Quick response to an email I received tonight complaining about MasterChef... my thoughts so far:
Hi J... I guess I’m not approaching it with such a critical eye. Right now, I need light entertainment and it’s providing me with that in spades.
You have to remember how much money this is making Ten. It’s a completely commercial project and the producers’ aim is to thrash rival networks with astonishing viewer numbers, not create a food culture of integrity and knowledge. And they’re achieving that for sure — apparently it was the top program nationally on four weeknights last week. If I were to be a pragmatist, and there are many food people who have been pragmatic so far about the series, a positive is that it’s bringing information about food to many people who probably know very little about the subject. And that has to be a good thing. (On the negative side, it’s creating a whole new generation of posing celebrity chefs. It’s also running a marvellous line in hypocrisy: eg, the episode in which the contestants were sent out into Sydney’s food bowl to source produce for a dish and, during which, the message was ‘fresh’, ‘seasonal’, ‘fresh’, ‘straight-from-farm’, was spliced with ads for Campbell’s stock.)
Your criticisms about the mousy contestants’ simpering and fawning as they receive positive comments from the judges, the lack of real instruction about basic technique, the faux dramatic moments, and the fact that there are three male judges who unwittingly but frequently patronise female contestants — well, I agree with those criticisms completely.
But here’s something else: Last night I made a soup from the dregs of my vegetable drawer. I decided I wasn’t going to go out and buy more fresh produce until I had used up what I had. Most people would have thrown out the aged ingredients I used — and without a second look. It occurred to me as I made my soup, and watched MasterChef at the same time, that that is a very important element of cooking — the capacity to make do with very little, to be thrifty and frugal, to use up everything without wasting a thing. For both financial reasons and for environmental reasons. That ethos is something that our ancestors, whether English, Scottish, Chinese, Lebanese, Italian or Greek, took for granted.
When I was a child, my mother, frugal to her bones, would seek out cheap damaged boxes of fruit and vegetables at the local greengrocer and poach the fruit and make soups and stews from the damaged vegetables. Even when I studied at Le Cordon Bleu in London in the dark ages of the early ‘90s, that ethos was emphasised — don’t throw food away. Keep scraps for stocks, etc. I’d guess that almost every successful restaurant — and most of the MasterChef contestants seem to aspire to work in a restaurant or have their own restaurant — watches its food costs and food waste with the eye of an eagle. Margins in restaurants are so tight that they simply can’t afford to do otherwise.
I could be wrong, but I don’t think one episode of MasterChef has challenged contestants to make something from nothing, to use their food scraps in some way, to study an empty fridge and bare pantry and come up with a meal. Nor have I seen basic techniques — how to make a stock, a soup, a stew, an omelette — demonstrated. (Perhaps I am wrong — happy to be corrected.)
But nevertheless, I’m letting all of that wash over me. I’m loving Alvin’s glasses and the rolls of his eyes; the cement mixer from the Central Coast, well I’m rooting for him. The Melbourne laywer ... she may turn out to be too intense, too much of a goody-goody two-shoes. It’s great television, great entertainment and, if you take it as that, and not much else, you’ll be joining a Matt Preston fan-club in a flash.
Hi J... I guess I’m not approaching it with such a critical eye. Right now, I need light entertainment and it’s providing me with that in spades.
You have to remember how much money this is making Ten. It’s a completely commercial project and the producers’ aim is to thrash rival networks with astonishing viewer numbers, not create a food culture of integrity and knowledge. And they’re achieving that for sure — apparently it was the top program nationally on four weeknights last week. If I were to be a pragmatist, and there are many food people who have been pragmatic so far about the series, a positive is that it’s bringing information about food to many people who probably know very little about the subject. And that has to be a good thing. (On the negative side, it’s creating a whole new generation of posing celebrity chefs. It’s also running a marvellous line in hypocrisy: eg, the episode in which the contestants were sent out into Sydney’s food bowl to source produce for a dish and, during which, the message was ‘fresh’, ‘seasonal’, ‘fresh’, ‘straight-from-farm’, was spliced with ads for Campbell’s stock.)
Your criticisms about the mousy contestants’ simpering and fawning as they receive positive comments from the judges, the lack of real instruction about basic technique, the faux dramatic moments, and the fact that there are three male judges who unwittingly but frequently patronise female contestants — well, I agree with those criticisms completely.
But here’s something else: Last night I made a soup from the dregs of my vegetable drawer. I decided I wasn’t going to go out and buy more fresh produce until I had used up what I had. Most people would have thrown out the aged ingredients I used — and without a second look. It occurred to me as I made my soup, and watched MasterChef at the same time, that that is a very important element of cooking — the capacity to make do with very little, to be thrifty and frugal, to use up everything without wasting a thing. For both financial reasons and for environmental reasons. That ethos is something that our ancestors, whether English, Scottish, Chinese, Lebanese, Italian or Greek, took for granted.
When I was a child, my mother, frugal to her bones, would seek out cheap damaged boxes of fruit and vegetables at the local greengrocer and poach the fruit and make soups and stews from the damaged vegetables. Even when I studied at Le Cordon Bleu in London in the dark ages of the early ‘90s, that ethos was emphasised — don’t throw food away. Keep scraps for stocks, etc. I’d guess that almost every successful restaurant — and most of the MasterChef contestants seem to aspire to work in a restaurant or have their own restaurant — watches its food costs and food waste with the eye of an eagle. Margins in restaurants are so tight that they simply can’t afford to do otherwise.
I could be wrong, but I don’t think one episode of MasterChef has challenged contestants to make something from nothing, to use their food scraps in some way, to study an empty fridge and bare pantry and come up with a meal. Nor have I seen basic techniques — how to make a stock, a soup, a stew, an omelette — demonstrated. (Perhaps I am wrong — happy to be corrected.)
But nevertheless, I’m letting all of that wash over me. I’m loving Alvin’s glasses and the rolls of his eyes; the cement mixer from the Central Coast, well I’m rooting for him. The Melbourne laywer ... she may turn out to be too intense, too much of a goody-goody two-shoes. It’s great television, great entertainment and, if you take it as that, and not much else, you’ll be joining a Matt Preston fan-club in a flash.
