A HESWALL mum with a penchant for home style cooking will face a grilling when she takes on the quarter-finals of MasterChef next month.
Kathryn Whitehall will grace our television screens on Easter Monday when Knockout Week starts on the BBC One show.
MasterChef is back for its eleventh year with what promises to be the most inspirational series yet.
Out of the hundreds that auditioned, 40 amateur cooks have been whittled down to the most promising 12.
All of them have just one goal – to lift the coveted MasterChef Champion trophy.
The competition will get serious as Knockout Week begins on April 6. At the end of the week, only the best eight cooks can become semi-finalists.
After four weeks of fierce competition only the 12 best cooks remain, and on Easter Monday, the battle is on as they come together for the first time.
To proceed to the semi-finals, 51-year-old Kathryn will need to convince John Torode and Gregg Wallace that she is worthy of a place in the next round.
Kathryn, who first developed her love of cooking when she was a child, told the Globe: “I applied for MasterChef in May. I had a lot of time to think about it and after 10 years, I decided that this year was going to be the year I finally plucked up the courage to enter.
“I’m a home cook and I’ve been cooking from when I was very small. I started with baking with my mum and my sister and now cook with family and friends.”
Their fate now rests in the hands of a daunting cook-off and one dish that they must design around briefs given by John and Gregg.
John’s brief asks for a main course with “true origin” - it has a reason, a story, a reality - and must be a true and proper classic from any culture.
Gregg’s pudding instruction is: “Make it thick, make it sticky & make it brown."
The 12 must each decide which brief to cook to, and in two hours deliver just one dish that stands out from the crowd, and proves to judges that they have a future in the competition.
Afterwards, John and Gregg choose the best nine chefs to go straight through to the next stage, leaving the weakest three to cook-off again.
Kathryn will need to impress judges Gregg Wallace and John Torode.
Filming for the show took place in November, with Kathryn already knowing her fate.
Although sworn to secrecy about whether she makes it through Monday’s show, Kathryn said: “It has been an absolutely fantastic experience. I thought it would be really good fun and it’s even better than I thought it would be.
“It’s definitely one of the best experiences of my life.”
Tune in to MasterChef on BBC One on Easter Monday to find out if Kathryn makes it to the next round.
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