A master class on inspiration

I’ve already written a blog post dedicated to Masterchef earlier this year, but I had to give it a special mention one last time before parting with it for another year.

The third season of Masterchef Australia has ended.

And isn’t that sad? For starters, one of my favourite people won the show (which I’d known a long time ago, right at the beginning, right before I knew she was going to be one of my favourites) and that rarely happens. So why does something that’s going so well have to…end?

So having my participant win was a novel and enjoyable experience. But the end was also not as glorious and euphoric as I had imagined. The show was seriously so good that the fact that it was ending didn’t seem to please the participants nor the judges. And of course, I know that many a hearts will have broken in this South Asian part of the world. Many a pair of eyes will feel rather purposeless during the 9:15 to 10:15 pm slot on tv. I mean, they’ve tried to replace the authentic Masterchef with that awful American version. But Gordon Ramsay is one big organ of an ass from head to toe and I vouch to never watch tv during this time until his version of Masterchef ends. And who wants to watch a show about food that is reminiscent of not where in the body the food goes in, but where it comes out of?

So why was Masterchef (the Australian one of course) so popular? I think for most of us, it really did manage to reignite the slumbering passion we all have for food. It was a lovely wake up call. A wake up call to pay attention to what is important to us, and to enjoy the process of keeping ourselves alive, to do it with taste and elegance and with a lot of creativity. Most of the participants felt so human and real and loveable. And the judges – haha. The judges Gary and George are both so cute and adorable, bubbly and balding. They look like tasty buns you’d want to snatch a bite of. Not to mention Matt Preston’s out of this world sense of fashion that always leaves me feeling flabbergasted.

The hours I’ve spent after each episode rummaging through my fridge, taking out seemingly incompatible ingredients and whipping up a new dish have been phenomenal. It’s like I’ve found a food muse on tv. Too bad it has to end. I wish Masterchef wasn’t a competition where only one person had to win win. Because honestly, there are so many winners that emerge from it, more than the show can accommodate. (Producers, I hope you know that.)

Like last weekend, when I spent an entire day inside the kitchen with my best friend just experimenting with food. It was while we were mixing ingredients, reading recipes online, sharing our experiential wisdom, that we realized how much Masterchef has shaped our culinary psyche. The food we made sucked, but we reveled in a fair bit of role playing. We knew most of the personalities inside out, and it was hilarious. Being the judge one moment, then one of the participants the next. We want to hold the title for having acquired the best fake (and ridiculously inaccurate) Australian accent, but I have a feeling that there must be many more like us. This show has fed so deeply into us, that maybe it’s okay that we don’t get to see it for a while. It’s seeped into us and filled us with inspiration to last long.

So after feeling inspired like this, I’m thinking of starting my own food blog. Let’s see where that goes.

Ms. Sumi teaches English to high school students. When she isn’t in the classroom, she likes to read novels, write poems, and spend time in the kitchen. She is also a great appreciator of wildlife and considers spiders, cockroaches and leeches as some of her favorite insects.

image source: tvcentral.com.au
http://www.parakhi.com/blogs/2011/12/01/a-master-class-on-inspiration