masterchef
03/07/2011 - 10:55 pm
I cannot believe I am writing this blog post. To make the leap from aspiring food writer to Masterchef finalist was really quite something but this might just top it.
I’ve got a restaurant. Maybe it will help things sink in if that is repeated.
I have my very own restaurant. And what a restaurant it is.
The Hole in the Wall in the delightful village of Little Wilbraham, just outside Cambridge, is about as picture perfect as an old pub can be and I love it.
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26/01/2011 - 1:11 pm
A fellow Masterchef finalist, Tim is now a professional patissier specialising in French macarons that are simply stunning. He’s about to launch an online store as well so there’s no excuse not to treat yourself. Go on, you know you want to…
23/10/2010 - 10:18 am
For the next two days Alex will be appearing at the BBC Good Food Show Scotland at the SECC in Glasgow – he’ll be demonstrating some culinary skills alongside Tim Kinnaird, Dhruv Baker, Lisa Faulkner and the rest of the Masterchef team.
“Join us in celebrating Scotland’s rich food heritage at the BBC Good Food Show Scotland. Packed with celebrity chefs (including Gordon Ramsay, James Martin, Tom Kitchin and Michael Caines), a tempting variety of local produce and plenty of entertainment including the arrival of MasterChef.
Don’t miss the Scotland Food and Drink Regional Village where you’ll find Scottish producers from the Highlands & Islands, to the South West and East to West, offering distinctive produce from these areas with a rich variety of fish, meat, game and fresh vegetables.”
If you’re nearby, pop along and say hello!
Click here for the Masterchef Live timetable of events
16/09/2010 - 3:25 pm
Breaking news: It’s here at last – The Masterchef pop-up restaurant has been finalised and is coming to London. From 5th-16th October we’ll be taking over the kitchens at Meza in the heart of Soho and cooking up the best dishes from the series. Dhruv will be behind the stove for the whole run and myself and Tim will join him for service 7th-9th and 14-16th. Special guest chefs – all Masterchef alumni – will be announced shortly. To book your table click here. Look forward to seeing you there!
02/08/2010 - 9:40 am
Last year’s Masterchef champ, Mat Follas, left this year’s crop of hopefuls with a tough act to follow.
His restaurant, The Wild Garlic in Beaminster, Dorset, has only been open a year but has already had the critics positively effusing with praise and is consistently fully booked – no mean feat for any eatery let alone in these stringent economic times.
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01/07/2010 - 4:38 pm
It is amazing where slightly drunken conversations can lead. In this case the answer is Dorset. To Mat Follas’s Wild Garlic restaurant, to be more specific.
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23/06/2010 - 10:26 am
Phew. It’s all over.
Three days in a food fanatic’s fantasy world and my first real taste of doing shows with a proper live audience and everything. Just brilliant.
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22/06/2010 - 5:43 pm
A huge ‘thank you’ to the entire team at Peel’s, Hampton Manor for letting Tim, Dhruv and myself into their kitchen for three days last week to cook up a full menu for paying customers.
(photo credit: Birmingham Mail)
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11/04/2010 - 1:17 pm
It’s all over. Those weeks and months of hard work and secrets. The challenges, the travels, the interviews and (just occasionally) the cooking.
My time as a Masterchef finalist is done and I can look back with pride at what we all achieved: heaving hot boxes through the courtyard of a thousand year old castle; working alongside some of the best amateur chefs in the country and then progressing to the final and running a restaurant with two of the nicest chaps I could ever have hoped to meet; cooking Alain Ducasse’s own signature dessert and serving it to the legendary man himself (not to mention a table full of Michelin starred chefs); transforming offal and other seldom used cuts of meat into dishes fit for a prime time BBC1 cooking show. To name but a few of the once-in-a-lifetime challenges that we faced.
Except it’s not over. It’s only just beginning.
By Thursday morning my inbox was registering almost 700 unread emails that had come in since Wednesday’s final episode. Amongst them were job offers, enquiries from agents and, most lovely of all, messages from people I have never met. People who were kind enough to take the time to write and say how much they enjoyed the show and send their congratulations at my reaching the final.
Thank you to you all. I will reply, I promise – but I may be some time. In a real sense rather than an ominous Captain Oates sense.
There are a number of very exciting projects in the pipeline, amongst them a book and a restaurant – both of which, I must add, are in the very early stages of development. But as soon as there is more news, it will be announced right here on my blog.
So watch this space.
In the mean time, the chocolate and coffee pot recipe that dazzled the critics is available here, on the BBC Food website (but don’t freeze the espuma!). However, if you’re looking for something more hearty and warming, might I suggest this lamb breast recipe, which is currently slow-roasting in my oven, albeit a more spiced version. It’s amazing what you learn from cooking in India for a Maharajah.
Oh, and I’m on Twitter: please drop by and say hello.
Wicked-cool spaghetti pics by the amazing @photolotte
04/04/2010 - 9:42 am
For the first time in the history of Just Cook It, you can now read one of my recipes on the BBC Food website.
The roasted lamb rump with spiced date puree, glazed carrots and cinnamon cous cous that I cooked for the critics is available right here. Here’s hoping you like it as much as Jay Rayner et al did.
If you do try the recipe, don’t feel the presentation has to be fine-dining: it can easily serve as a hearty lunch or supper for a hungry mob – a big pile of cous cous topped with pink lamb and glazed carrots then smothered with a sticky lamb gravy. A nice twist on an Easter classic.
If you’ve still not had your MasterChef fill, there is also an interview with the three finalists in today’s Express.
The final starts tomorrow at 9pm on BBC1 with the most incredible on-location challenge that the show has ever featured: cooking breakfast al fresco battling 40 degree heat in a 500 year old mountain top castle. In Rajasthan, India. Oh, and we cook for some royalty, too. Don’t miss it.
01/04/2010 - 3:23 pm
(Shameless self-promotion alert. Hey, I don’t get on TV very often so I’m making the most of it)
Ahead of tonight’s semi-final, here’s a little interview with me talking about food, cooking and John and Gregg.
Alex talking Masterchef
If you would care to relive what has become known as the ‘WI Debacle’ then it’s available on iPlayer. If you’d prefer to sit tight and wait for the next instalment it’s on BBC1 tonight (1st April) at 8:30pm.
Oh, and have a decadent decadently long weekend.
24/03/2010 - 4:43 pm
As weeks go, the last seven days have been quite surreal.
There’s not much that can prepare you for making your debut on national television. It’s a little like getting onto a rollercoaster in the dark with no clue as to how the ride will pan out.
Thankfully, there have been no major hiccoughs. The heats and quarterfinals have been safely navigated and I’ve come out the other side as a MasterChef semi-finalist. It’s truly wonderful to be able to write those words.
The response has also been fantastic and genuinely heart warming. Thank you to everyone who has phoned, written, texted, emailed, tweeted or shouted across a car park. Thanks even to the person who suggested I might be Chris Martin and Stephen Merchant’s offspring (but only because you’re a Radio 1 DJ).
But my favourite response has been this:
It was quite a surprise when we pulled up in the car park at the butcher/farm shop/deli/food nerd’s nirvana that I go to and saw that sign, usually reserved for far more important matters like proclaiming the arrival of the season’s first rhubarb or new potatoes.
We were there to pick up a meal worthy of a celebration – and to my mind few things shout ‘hooray’ better than a whopping great steak. Whilst individual pieces are all well and good, practicality, economy and taste favour a shared piece of beef, especially if cooked rare and sliced tableside.
A hearty single rib (côte de boeuf if you wish to get all Gallic about it) from a Red Poll raised a mere four miles away was ideal. Aged just over four weeks the meat was dark red and looked tender enough to eat as was. Instead it was liberally seasoned, vacuum packed and submerged in a water bath to bob around merrily for a couple of hours at 52 degrees.
The logistics of the operation presented some slight problems: on realising that my largest pan was not big enough the bone had to be trimmed away and the rib-eye seared on both sides for about five minutes in order to put a tasty crust on the outside.
It was served with chips, an artery-clogging amount of béarnaise sauce and a heap of steamed broccoli as a concession to health – although once dipped into the rich buttery sauce the beneficial effects were possibly negated.
After waiting two and a half hours for a steak there was little that could have prevented us from falling on it like a pack of wolves hence the distinct lack of well composed, perfectly lit photographs.
In this case the lack of picture says a thousand words.
* * *
The MasterChef quarter final can be found here, on the BBC iPlayer and the first of the semi finals will be broadcast on BBC1 on Friday 26th March at 7:30pm.
And I’m also on Twitter.
18/03/2010 - 11:12 am
Oh crikey. I’ve made it through to the quarter final of Masterchef UK.
If you’d like to see my television-based adventures so far (and you’re based in the UK) it is available on the rather brilliant BBC iPlayer.
Dear regulars: you have no idea how hard it’s been to keep this secret. Thank you hugely for your continued visits and your funny, insightful and inspirational comments over the past couple of years.
And for any newcomers: hello. Welcome to my little blog, Just Cook It – pull up a chair and have an explore. To give you an idea of the sort of thing I do, here’s a small selection of some of my favourite posts to get you started:
Mains
Five hour steak
Beef short ribs
Momufuku style steamed pork buns
Deep fried pig’s brain
Dessert
Lemon and chilli pepper tart
Whipped Chocolate mousse
Instant sponge pudding
Misc. tastiness
Pork Pie
Eccles Cakes
Hot Dogs
Pork Scratchings
New posts may be sporadic over the next few days but if you’re feeling starved, I can be found on twitter at @justcookit. Hope to hear from you soon.
More madness to follow shortly – the Masterchef Quarter Final is on Monday 22nd March at 8:30pm on BBC1.
13/03/2008 - 1:59 pm
Shortbread should be easy to make. It was the first foodstuff I was ever taught how to create in my very first home economics lesson at school and is a very basic combination of butter, flour and sugar with optional assorted flavourings. After some web-based research I found so many conflicting recipes that I just decided to try and use my intuition and spend a couple of days trying different ratios and different ingredients. I chose to ignore all recipes I’d seen and leave out the sugar as I wanted a savoury biscuit and opted for a pasta flour to keep it as light as possible. So, shortbread v. 1.0 consisted of little more than flour, butter, salt and finely chopped rosemary.
It mixed together nicely and formed a reasonably workable dough sausage which I left in the freezer to harden up. And then forgot about it. It emerged an hour later (when I say ‘it emerged’, I don’t mean it managed to extricate itself from the freezer by itself, obviously I removed it) looking and feeling like a pebble so I used a knife to cut a few of bite-sized discs from it which I baked gently. They were brittle and quite tasty but not quite right so I took advice from Heston Blumenthal and added an egg yolk into the remaining dough mix. I had confidence in Heston’s recipe and cut the new dough sausage into about 15 small discs ready to bake. Surely these would be delicious? Crumbly, crunchy, buttery yet meltingly delicious in the mouth with a hint of woody rosemary – the perfect foil to the sweet fig and onion and sharp, creamy goats’ cheese? They baked slowly and once they were ready my excitement grew at the possibility of trying one. When they were cool enough to handle I popped one in my mouth. And promptly spat it out again in the manner of a small child eating mud that they thought was chocolate.
Putting egg into shortbread is disgusting. Don’t try it. v.1.2 was a disaster fit only for the compost heap.
The kitchen was slowly becoming littered with the corpses of failed shortbread and I was fast losing the will to bake. Perhaps there is something in tradition. I should know by now that baking relies on strict principles laid down by generations of housewives and only the foolhardy or those very, very good at science should attempt to re-write the rulebook (for the record, I am not very good at science). The last resort was to relent and add sugar to the mix. With a heavy head and aching fingers (the ‘rubbing method’ can be hard work) I began to craft v.1.3, tipping quantities of flour and butter and sugar and salt and rosemary into a bowl with reckless abandon. With trepidation I worked the resultant dough into the now mandatory sausage and trimmed off a succession of little shortbread rounds which went into the oven at about one o’clock…
…And came out half an hour later looking and smelling exactly like I expected rosemary shortbread to look and smell. They were brittle but able to sustain a hefty quantity of fig and onion jam as well as a generous amount of cheese. But most importantly they were terrifically tasty, which you’d expect after a mere four days of trying. Now all that remained was to decide what to have for lunch.
- 1:56 pm
There are certain times in life when one does not wish to be wracked with indecision: moments when you’d rather be able to make a choice and stick with it with the tenacity of, well, of someone who has absolute faith in their base convictions. I imagine that waiting at the end of the aisle is not a place to have an internal dialogue with the two opposing forces in one’s head, nor would it be wise to have second thoughts when halfway across a rapidly flowing, dangerous-creature filled river thus rendering you unable to head to either bank, instead flailing like a spider caught in the whirlpool of an emptying bath. As a general rule I’d class myself ‘not bad’ at making decisions although I do tend to be a bit erratic, if it were a subject at school I think my report would say something along the lines of ‘not bad at making decisions, tends to be a bit erratic. C+’.
For example, I have been known to agonise for far too long over what to drink in a pub and the inevitable appearance of a waiter at my table can send me into a flustered panic but I guess all those minor ums and ahs have been cancelled out by the quitting of job (about 0.4 seconds to decision made, or DM) and buying of cottage with girlfriend (similar DM). See? Erratic.
Anyway, this brings me neatly on to what I wanted to say about food and cooking (there is always a point to my clunkingly ponderous meanderings even if it is not immediately obvious). Last Monday I received a call from a researcher at the production company behind a well-known BBC food series in which members of public compete to become the master of all things cheffy (I’m not sure how much I am meant to say, so I’ll keep it vaguely cryptic). After a telephone interview I was invited to the casting day and was asked to bring myself as well as a dish that could be eaten cold: ‘most people bring desserts because it’s a bit easier,’ I was told. Cue four sleepless nights deciding what to cook and how to cook it. Every time I tried to close my eyes I had possibilities running through my mind like a cinema screen onto which a demonic projectionist was displaying a visual representation of food Tourette’s. One moment I’d be staring at a piece of pork pie, the next it would be a slab of Valrhona cheesecake rapidly followed by a butter poached langoustine, venison loin with blueberry sauce and hundreds of meals I didn’t even recognise. I felt less like Alex, me Alex, and more like Alex from A Clockwork Orange Alex, only marginally less keen on milk.
I became fixed on the idea of cooking pigeon but was unsure whether it would benefit from begin served cold. The resultant dish (pan-fried pigeon breast with a savoury pigeon baklava, (similar to a pastilla) was tasty but lacked the depth of flavour I was after and so I returned to the drawing board, attempting to delve into the depths of my imagination to come up with a suitable dish that fulfilled the necessary criteria. I was loathe to do a dessert partly due to my ineptitude at most things pasty related and partly because I felt that doing something savoury would put me into the minority. After much head-scratching and discussion, I eventually settled on a canapé type morsel consisting of rosemary shortbread, fig and onion jam, goats’ cheese, and rosemary infused honey.
