4 Thursday November 11 2021 | the timesthe table
L
et me start by saying that
I’m a decent cook. I can’t
fillet a fish or do that
cheffy chopping thing
where they whizz
through onions quicker
than I can say, “Where’s
my finger gone?” But I
can roast a chicken and turn the
carcass into stock, which I use to
make a risotto. It is true that I once
accidentally strained the stock
straight down the sink, but let’s move
swiftly on.
None of this alters the fact that
walking into the MasterChef studio to
do the infamous skills test for Marcus
Wareing is terrifying. My task is to
make sausages, mash and onion gravyfor this Michelin-starred chef and
judge on MasterChef: The
Professionals. Contestants get 20
minutes for this, but he’s feeling
generous, so I get an extra five or ten.
Still, deadlines I can do. Give me a
keyboard and a blank screen and I’m
happy. But a deadline that comes with
a chopping board and a choice of
onions? My hands are shaking. They
don’t do that very often.
To be fair, he gives me a head start.
Unlike the contestants, who come to
the skills test blind, Wareing first
shows me exactly how he’d cook it. As
a result I now know that if someone’s
going to tell you you’ve been making
gravy wrong your whole life, it might
as well be Marcus Wareing. My onionMe, with a blowtorch? My trial
Marcus Wareing and his team are back, and making Britain’s
chefs sweat with their high standards. How would someone
who can’t even fillet a fish fare? Hilary Rose found out
gravy at home contains very little:
butter, flour, onions, Oxo stock cube
and — I’m going to say this loud and
proud and yah boo to the snobs — a
drop of gravy browning. We like our
gravy a good, thick, rich brown in the
Rose household, and plenty of it.
Delicate splodges of watery jus will
butter no parsnips. My Michelin-
starred re-education begins.
“Once you’ve softened the onion,”
says Wareing, a slight, neat figure with
the precise hand movements of a
surgeon, “add some wholegrain
mustard and balsamic vinegar.”
Vinegar? In gravy? There’s also garlic,
red and white onion, honey, sprigs of
thyme as well as rosemary (“you won’t
taste them. It’s all about building
flavour”), plus brandy, which he
flames, and half a can of Guinness,
which is bubbling and reducing in a
separate pan. It will, Wareing promises,
provide a counterpoint to the
sweetness of the honey and vinegar. I
consider pointing out that if he didn’t
put honey and vinegar in gravy in the
first place, where they clearly have no
business being, he wouldn’t need a
counterpoint. I decide against.
He fries the sausages gently, covers
them in brown paper so they don’t
burn while he finishes the sauce, and
scoops the inside of a cooked jacketpotato on to a flat sieve, working it
into mash using a little spatula. He
warms it through with milk and butter,
plates up and the demonstration is
complete. Over to me.
It’s seven years since Wareing joined
Monica Galetti as a judge on the
programme, taking over in 2014 from
Michel Roux. Fans of Roux’s twinkly
charm worried that Wareing, by
contrast, seemed stern and unsmiling.
In a guest appearance on the show he
once made a contestant cry. I met him
back then, at his home in southwest
London, and he was confident that
we’d learn to love him.
“MasterChef is the only thing I’ve
ever wanted to do on TV because it’s
all about the food,” he told me over a
mug of strong tea — he’s a northerner,
from Southport, Merseyside, originally
— in his vast kitchen. “I never thought
I’d see Michel on TV, but I felt he was
the same person that he is in the
kitchen, and I have a huge amount of
admiration and respect for that. I feel
honoured and humbled that I’ve been
chosen to step into such an amazing
pair of shoes.”
Previous TV appearances had been
cut, he said, to make him look like the
bad cop. This new gig would show the
real him. “I don’t have anything toworry about,” he said. “This is an
amazing chance to show the chef that
I am and the person I’ve always been,
not this hard guy or monster.”
He duly made the role his own and
proved the doubters wrong. The 14th
series of MasterChef: The Professionals
started this week. The programme was
nominated for a Bafta this year
(having won one in 2010), promoted
from BBC2 to BBC1, and last year’s
final pulled in more than five million
viewers, its biggest audience yet.
Some of the professionals seem a
little clueless at first, but Wareing is
kind. “It’s not easy coming in here.
Their head goes empty, it’s the nerves.
This is their career. I think they know
their stuff, they just forget it, but after
the skills test the nerves disappear and
their confidence starts to build.”
Today Wareing is immaculate in
chef’s whites, a silver fox in indigo
jeans and snazzy brown and red
leather shoes. The cobbled mill
complex in east London whereMarcus Wareing and
Hilary Rose in the
MasterChef kitchen.
Above: Hilary’s bangers
and mashMasterChef: The
Professionals continues
tonight at 9pm and
tomorrow at 8.30pm on
BBC1, and you can
catch up on iPlayerMarcu WAfter the skills
test the chefs’
confidence
starts to build