“Singing Chef” Josh misses out on a sweet spot in the MasterChef South Africa Top 10.
The pressure is always on in the MasterChef South Africa kitchen, but this week it reached boiling point as the toughest challenge yet determined the show’s Top 10 home cooks. Although all the contestants grappled with glitches while trying to recreate a delicate dessert, it proved to be a gruelling ordeal for 28-year-old Josh Lotz from Pretoria, MasterChef South Africa’s inimitable “Singing Chef”
Josh, who often broke into song amid the kitchen chaos and entertained viewers with his quirky comments, eccentric stories and theatrical style, even named his creation “A Tale of Trauma” – an apt description for the dish that cost him a place in the show’s coveted Top 10.
The young television co-ordinator’s road to disaster began when the judges announced the first “Pressure Test” of the season. In MasterChef terms, this means the contestants must replicate a culinary work of art presented by a distinguished guest chef.
This masterpiece belonged to South Africa’s queen of patisserie, Chef Motheba Makhetha. She brought along and demonstrated the ins and outs of her showstopping Paris-Brest (classic French choux pastry), with peanut butter mousse, banana jam, peanut praline, chocolate ganache, caramelised peanuts, peanut skins and chocolate feathers.
With all these time-consuming elements, matching Chef Motheba’s excellence required precision, hectic multitasking and plenty of patience. Not only did the anxious home cooks have to execute these different elements to perfection, but they also had to follow her recipe to the letter. And these letters stretched across six long pages.
Creating the crux of the dessert, the choux pastry, soon turned into a nightmare. Chef Motheba’s tip that the choux should go into the oven when smelling like porridge posed a particular problem: what does porridge actually smell like?
However, in a dramatic moment, judge Zola Nene detected a completely different, worrying whiff in the kitchen. Something was burning. Unbeknownst to Candice, it was her choux. As she described it: “It looked like a mountain scorched by the sun.”
But Candice was not the only one having to redo elements. There were second takes for several of the contestants, and Josh racked up the most U-turns along the way.
First, his choux didn’t develop properly, calling for a second batch, and then he burnt his peanuts. Dr Phil came to the rescue, offering Josh some of his spare peanuts. Still, the good doctor’s generosity couldn’t save the day.
Josh, who presented a winning dish in a previous episode, landed in the bottom two alongside Ntobeko. Neither cracked the recipe’s code and, ultimately, the judges – Chef Katlego Mlambo, Zola Nene and Justine Drake – as well as guest judge Motheba Makhetha, decided that Josh would not proceed to the Top 10.
Meanwhile, it was a surefire spot for Benjie, whose presentation ticked all the boxes, resulting in his second winning dish of the season.
With Josh eliminated, the MasterChef Top 10 now consists of the last two remaining female home cooks, Shoki and Candice, alongside Benjie, Dr Phil, Calvin, Keith, Jeshen, and the three Zulu culinary warriors, Simele, Ntobeko and Nkululeko.
In the next episode, this elite squad will have to display their creativity by turning two-minute noodles into a MasterChef-worthy dish.
MasterChef South Africa Season 6 keeps e.tv viewers on the knife’s edge every Sunday at 18:00, with rebroadcasts on the channel on Saturdays at 17:00, and additional airings on eExtra on Saturdays at 20:30 and on eReality on Sundays at 17:00.
While e.tv is available on free-to-air, the channel is also hosted on all DStv packages on DStv’s channel 194, and the CatchUp episodes will be on eVOD (watch.evod.co.za) from the day after the premiere episode. eReality is available on Openview.
Represented internationally by Banijay Entertainment, MasterChef is the world’s most successful cookery television format (Guinness World Records). Now commissioned across 71 markets, the life-changing show has aired over 700 seasons and more than 16,000 episodes to date. Created by Franc Roddam and first launched in 1990, the superbrand is known and enjoyed worldwide.
MasterChef South Africa is produced by the multi-award-winning production company Homebrew Films for Primedia Studios. The series was once again filmed at Atlantic Studios in Cape Town.
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