A chat and a beer with MasterChef’s Christian Collins

Lisa, Christian’s fiance, was adamant he try out for the show. So, when casting calls came to Boston, Christian whipped up his signature dish of braised short ribs and truffled mashed potatoes, and got in line. As it turns out, they don’t take temperature into effect when judging these dishes, but that didn’t stop him from making damn sure it was as perfect as it could be. “I had a chafing pan and a sterno can. I’m not getting in there and my food is cold! I was there making potatoes in line!”

Once they decided he was going to the next level, three or four interviews were scheduled and completed. Next thing he knew, they sent out a crew to film him, so he assumed he was in the top 100. They gave him a letter saying he’s going to be in the show, so of course he’s excited. Drug tests and blood tests are scheduled and completed at local labs. The results come in to the show’s producers … and they tell him he has Mono. “‘No fucking way in hell,’ I said.” Word got out that people were headed out to start filming, and he was devastated. As it turned out, after speaking to his own doctor about the results … he did not have Mono. Who knows how the results were flubbed in the first place, but off he went to Los Angeles, leaving his pregnant fiance behind for several months.

All of the contestants are sequestered for a week in a hotel and can’t talk to anyone outside. You’re brought out to go eat, and that’s about it. Then there are a couple of meetings with show producers and organizers and such. Once they start filming, only then is when you see the 99 other people you’re up against. At first you still have your cellphone, but then it’s taken away for the rest of the two months, mostly to keep one’s head in the game and to remove most distractions.

Every day for two months they film. “Everyone misses their family and stuff, so the people you’re with turn into your family. We’re pretty much at the bar every night, thinking about what’s going to go on the next day, speculating and contemplating.”

Unfortunately, this hanging out doesn’t really include the judges. “We might stand around with them before they go on to film, but not outside the show.”

Here’s an audio clip of Christian telling me a story of how the contestants would try to figure out what challenges were coming next:

Are the judges really that hostile on the show, or is it all an act? Oh, it’s all real. “Joe [Bastianich] throwing things in the trash is not an act. He’s not apologetic about it, that’s for sure — he doesn’t lose sleep over it.”

The interviews we see during the challenges are strange. It’s TV, and they have to film things out of order. So when a contestant says, “I hope the judges like it” at a certain interview, it’s likely they’re saying that after the fact — they already know what the judges thought!

One big question I had was whether the contestants have access to some sort of cheat sheet of cookbook that viewers don’t see. There were times one of them would say they never cooked something before, yet they pull it off. Do you know how to make a soufflé without having ever made it before? I can’t! As it turns out, there’s an off-set open kitchen, which acts as a place for the chefs to practice as well as having scheduled cooking classes setup. There would be one for baking, one for chocolate, one for sauces. … You’d make all of these different things once in the open kitchen — like a soufflé — and then next thing you know, four challenges later, you’re making a soufflé. They want you to look good, but you have to remember what you did. Luckily, you’d just made one not all that long ago.

How about those dramatic pauses, when a winner or loser is revealed? Were the contestants put through those that long as well? “Oh all the time. The judges would try to get in people’s heads. Joe would come up and be like [motions tasting something] … ‘so is that the texture you’re going for?’ [Laughs]. And some people would break down and be like, ‘Is that the texture I’m going for? Well I dunno! Oh no!’

As for how they pick the top three dishes during the reward challenges: “They’re walking around checking things out. … I guess they’re such professionals that they just know.” After that, the dishes they made might just go in the trash. “I dunno, maybe the crew eats it. I imagine someone’s eating some of it. Like the lobster challenge? They’re going to throw away 16 four-pound lobsters? I don’t think so!”

In Iron Chef, it’s said the chefs know in advance what the secret ingredient might be, ahead of time. Did the MasterChef folks get that sort of advantage at all? “Yeah, sort of, but they’d rattle off like eight different things. They were very clever. Like, ‘think Mediterranean.’ Some people would be up in the library cramming for Mediterranean that night. I came to the conclusion that I don’t care how many recipes you read, you’re gonna get in there and you’re going to be in the same spot whether you read those recipes or not.”

As for who Christian thinks should have won, he definitely wanted it to be known that he thought it was Adrien Nieto who should have taken the title over Jennifer. Here’s a clip of what he had to say about the final challenge:

All in all, I’ll say that I didn’t get the impression that Christian’s a bad guy and deserves all the hate he’s getting. However, if there’s a guy who can take any of the negative views with a shrug and turn the other cheek, it’s him. Even if some people want to call him “Cap’n Douchey” … ahem. (And, yes, he brought that up.) And I’m not just saying all of this because he picked up the beer tab. But, for that, thanks Christian, and for indulging this foodie with MasterChef talk. See you on Hell’s Kitchen, right?

Clacked by Keith McDuffee
on Sep 23, 2011 @ 15:49 EST5EDT