‘MasterChef, I’m sorry, but I think it’s time for us to take a break.’
I know it sounds a bit funny, but I think about cooking in one way or another from the moment I wake up to when I fall asleep. It’s no big surprise then that like millions of other eager home cooks, the show that had me dough-hooked from the start was a little gem called MasterChef Australia. You might have heard of it? Now at the pointy end of its seventh series – and dominating primetime – I can’t shake the feeling that we’ve grown apart.
MasterChef, I’m sorry, but I think it’s time for us to take a break. It’s not you; it’s me. Well, ok, it is you. While I still love cooking, this season’s “ordinary cooks cooking extraordinary food” are just a bit too virtuosic to relate to.
I know, I know. That my passion has waned could just be a case of the Seven Year Itch, a common phase in a long-term relationship. But in every other season when my partner would ask me what I’d do in the challenges I could imagine that I’d have had a pretty good bash at them (at least when it came to savory dishes; I’m rubbish at desserts).
Taste that horrible Bolognese and fix what’s wrong with it in half an hour. Done!
Reinvent a dish from your childhood. Are you kidding? Mum’s fish dish for sure!
Cook the perfect poached egg in five minutes. Give me three!
So what happened to us? I still remember all the reasons for falling in love in the first place, and most of those have only strengthened over time.