‘You’re literally putting your soul on the line’
New MasterChef NZ judges revealed as Nadia Lim, ‘scary’ Vaughn Mabee and ‘silver fox’ Michael P Dearth. Emily Brookes talks to them about the show’s comeback after seven years.
There’s a lot of talking going on, so Nadia Lim is shouting to be heard. ‘‘Everyone loved pickling!’’
Three distinct laughs ring out from the Zoom conference, then Michael P Dearth breaks in to agree.
‘‘You’re going to see a lot of pickling.’’
They’re talking about MasterChef NZ, which returns to TV3 on May 29 after a seven-year hiatus.
Season two winner, now wellknown cookbook author and food personality Lim, and Dearth, owner of renowned Auckland restaurants The Grove and Baduzzi, are joined by Vaughan Mabee – three-time winner of the Innovation Award in the Cuisine Good Food Awards and owner-operator of this year’s Best Restaurant, Amisfield – as judges this season.
For Lim, ‘‘memories came flooding back’’.
‘‘To the viewer, you just don’t understand how nerve-wracking it is,’’ she says. ‘‘You’re literally putting your soul on the line ... It’s actually really scary. I don’t think any amount of TV will ever do justice to what it’s actually like in real life.’’
Mabee, a TV novice, was surprised by how serious it was. ‘‘I’m a bit of a joker. I would have never guessed how emotional and serious it gets.’’
If you’ve never seen MasterChef – or forgotten in the long gap between seasons – the reality show’s format is simple: amateur cooks compete in a series of increasingly difficult cooking challenges to avoid weekly elimination and, eventually, be crowned the winner.
‘‘Let’s face it,’’ continues Mabee, ‘‘there’s a difference between a chef and a home cook, but what shocked me was how good some of these home cooks actually are. Some of them were talented not just in what they knew in technique, [but] in their creativity, all of the elements that sometimes chefs who’ve worked for me don’t have yet in their culinary bag of tricks... I just couldn’t believe it, eh, just how good these home cooks were. Some of the things I ate I was like, Jesus, this is really amazing.’’
Lim breaks in: ‘‘There was one where you were like, ‘Oooh, I’m going to do something like this on my menu’.’’
Whether or not they’ve been involved in MasterChef before, all three judges agreed there had been major changes in the way home cooks approached food since the last local season aired in 2015.
‘‘I think mainly everyone had just been practising more at home during the lockdowns, and I think there’s been a resurgence of home cooking because of the lockdowns,’’ says Lim.
‘‘Potentially a lot of these contestants may not have entered MasterChef [were it not for the pandemic] because I have a suspicion their passion for cooking was reignited during the lockdowns and being at home more.’’
Thanks in part to people like Lim, who owns a 485-hectare ethical farm in Arrowtown, and
Mabee, who focuses on using produce from small-scale producers local to Amisfield’s Central Otago location, contestants also had a new appreciation for provenance.
‘‘One of the things I noticed about this series was... there’s this real appreciation for where your produce really comes from, and that being part of the inspiration behind why you decide to make a particular dish,’’ says Lim.
With MasterChef, Dearth hopes viewers will be impressed by the same things contestants and judges were: the bounty of the ocean and sustainable farms of the region, not to mention the beautiful landscape.
But perhaps the greatest influence on the changes in New Zealand’s food culture over the past decade or so is the demographics of the country.
The ethnic diversity on display in this season was, says Mabee, ‘‘out of control. It was like New Zealand the way it is now, what New Zealand cuisine is; a melting pot of different cultures.’’
Dearth and Mabee agree that Lim was the judge who had the contestants most star-struck. Mabee was the scariest; Dearth, says Lim, was the ‘‘Silver Fox’’.
But, it seems, you can take the girl out of the MasterChef competition, but you can’t take the MasterChef competition out of the girl.
‘‘I have to admit there were a couple of moments in the show where Michael and I had to remind Nadia she’s a judge now and she doesn’t have to be so competitive,’’ chuckles Mabee.
‘‘I think it was about 15 times we had to remind her of that.’’
‘‘A good dozen,’’ Dearth demures.
Lim can’t argue. ‘‘Sometimes I was like, ‘Today I really want to be cooking, I would really love to do this challenge’.’’
Though ultimately: ‘‘It was much nicer to be on the other side.’’
‘‘Sometimes I was like, ‘Today I really want to be cooking, I would really love to do this challenge’.’’ Nadia Lim