Entertainment

The MasterChef Australia contestants were so stressed out about Duchess Meghan

One of my “favorite” things about the Duchess of Sussex is that her haters watch her and act like everything she does and says is the most shocking and ridiculous thing. Meghan appeared on MasterChef Australia as a guest-judge, and Meghan’s “critics” are behaving as if no cooking show has ever had a celebrity guest judge before, and no guest judge has ever chatted about their own life and their own relationship with food and cooking. It’s only Meghan who does this, obviously, and therefore she deserves to be mocked and pilloried. They’ll keep bitching and moaning about Meghan and MasterChef until one of the left-behinds appears on a cooking show, then it will suddenly be the most normal and aspirational thing in the world. From the Times’ “review” of this particular MasterChef Australia episode.

This is, you would be forgiven for thinking, the most exciting day of the MasterChef Australia team’s lives. They are about to welcome a guest “beyond (the contestants’) wildest imaginations”. The set is decked out in flowers and red velvet, and we are told to expect a judge who is “a global icon, a philanthropist, a humanitarian, a woman known around the world of her heart, her voice and her deep love for home cooking”. And so of course, clad in black silk and walking down the red carpet to flashing lights and great whoops from assembled wellwishers, here comes the Duchess of Sussex.

MasterChef Australia is a far bigger, brasher affair than its British counterpart. This is a show in which a crowd cheer and pump their fists from a balcony when a chef successfully cooks his steak medium rare. Such things are a hard watch for a buttoned-up Brit, but are — one suspects — far more appealing to our super-saccharine, ever-so-sincere Californian duchess.

As always, we are a good quarter of an hour into the 90-minute (90 minutes!) show before anybody so much as picks up a spoon. During this extensive preamble, we are treated to a slightly excruciating stand up interview with… well, “Do I call you Duchess?” asks one extremely excitable host. “Oh, call me Meghan,” our hero trills.

The duchess’s husband, we are told, “being from the UK, loves a lot of meat, potatoes, cream sauces”. But like his wife, he does not shy from spice: “He can handle a really good curry.” She feels very blessed to have a large garden and lots of produce on hand. When her children ask, “Mama, can I have dessert?”, she replies, “If you can pick it, you can have it.” Much of this we learn, along with the fact that Meghan likes a mixture of savoury and sweet food, and is amused by the quirky fact that she says the word “basel” instead of “basil” — Americans! What are they like! — after she is asked what her favourite dish is to cook at home. We do not, in fact, learn what her favourite dish is to cook at home.

All that is left, following extensive gushing, is for Meghan to set a task for the four blushing contestants (“It’s like speaking to your first crush,” one says). With the pull of a rope, a red velvet rope descends and reveals a table laid with a variety of “hero” items: lemon, honey, strawberries, celeriac and apples, among others. Meghan’s hope is that the contestants will pick an ingredient which “almost feels like an heirloom” and base a dish around it. Perhaps the ingredient should be related to “something from your family” or a memory: “Something we can also taste in your dish.”

For two of the four contestants, this ingredient turns out to be celeriac. We get celeriac ice cream, and celeriac and steak. One other guy is up to something with carrots. After much celeriac-based faffing, Meghan is asked to declare to the contestants that they have 30 minutes remaining. She refuses to shout this out to the whole room, and instead heads to the workstation of each contestant to tell them individually. “She looks through your soul a little bit when you’re talking to her” is the contestant Casper’s response to this interaction. He is making octopus with Jerusalem artichoke puree. When Meghan likes it, he looks as if she has just proposed marriage.

We are now getting into the judging in earnest. “I mentioned my husband was a real meat and potatoes guy. This feels like the most elegant elevated version of that. H would love this dish,” Meghan informs Mr Celeriac and Steak. Is there a chef alive who has not dreamed of hearing that Harry Windsor would like his steak? Carrot man is up next, but who is this? A producer scuttles on screen: “Sorry to interrupt. We’ve had a phone call to the studio.” And up pops the ginger mug of the man himself on a video call: “Whats going on? Have I interrupted something?”

“It’s amazing. They are so talented. We wish you were here” the duchess trills. “He’s in Canberra now. With the veterans,” she adds, for our benefit.

[From The Times]

Basically, the Times and other British outlets are super-pissed that the Australian contestants and MasterChef team enjoyed spending time with Meghan. That’s it. That the chefs were in a tizzy because they got to cook for Meghan, and that Meghan was chatty, personable and well-received. That’s what is deserving of all of this mockery. In case you’re like me and wondered what the hell “celeriac” is… it’s celery root. That’s what we call it in America. Anyway, on any given day, you can tell how successful Harry and Meghan are by how outraged the British press is about nothing in particular. This is the equivalent of throwing a national tantrum over Ina Garden’s hash potato recipe. (All that being said, those Aussie chefs were SO STRESSED about cooking for Meghan. It was funny as hell.)

You can see more clips from MasterChef Australia on their Instagram.

Photos courtesy of 10 News Sydney, MasterChef Australia and Instagram.






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