I’m not really interested in cooking competitions on television. All of Holland bakes or Masterchef in any form. Both programs are BBC formats, but Masterchef became famous because of the Australian version – which is also broadcast in the Netherlands on Net5. There is now one too Master Chef IndiaAn Masterchef Croatia and there are variants with real chefs, with children, and with celebrities. The first episode Celebrity MasterChef Netherlands started on Wednesday and I watched it – too bad for my memory.
One of my initial objections had already been resolved by the broadcast time of half past eight. Cooking competitions are usually scheduled around dinner time and then you run the risk of… hangry is left with no desire to cook. Another objection remained; I really don’t understand the added value of cooking under insane time pressure. It doesn’t make the dishes any tastier, it doesn’t make the viewer more interested, at most it’s entertaining to see people panicking in desperate need of time. It especially stresses me out, that pressure cooker into which the candidates are pushed. Sixty minutes to you signature dish to prepare, including gathering ingredients, assembling the magimixer and understanding the induction plate. I like to convince myself that cooking, or at least preparing food, can also have a calming effect.
I have to take back the fact that the viewer doesn’t learn anything from that hurried rescuer in the kitchen. I’ve learned a lot from it Celebrity MasterChef Netherlands. This is partly due to this year’s three super-sympathetic jury members. Two-star chef Soenil Bahadoer, chef Angélique Schmeinck and culinary journalist Joël Broekaert. They casually spice up the competition with their knowledge. Sometimes this goes down well with the candidates – radio DJ Erik de Zwart teaches that the water in which he cooks his vegetables “must be as salty as the Mediterranean Sea”. Rapper (and author of two cookbooks) Freddy Tratlehner was under so much stress that he wasn’t necessarily open to learning how to tell if the crab in his pan is male or female. “You can’t taste the difference in the pasta.” Artist Louise Schiffmacher had to endure the jury almost choking on her couscous to know that she should never serve burnt food.
Filming in the mouth
I became trained mainly in culinary vocabulary. We already knew the ‘sour’ in the dish, just like ‘crisp’. But in the ‘mouthfeel’ series, ‘filmy in the mouth’ was added when it comes to a sauce or dressing, where ‘filmy’ is again a synonym for greasy. What I still need to work on is reading the facial expressions of the judges. Does raising eyebrows mean that they like what they taste or not. You don’t always make sense of their words either. By ‘nicely compact’ do they mean that singer Jeangu Macrooy’s bowl of peanut soup is a bit meager? ‘Beautiful’ is in any case the alternative to ‘delicious’, so often I heard the word in combination with a bite.
At the end of each episode, the jury sends a candidate home. Juror Soenil Bahadoer commented Foodies magazine that it is not just about whether the dish presented is tasty or technically well made. What the candidates don’t know is that the judges also check their workbenches in the studio. They do it to taste all the “separate components”, the sauces, the dressing, the gravy. But also to see how work is done, whether organized or chaotic. Doesn’t say it all: Freddy Tratlehner’s workbench had exploded, but his pasta with crab and morels turned out to be ‘very nice’.
Next week the candidates – there are still all ten of them – will receive a mystery box on their workbench. That’s another word for a full shopping bag.