Masterchef

Rosa Baden Powell Masterchef 2001



Along time ago I entered a cookery competition. My expectations weren't great and my dates for availability for filming were dependent on snow conditions at Glenshee (I have a fax saying: the snow may be good but we need your menus) and children.I didn't expect to get very far and I chose a cook-off date to fit in with a child in a school play in Winchester, in the full knowledge that if successful, I would have to cook again the following day.This is how I came to the final without having practiced one of the courses. Nothing major in my book but when you come across competitors who have scaled on graph paper vegetable placement,perhaps a tad worrying.

The morning after the final of Masterchef 2010 was televised the telephone rang; it was a journalist asking me if I had reached the final or had just been in the Scottish final of Masterchef? She couldn’t be sure from her internet search. I rather suspected that a Scottish round might not have been newsworthy enough, even for a Scottish national newspaper. I could almost hear the sigh of relief in her voice, when I confirmed that yes, it was the BBC not some Scottish wannabe show and yes, I had reached the final. “So, what do you want to know,” I asked.
“Did reaching the final of Masterchef change your life?”

If I am honest, I wouldn’t feel confident enough to enter Masterchef in its 2010 format and would have little interest in winning because I don’t want to run or work in a professional restaurant. However, my Masterchef card is a useful one and has opened doors. Not long after the competition the chef, Nick Nairn, invited me to do a cookery demonstration; even an also-ran finalist with a Scottish Masterchef title thrown in, was of interest to an All Scots show in Glasgow. A fee was offered too. When I was preparing for the show, I quickly realised that the expected Masterchef style wasn’t one that I was comfortable with: yet more complicated recipes that nobody would have any interest in trying to cook at home. I did wonder as I watched this year’s fantastic final if the food was warm when the judges tasted it; presentation is important but taste remains paramount - throw some heat in too. I had watched the gannets at cookery shows (and TV ‘runners’ too) push and shove, to steal a taste but after the plate has been licked clean, on they push in search of the next free sample. After my initial hubristic enthusiasm to sing about my pipped-at-the-post Masterchef status, reality checked in and I timidly asked if it might be possible to do a mother and daughter demonstration. I sold it with the mother-of-six novelty value who could encourage other parents to cook with their kids. The recipe worked, a teacher saw us in action and so Stirrin’Stuff evolved as a direct result of a cookery competition.

Nowadays, I steer away from the title of 2001 Masterchef finalist but still, it is alluded to or mentioned directly as at the 2010 Oxford Literary Festival’s A mediaeval Kitchen Cookery demonstration with Masterchef finalist, mother of six and cookery columnist Fiona Bird, author of Kid's Kitchen: 40 Fun and Healthy Recipes to Make and Share’

My cookery message has little to do with Masterchef and is as applicable to a single mum as a mother of six but who am I to complain? If Masterchef gets ‘em in to a kitchen demonstration, this is excellent but what happens when they are watching is up to me. My recipe is straightforward but still ambitious: simple cooking with real, raw ingredients. I suggest plenty of food variety for a balanced diet with perhaps a soupcon of sugar to make the bridge to palates that are junk food addicted but most important of all it should be fun.

I’ve been watching the Delicious Miss Dahl on BBC2, I simply love it. Sophie Dahl is easy on the eye, prepares food that most folk are capable of cooking and it all takes place in a beautiful kitchen. Even a sneaky tweet that suggested the kitchen is stage managed, hasn’t broken Sophie’s spell over me. Television isn’t the real world: do we really want to see parents and children learning how to peel a carrot? Dull, dull, dull let’s leave that for the classroom. I want to shout ‘Hurrah’ for the pretty Miss Dahl and the perfection of Masterchef dishes….and Carpe Diem contestants if Masterchef offers a platform to rant from .’We need simple nutrition and food skills on the primary school curriculum’