Dishing up

Now, instead of laughing along with those equally as incompetent in the kitchen, MasterChef: The Professionals returns and leaves us with little choice but to sit up and learn a thing or two.

The Bafta award-winning competition tests the skills of professional chefs, who are pushed to the brink of their gastronomic limits, before a winner is crowned the next big thing in the culinary world.

They will be put through their paces by double Michelin-starred chef Michel Roux Jr and original MasterChef judge Gregg Wallace.

As always, they will also face toughtalking, stern-faced perfectionist Monica Galetti, so it’s to be hoped they know their stuff and can stand a fair amount of criticism.

In the opening programme, the first batch of 40 chefs are set a challenge. However, just because it’s the first episode does not mean the judges are going to go easy on them. Oh no. It’s the Ingredients Test first, in which the contestants are given seven ingredients and one hour to make a dish of their choice.

It may sound a daunting challenge but the judges are all of the opinion that this year’s crop of contestants is better thanever. Galetti, who, outside of the show works for Michel Roux Jr in his restaurant, says: “Every year this competition gets better, it gets harder, my expectations get higher and so do Michel’s – and this year is better than ever.”

Roux Jr said: “As the series continue, our chefs become an increasingly harder act to follow, but that is what makes MasterChef: The Professionals so gripping and compelling.”

Roux Jr recently said that cooking for a living was no different to any other job: “It is like all professional walks of life.

“There are great chefs, good chefs, average chefs and bad chefs. In journalism, there are fantastic journalists, good journalists, indifferent journalists and bad journalists.

“This show puts the pressure on them to find out what level they are at. We want to see that fault, if there is one.”