‘I know numerous jazz musicians who are also really good cooks’
Laura Michael made it to the final four of the biggest cooking competition on TV.
The jazz musician from Carluke, Lanarkshire, sadly missed out on a place in the top three on Masterchef, but her cooking dreams are far from over.
“To get to the finals is absolutely beyond what I could have ever imagined,” says Laura, 46, "It’s been really exciting, the whole experience has been so positive.”
Did she think she would get that far? “Absolutely 100 per cent not, no. I didn’t even think about it, if I did it might have stopped me entering.
"I just wanted to learn how to cook and be under a bit of pressure."
Her passion for food was stirred by travelling all over the world as a musician and sampling all kinds of cuisines.
She says: "I think I have always been really into trying to recreate things that I have tasted. I felt like I was always very experimental and hardly ever did the same recipe twice.
"I really pushed myself in my own kitchen and felt like I needed a bit of guidance.”
Glasgow-born Laura championed Scottish food on the show, like a dish of fillet steak drizzled with whisky cream and a haggis bon bon.
"I’m very into using local produce,” she says, “Scotland has an abundance of a food larder to pick from.
"I absolutely love the quality of the fish we have in this country. Our fish is getting imported to Spain!
"We visit the Isle of Islay quite a lot and I’m always amazed by the quality of the scallops, Langoustines.”
But how did she go from being a saxophonist and music instructor to creating restaurant-style food?
It turns out the jazz community in Scotland is full of foodies. Laura says: “There are numerous people I know who are jazz musicians who are really good cooks. So I’m starting to think there's a correlation between improvised music and learning to cook!
"There are parallels between creative music and creative cooking. You get that buzz.”
Her experience performing live also helped her not be so nervous with all eyes on her on set, she says.
But what about being under the beady eye of presenters John and Gregg? “They were fab, I love them. Gregg kept us all boosted up and has lots of energy and is very funny.
"But I absolutely love John Torode. I thought he was so calm and had such wisdom about food, just being around him he was so knowledgeable.”
Masterchef was filmed in autumn last year, before Scotland’s second lockdown but with Covid restrictions still in place.
"It was a bit mental, I’ve got to be honest,” says Laura, “I think it would be hard anyway leaving my children, but leaving in the middle of a pandemic when there was an anxiety about coronavirus – that was the most difficult part for me.
"My son is only nine and really struggled with that. That was really hard for me. I think there were quite a few contestants who were mothers who felt the same." Despite not winning the utimate crown, Laura says she has a lot of ideas of what she wants to do going forward.
"The food industry’s in a challenging position at the moment because of coronavirus,” she says, “but I haven’t gone through this not to do something with food.”
The finals of Masterchef continue on Friday at 8.30pm on BBC One.