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The anti-dessert chef club
Jun. 1st, 2009 12:34 pmGosh, my f-list is quiet. Where is everyone? Is it just me and a handful of survivors, eking out an existence in a post-apocalyptic world? I hope not.
I will have to ramble to fill the silence. My current guilty TV pleasure is MasterChef Australia, which I find equal parts interesting (the cooking) and frustrating (the rest of it). It seems to be on about ten nights a week, which is too much of a viewing commitment for me, but I have worked out the show's weekly routine so I can watch the nights that feature cooking and avoid the nights that feature people sitting about deciding who to vote out. Although even the cooking nights have too much filler. If I were editing, I could have the show over in the half the time.
Sunday night is one of the interesting nights, because it involves the cheftestants cooking two dishes. In the first half of the show they are each given an identical mystery box of ingredients and they have to make the best dish they can. For the second dish, the winner of mystery box challenge then gets to select a main ingredient (from a choice of three) and the cheftestants have to use that ingredient and the weekly theme (French cuisine, or whatever) as the basis of a dish. I like to imagine what I would make, before realising that it has taken me half the allotted time to decide. I would not be successful on this show.
Right, so now that I've set all that up, I can tell you about last night. The mystery box was clearly intended for them to make what I call Johnny (or Nellie) cakes and what everyone else in the world calls cupcakes (actually, so do I, but I think 'Johnny cake!' as I say it). Almost all of the cheftestants were horrified; we saw interview after interview of them saying, 'Oh, I don't do desserts' or 'I've never made a cake in my life' or 'I've never even eaten a cupcake'. What sacrilege is this? Are cakes not one of the major food groups? Perhaps not, but cakes were the first things I learnt how to make. I'd be much happier making a cake than, say, filleting and boning a fish. Anyway, they made their little cakes and one, normally talented, cheftestant was so hopeless at it he didn't know to let the cake cool before icing it. He should hang his head in shame.
Then the lady who made the best cake (perhaps not entirely surprisingly, a woman with young children) was given the theme for the second challenge: English cooking. She got to select a main ingredient from trevalla, strawberries or a leg of lamb. She picked the lamb on the grounds that (a) she'd never cooked trevalla before (fair enough) and (b) she doesn't really do desserts. Gah. What is wrong with these people? They're like an anti-dessert club. And that is wrong. (If I were her I would have picked strawberries. I don't know what I would have done with them, but at least the other contestants would struggle with them too. Put a spanner in everyone's works. I am apparently meaner than I think I am.)
I will have to ramble to fill the silence. My current guilty TV pleasure is MasterChef Australia, which I find equal parts interesting (the cooking) and frustrating (the rest of it). It seems to be on about ten nights a week, which is too much of a viewing commitment for me, but I have worked out the show's weekly routine so I can watch the nights that feature cooking and avoid the nights that feature people sitting about deciding who to vote out. Although even the cooking nights have too much filler. If I were editing, I could have the show over in the half the time.
Sunday night is one of the interesting nights, because it involves the cheftestants cooking two dishes. In the first half of the show they are each given an identical mystery box of ingredients and they have to make the best dish they can. For the second dish, the winner of mystery box challenge then gets to select a main ingredient (from a choice of three) and the cheftestants have to use that ingredient and the weekly theme (French cuisine, or whatever) as the basis of a dish. I like to imagine what I would make, before realising that it has taken me half the allotted time to decide. I would not be successful on this show.
Right, so now that I've set all that up, I can tell you about last night. The mystery box was clearly intended for them to make what I call Johnny (or Nellie) cakes and what everyone else in the world calls cupcakes (actually, so do I, but I think 'Johnny cake!' as I say it). Almost all of the cheftestants were horrified; we saw interview after interview of them saying, 'Oh, I don't do desserts' or 'I've never made a cake in my life' or 'I've never even eaten a cupcake'. What sacrilege is this? Are cakes not one of the major food groups? Perhaps not, but cakes were the first things I learnt how to make. I'd be much happier making a cake than, say, filleting and boning a fish. Anyway, they made their little cakes and one, normally talented, cheftestant was so hopeless at it he didn't know to let the cake cool before icing it. He should hang his head in shame.
Then the lady who made the best cake (perhaps not entirely surprisingly, a woman with young children) was given the theme for the second challenge: English cooking. She got to select a main ingredient from trevalla, strawberries or a leg of lamb. She picked the lamb on the grounds that (a) she'd never cooked trevalla before (fair enough) and (b) she doesn't really do desserts. Gah. What is wrong with these people? They're like an anti-dessert club. And that is wrong. (If I were her I would have picked strawberries. I don't know what I would have done with them, but at least the other contestants would struggle with them too. Put a spanner in everyone's works. I am apparently meaner than I think I am.)