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Masterchef Canada

Final three cooks revealed on Masterchef Canada

From a media release:
The Final Three Home Cooks are Revealed on CTV’s MASTERCHEF CANADA

  • Veronica Cham, a lawyer from Toronto, left the competition on tonight’s MASTERCHEF CANADA
  • An all-new episode of MASTERCHEF CANADA airs next Sunday, June 12 at 7 p.m. ET/PT on CTV and the CTV GO app, as the Top 3 battle it out for a place in the finale and cook for 13 of Canada’s most influential chefs using ingredients from the nation’s 10 provinces and three territories
  • The next Canadian MasterChef will be revealed during the MASTERCHEF CANADA Season 3 finale on Sunday, June 19 at 7 p.m. ET/PT on CTV –

A salt water Pressure Test featuring fresh sea scallops on tonight’s MASTERCHEF CANADA led judges Michael Bonacini, Alvin Leung, and Claudio Aprile to send Veronica Cham, a lawyer from Toronto, home from the competition.MASTERCHEF CANADA returns next Sunday, June 12 at 7 p.m. ET/PT on CTV and the CTV GO app as the Top 3 cook for 13 ofCanada’s most influential chefs.

On tonight’s episode of MASTERCHEF CANADA, the Top 4 home cooks got a taste of home when they were surprised in the kitchen by their families, who also joined them for a trip to Toronto’s St. Lawrence Market. With the help of their family members, the home cooks each decided on an entrée they felt showcased their culture and background, and selected the necessary ingredients at the market.

With their family members cheering them on, the home cooks had 60 minutes to create a dish the judges and their families would be proud of. With each home cook presenting their dish to the judges, Matthew Astorga was up first with his quail adobo with puffed wild rice and quail egg. This marked the first time Matthew prepared a Filipino dish on MASTERCHEF CANADA, and he drew inspiration from meals his mom has prepared for him. Mary Berg presented her plate next, pan-seared quail and cornmeal sweet potato waffle, which was inspired by her family vacations to South Carolina. Next, Veronica brought up her braised brisket with hand-pulled noodles and pickled cucumber. Knowing her dad wouldn’t want her to lie to the judges, Veronica let them know that her brisket might be underdone. Lastly, Jeremy Senaris served up his kare-kare, oxtail stew with peanut butter and rice cake, which is a favourite of his two nieces. In the end, the judges crowned Mary the winner of the challenge – automatically advancing her to the Top 3.

With Mary safe from elimination, the remaining three home cooks faced a difficult Pressure Test involving fresh scallops. With only 60 minutes, they were challenged to replicate three mouth-watering dishes: scallop crudo, thinly sliced raw scallops in a citrus dressing; pan-seared scallops with a pea and mint puree and passionfruit coulis; and coquilles St-Jacques. The home cooks were given the exact number of scallops they needed to replicate each dish, and were further challenged by having to open each sea scallop from its shell. With their 60 minutes up, the home cooks presented their dishes to the judges and in the end, Jeremy was revealed as the winner of the Pressure Test moving him into the Top 3. With Matthew and Veronica left standing, the judges made the difficult decision to send Veronica home from MASTERCHEF CANADA.

On an all-new episode of MASTERCHEF CANADA (Sunday, June 12 at 7 p.m. ET/PT on CTV and the CTV GO app), the season’s penultimate episode finds the home cooks battling it out for a place in the finale by creating beautifully-composed plates for 13 ofCanada’s most influential chefs. Their pantry consists of the same 13 ingredients – one from each province and territory – that they received in their first Mystery Box Challenge at the start of the season. The winner advances immediately to the finale, while the two remaining home cooks go head-to-head in a difficult dessert challenge.

The remaining Top 3 home cooks vying for the title of MASTERCHEF CANADA and the $100,000 cash prize are:

 

For more on MASTERCHEF CANADA, fans can visit CTV.ca/MasterChefCanada for exclusive content, including must-see videos with the home cooks and the judges, bios, full episodes, sneak peeks, and extras.

New episodes of MASTERCHEF CANADA are available following their broadcast premiere on demand at CTV.ca and on the CTV GO app, and encore Mondays at 8 p.m. ET on M3, Saturdays at 7 p.m. ET/PT on CTV Two, and Sundays at 5 p.m. ET/PT on CTV.

Viewers can watch Veronica Cham live on CTV MORNING LIVE ATLANTIC (Weekdays 7:00 a.m. AT), CP24 BREAKFAST(Weekdays 5:30 a.m. ET), CTV News Channel (8:45 a.m. ET/PT), and THE SOCIAL (Weekdays at 1 p.m. ET/PT) on Monday, June 6 as she discusses her experience on MASTERCHEF CANADA.

The MASTERCHEF format and finished programmes are represented internationally by Endemol Shine Group, and is based on a format originally created by Franc Roddam.

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MasterChef Canada’s Cathie James makes life difficult for the home cooks

Being a home cook on MasterChef Canada is tough. Not only have they left the comfort of a regular life behind to enter the competition, but they’re prepared dishes for three bona fide chefs in Michael Bonacini, Alvin Leung and Claudio Aprile. As if that wasn’t difficult enough, the contestants experience victories and defeats via Mystery Box and Pressure Test challenges in the studio and complex, intricate tests in numerous on-location tests.

Those challenges, designed to apply pressure to the contestants on the road to crowning a winner, are the responsibility of MasterChef Canada executive producer Cathie James, who reveals the details behind the tests and the challenges they have to make them work.

Certain home cooks get more airtime on the show than others. Is that because they are quote-worthy? How do you decide who to focus on week-to-week?
Cathie James: In other shows that I’ve worked on, you make those decisions based on who is the most charismatic. With MasterChef, what’s happening on the show with regard to the food and the cooking really pushes your decision in the edit because, in some respects, we edit the show backwards. Whoever wins the Mystery Box, for example, you want to see how it came together … the person who is eliminated at the end, you want to make the audience care about them so they may get a little more attention in the lead-up to their elimination. And if there is a jeopardy moment with a contestant—something goes badly wrong—we often cliffhang the action and focus our energies on it.

The storytelling really comes together in the editing suite.
This year, there were 14 people who make it into the competition and there are 10 cameras, so the amount of tape for day of filming was absolutely overwhelming. The decisions that are made in the editing really do shape the episode. That’s the case for any non-scripted television. And just because you construct the situation—flying 40 people in for auditions and putting them through a series of challenges—doesn’t mean what happens to those people and their reactions to them, isn’t authentic.

For the show to resonate with you, me and the viewers, what you see has to be genuine.

A huge part of MasterChef Canada are the challenges you put the home cooks through. I’m fascinated by the work that goes into the on-location tests. Can you walk me through the process?
They’re really hard to come up with and have worked with some really strong brands in Kraft and Unilever, so often they want to be a part of things. Not only are you looking for a location that’s beautiful and exciting and plays to a particular type of food or a theme … you’re looking to give the audience something that is really different and captures a type of cooking. We usually come up with six off-site challenges every season, so we start the summer collecting ideas and will come up with 10-15 ideas.

I have a challenge team that are logistical wizards. Once an idea has been approved by the network, the team takes it and makes it happen. The big creative process is, how are we going to reveal the winner? So we have the model on the runway with ether the red or blue dress or the pyrotechnic thing. Some work better than others. The pyrotechnic reveal, where the judges lit a fuse and it was supposed to go around the MasterChef symbol … that fuse was supposed to go around the symbol 100 times faster than it did. [Laughs.] We cut it, so it didn’t look so bad. You’re always flying by the seat of your pants with this and you can’t go back and re-shoot. We get what we get.

With 10 cameras, it’s impossible to see what’s really going on until we go through the footage. And then you have the confessional interviews with the contestants, where you get their perspective on what was happening at the time.

You’re three seasons into MasterChef Canada. Are you still surprised by the skill level of the home cooks?
I’m absolutely amazed and they keep getting better. This season, the food is better than it ever has been.

MasterChef Canada airs Sundays at 7 p.m. ET on CTV.

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Seeing red on MasterChef Canada

After taking over Claudio’s Origin in Season 1 and Michael’s Canoe in Season 2, it was Alvin’s turn to hand the keys to his restaurant to the Top 6 during Sunday’s instalment. The episode title, “Demon at the Pass,” certainly lived up to its name as Chef Leung barked orders to the Red and Blue teams as they cooked at Toronto’s R&D restaurant, launched by Season 1 winner Eric Chong (Rebel) and Leung (Demon).

And by the end of the episode, it was Dr. Shawn who surrendered his apron (and signature ball cap) and exited the competition. But back to the Restaurant Takeover for a second, where the Demon Chef lived up to his name by barking orders and refusing to mince words when plates delivered by the Red and Blue teams weren’t up to par. I felt badly for the Top 6, who not only had to learn and execute complex Asian dishes but served them to former MasterChef Canada competitors. Mary’s Red team of Veronica and April Lee gutted it out against Jeremy’s Blue squad of Matthew and Shawn and everything appeared to be evenly matched … until a second plate of wonky chow mein was sent back to the Blue kitchen. That spelled their defeat and sent the men to the Pressure Test.

Kudos to MasterChef Canada‘s producers for coming up with increasingly difficult challenges for the home cooks; making a Charlotte cake in just one hour seemed impossible and created some especially tense moments as Matthew’s glaze bled down the sides of his cake and Shawn’s lady fingers were chunky and child-like. The former edged out the latter when it came to taste, however, eliminating the good doctor from the competition.

MasterChef Canada airs Sundays at 7 p.m. ET on CTV.

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Astronaut Chris Hadfield blasts on to MasterChef Canada

The devil is, as they say, in the details. And, on a night when the home cooks were flying high after a visit from Colonel Chris Hadfield, it was Terry who came crashing down to earth and exited MasterChef Canada.

Terry was humble in his defeat, admitting fault after he and Shawn mixed up the filling in one hors d’oeuvre, and tearfully said goodbye. It was unfortunate to see Terry eliminated that way because it was a plating issue rather than one of taste. And Terry’s elimination was another instance of a plan backfiring on the contestant who set it up. Matthew stunned everyone (including himself, I think) by winning the Mystery Box challenge after Col. Hadfield and the resident judges deemed his smoked salmon parfait to be the best of the bunch constructed of space age ingredients. Matthew, who was awarded immunity for the week, paired up his competitors, putting Jeremy with Mary to slow her down and Shawn with Terry to help them out. Instead, Jeremy and Mary won the tag team and the other two faltered.

I must say it was pretty cool to see Col. Hadfield appear in Sunday’s new episode “Out of this World.” Not merely there for his star power, Hadfield helped taste and judge the plates and interacted with the home cooks while offering insight into how meals are prepared in space: a needle injects lukewarm or hot water into the plastic packets to rehydrate the contents.

As for the Elimination Challenge, I was impressed the home cooks were able to plate all 15 bites, let alone anything that would taste good. There were miscues when it came to mirroring the example set out by the judges, but nothing major. At least, not until the wrong filling was put in Terry and Shawn’s coronets. Now, with just six homes cooks remaining, it really is anyone’s season to win now that Terry is not longer in the hunt.

Next week, Mary and Jeremy are team captains for a Restaurant Takeover that, if evidenced by Alvin’s yelling, is tough for everyone.

MasterChef Canada airs Sundays at 7 p.m. ET/PT on CTV.

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