Tuesday 26 April 2011

...Masterchef


Well they’ve gone and changed the format of Masterchef haven’t they? In the adverts people were standing on the cooking benches, which I assume was some attempt for them to be all like ‘Look! This series is different. We’re STANDING on the cooking benches! We’re really serious and that.’ Fine fine fine. All I could think was, ‘They’re standing on the cooking benches they’re going to cook on? Ew. They could have trodden in dog muck and be about to serve up Lobster thermidor with a side of dog turd.’

I digress… It turns out the new series is very similar to the last one, except that this time around John Torrode and Greg Wallace shout even louder than they did previously. I genuinely didn’t think that was possible. They shout at each other when they’re practically nose to nose. One can only imagine that all the shouting has led to irreparable hearing problems over the years, meaning they have to shout ever louder, and it’s a self perpetuating spiral of doom.

My favourite shout of this series HAS to be at the special new stage where the contestants cooked for former Masterchef contestants who are now chefs. They’re not masterchefs particularly, but they are chefs, so I suppose it’ll do, and if they called the programme ‘people who want to be chefs’ it might not have quite the same ring to it. Anyway, the shouting… John Torrode approaches ‘the pass’ (fancy term for where food gets handed to waiter) and bellows ‘WHERE’S MY FOOD?’ I’m surprised he didn’t preface it with ‘FEE-FI-FO-FUM!’ It would have been so much scarier.

That was one of Torrode’s finer solo moments. The highlights of Greg Wallace’s singular efforts are all around him eating. He basically makes love to a fork when it’s in his mouth. Ironically its enough to put you off your food/make you seek out an alternative eating implement to a fork to avoid the visual coming screaming back every time you’re trying to devour a chicken escalope.

Yes they’re fine on their own but it’s as a double act that these two really flourish, and Greg Wallace has come a long way since being described in early series as something about being a flavour and ingredients specialist. Let’s call a spade a spade: the man likes to eat. If it tastes good, so much the better. The chemistry (and shouting) between them is quite something. The other day John Torrode tried something one of the contestants had cooked and said ‘I’ll be interested to hear what Mr Wallace has to say about that’ – you mean apart from ‘nom nom nom.’ ? By this point he had eaten one of every dish being cooked. By my calculation that was twelve dishes. By the end he was barely bothering to chew or swallow, he was just doing pieces to camera with his mouth full. I’m surprised he hadn’t gone foetal in the corner or fallen into a caramel induced coma. But this man is committed to eating. It's where he gets his kicks. Case in point: he tastes a finer dish and cries ‘the dessert comes up and snogs you’. I can only imagine he’s inexperienced but someone should really tell him that that’s not what snogging is. Although to be fair to him maybe in his house it is – he probably lives with an entrecote of beef and is considering an affair with a spear of purple sprouting broccoli. The swine. 

I could go on but I’ve gone on too much already, so I’ll just say this: Tom to win.