Chatter food writer, Beth Kirby.Chatter’s food writer and photographer extraordinaire Beth Kirby finished 13th on this year’s Masterchef competition (and we know she would have won if Gordon Ramsay judged food writing along with cooking). Here she shares the special ingredients that go into making Fox’s reality show that viewers love to chew on each year.
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I was a rather unlikely candidate to be cast on Masterchef. For one, I can barely say “Masterchef” without laughing. It sounds so very serious. Also, I’ve never wanted to be a chef on the line; I don’t watch reality television; I’m not competitive; I’d never even seen Masterchef before auditioning, and at no point did I want to win. So how, exactly, did I end up on the show?
It really all started with my blog, “Local Milk.”
The creation of the site was inspired by a longstanding love affair with the kitchen and a rekindled love of Tennessee and the local food scene I discovered here in Chattanooga after moving back from the West Coast. I wanted to find a way to both preserve the culinary traditions I’d grown up with-the cornmeal and black walnuts of my grandmother’s kitchen-and at the same time reinvent them for a new generation of cooks looking to discover the Southern kitchen for themselves. I wanted to create a space that embraced crumbs and imperfection and focused on the relational aspects of gathering around the table and living well as opposed to formal, high maintenance entertaining. And so “Local Milk” was born, a space where I share from scratch, seasonal recipes, photography and stories about my life, about being a real person, with foibles and eccentricities, bad days, doubts and all. Real reality, if you will. A far cry from the simulacrum of an L.A. soundstage, but my love of all those things is what ended me up there.