MasterChef is one of those maddening TV shows that slyly sucks up viewing time; one minute, you’re watching hapless amateur chefs hope an undercooked panic-risotto will sneak them into the next round. Then two months have gone by, you haven’t left the house and every contestant is serving up Michelin-worthy gels, crumbs and swans made of coconut. Host and judge John Torode found himself on the receiving end of a nation’s wrath when he and Gregg Wallace sent one contestant home, as the chicken in her chicken rendang was not crispy. “It can’t be eaten,” declared Wallace, picking at the flesh under the soft skin.
Whoa there, said Malaysia, in response to a woman born in Malaysia being told she hadn’t cooked a dish from her childhood properly. Even the country’s prime minister, Najib Razak, got involved, tweeting: “Does anyone eat chicken rendang ‘crispy’? #MalaysianFood”.
Wallace and Torode appeared on Good Morning Britain to defend themselves, explaining that they didn’t mean it wasn’t “crispy”, they meant it wasn’t “cooked enough”, and to add that, actually, Zaleha Kadir Olpin didn’t go through because she wasn’t good enough, which surely made her feel better.
One of the many infuriating things about the racist drivel that greeted last year’s winner, Saliha Mahmood Ahmed – mocked on Twitter for “only cooking curry”, when she cooked plenty of other dishes just as well – was that MasterChef has become about showing dishes from around the world, cooked by a diverse group of people. So it was hard not to slap one’s head when Torode responded with a tweet expressing his enjoyment of the controversy: “Maybe Rendang is Indonesian!! Love this!! Brilliant how excited you are all getting… Namaste.” It seems to have disappeared, perhaps owing to his use of a greeting used in India, rather than in Indonesia or Malaysia.
• Rebecca Nicholson is an Observer columnist
