emotion out of the generally routine practice of preparing food.

I’m not trying to ridicule the likes of Melbourne lawyer Clare, who wept when she prepared a pork and apple dish which was the last meal ever made by her late grandmother, or Phillip, who broke down in recounting how his grandma lost one of her sons at an early age, and always regarded him as a kind of surrogate son. These are genuinely moving tales, and in the heat of battle you can see how re-telling them before a national audience would be emotionally draining.

Continue reading "Masterchef: Sometimes when I cook, I weep" »

All those arguing over which version of history should be contained in the national curriculum might want to think about a subject that could mean our current generation lives long enough to achieve some level of appreciation of that history.

Food is on our minds this week, with the return of MasterChef, which last year many commentators hailed as the saviour of real food in our homes. It’s not you know.

On Friday we were told obesity has overtaken smoking as the leading cause of premature death and illness in Australia. Someone who’s never been taught to boil an egg is hardly about to rush out and snap up the ingredients for a batch of Poh’s dumplings.

Continue reading "Bring back compulsory cooking classes at school" »

With My Kitchen Rules coming to an end, news of the return of MasterChef couldn’t have been timelier.

For quality cooking shows, within a few short months, we’ll have gone from a smorgasbord to a piddling entrée. Let’s face it – five minutes of Fast Ed each week is not gonna cut it. 

And if, like me, you’re a regular viewer of Man vs Wild, starring wilderness survival expert, Edward ‘Bear’ Grylls, you’ll have an extra reason to celebrate: you can toast the return of your appetite.

Continue reading "Man vs MasterChef" »

Alright I’m calling it now: Penny Wong will be a contestant on the next series of Dancing with the Stars.

Well actually that’s not true, but the scary thing is I bet you didn’t know whether that was a joke or not.

With news this morning that Queensland Premier Anna Bligh is going to be a contestant on Celebrity MasterChef this country has entered a bizarre dimension that has further blurred the line between politicians, network celebrities and reality tv stars.

Continue reading "Politics is not a gameshow" »

MasterChef has a lot to answer for, and not just because my work colleagues have been spending their weekends at home teaching their 10-year-olds how to make croquembouche.

And it’s not over yet. The MasterChef season two cattle-call is closing this week, so it’s only a matter of time before it all starts again.

Now, while I missed out on watching the first season of MasterChef (it’s a long story) what I did watch was the rest of Australia watching MasterChef. And you all went a little crazy.

Continue reading "MasterChef created a nation of know-nothing food tossers" »

Julie and Poh know what to do with century eggs, tempered chocolate and rabbit hindquarters, but even they might struggle with these ingredients: 1 x 425g tin of crushed pineapple, 1 cup of coconut and 1 x 250g container of sour cream.

Do you know what it makes?  Here’s a hint: ‘Mix together and leave for a couple of hours.  Serve on lettuce leaves.’

If you answered ‘Pineapple Salad’, then perhaps your childhood, like mine, included neighbourhood pool parties at which the adults downed shandies and Coolabah cask wine while nibbling on devils-on-horseback (prunes wrapped in bacon). 

Continue reading "Well read-head: Julie and Poh inspire a cookbook trip" »

Last night was a let down.

The cupboards were bare, the kitchen bereft of yummy smells and for the first time in two months no-one really cared who had the remote at 7pm.

Sunday night’s MasterChef finale celebrations were a distant memory, and all we were left with was an empty feeling.

Continue reading "How to cope with post-MasterChef depression" »

There’s a simple reason why some three million Australians watched the Masterchef final last night - instead of making heroes out of people you would do anything to avoid, it celebrated people you’d be happy to have as friends, or proud to have as part of your family.

On paper it was merely the latest phase in the reality television format, another game-based cooking program, similar in theory to so many others which now infect the Lifestyle Food channel, not even an original idea but the re-heated antipodean version of the British program of the same name.

As such, many Australians were slow to respond to the program, assuming it was formulaic fluff, cooked up by the marketing people in a cynical bid for ratings and targeted advertising.

Continue reading "Australia’s best TV show of all time?" »

Julie Goodwin was crowned the winner of the first series of the highly popular MasterChef Australia. She comprehensively beat South Australian artist Poh Ling Yeow after completing the three challenges they had been set.

It was a slightly controversial win of the ‘home cook’ beating the more inventive Poh who was prepared to take risks to produce some unusual and well plated dishes mainly based on her Malaysian heritage. However Julie’s cooking would probably appeal more to the masses, as she was renowned for her roast lamb and comfort food style.
MasterChef Australia has been massively successful for Channel Ten, who will be following it with a Celebrity version in October, and applications are already open for series two which will be screened next year. So what did we learn from this show?

Continue reading "Six things I learnt watching MasterChef" »

It’s a complicated formula, how much a TV network is prepared to pay for ratings.

60 Minutes has just sealed a rumoured $200,000 deal with British back packer Jamie Neale, to do an interview to air this Sunday night, up against the Masterchef final.

Someone at Willougby obviously thinks its worth paying that much for Jamie’s version of how he survived lost in the Blue Mountains for 12 days.

Continue reading "Will you watch 60 Minutes on Sunday? Me neither." »

“You girls are in the final of Australia’s first Masterchef,” exclaimed Judge George. Hooray! It was an unexpected result as Julie’s unfinished offerings didn’t look a chance against the polished presentation of Chris and Poh.

Of course, the problem with a Chris / Poh playoff was that their cooking joie de vivre appeals to a niche market – a fabulous, colourful, creative and sometimes crazy place – but still a niche market.

Two million viewers probably won’t cook stinky century eggs or glutinous pigs trotters. It’s a bit like chicken feet, which while delicious, are usually left on the yum cha trolley, at least by most non-Asian diners.

Continue reading "Masterchef: I told you the girls were going to win" »

My name is Yvette and I am a Masterchef addict. Not since Charlene married Scott on Neighbours have I looked forward so eagerly to my nightly fix of commercial TV.

Masterchef has been a revelation. With gripping culinary challenges, genuine emotion and insightful tips on cooking techniques it has become must watch TV. The prospect of its conclusion on Sunday night fills me with despair.

The show has also changed my mind about the culinary industry which up ‘til now I believed was full of offensive, egotistical, sexist chefs who thought it was OK for women to cook as long as they weren’t paid for it.

Continue reading "Macho-man chefs are now stuffed and skewered" »

There was a time, not so long ago, when critics predicted the end of reality television.

Big Brother had the infamous ‘turkey slap,’ incident, Extreme Makeover and The Swan filmed people surgically mutilating themselves in order to look like Barbie and Ken dolls, while programs like Survivor, The Bachelor, Boot Camp and even the Biggest Loser, not only revealed the depths to which human nature would sink, but invited competitors and viewers to revel in displays of excess: flesh, emotions, psychological reactions and banality.

Cheap to produce, it seemed that ‘actuality’ programming had reached its nadir. Lately, however, there is a rebirth of the genre.

Continue reading "The tasteful TV show that saved a toxic genre" »

After three months, 7500 applications, a top 50, then a top 20, MasterChef Australia now has a Top Six to duke it out in the final week of this extremely popular TV show.

The eliminations start on Monday, and there will only be two left standing for the Grand Final on Sunday 19th July.

Who will win? I rate the finalists:
Chris Badenoch:
The beer merchant from Melbourne has barely put a foot wrong in the competition with strong innovative cooking. However he is starting to look like he could do a Greg Norman, and choke as he gets near the finish line.

Continue reading "The MasterChef final formguide, time to cut the fat" »

It would appear the knives are starting to come out in the MasterChef Australia household as the $100,000 prize gets closer, with allegations of game playing and possible sabotage. And you thought it was just a cooking show - no, it is an extremely entertaining reality TV show.

With the ratings of MasterChef Australia nudging the two million mark it would appear that people who do not usually partake in reality TV are watching this show. To the horror of MasterChef UK fans the Australian version uses a different format, and has cherry picked the best bits from other reality TV shows.

So if you are a fan of MasterChef and this is your first foray into reality TV, here are some other shows you may enjoy. Key elements of each of these have been cleverly pinched by Masterchef Australia’s producers.

Continue reading "And you thought Masterchef was a cooking competition" »