A man whose cooking skills don’t extend beyond pressing the ‘start’ button on his microwave is looking forward to another night of shouting at ‘Masterchef: The Professionals’.
Gary Taylor, 36, intends to spend most of the hour-long cooking show mocking the talents of professional chefs, whilst simultaneously ignoring the fact that he struggles to make anything more complicated than a bowl of cereal.
“Did you see those idiots trying to make soufflés last night?” asked the man who once almost burned his parents’ house down by trying to cook sausages in the toaster.
“I mean I’m no Marcus Wareing but even I know that you have to set the butter in the mould first,” explained the husband and father of two, who has been banned from his own kitchen after somehow managing to get food welded onto every single non-stick pan in the house.
Taylor told our reporter that he had always fancied becoming a chef and had enjoyed experimenting with food during his time at university.
“Moving away from home really gave me the chance to try new things,” he said, possibly referring to the time his student halls had to be evacuated following his attempts to cook the contents of a Pot Noodle inside his electric kettle.
Taylor’s wife, Samantha, 32, said her husband’s enthusiasm for Masterchef was mostly positive but had so far failed to having any impact on the quality of his cooking.
“He does occasionally takes notes but I can’t honestly say that they’ve ever done him any good,” she explained.
“It’s all very well writing down the best way to stop your hollandaise splitting but if you can’t even warm up a bottle of breastmilk without setting off the smoke alarm then you should probably just accept your limitations and stay the fuck out of the kitchen.”
Although dismissive of his wife’s criticism, Taylor did accept that his attempts to impress in the kitchen did occasionally fall flat.
“Sure, the stuff I try to cook could sometimes be described as ‘challenging’, I guess, but it can be exciting to combine new textures and flavours,” he said.
“They had a guy on last night – a trained chef, mind – who struggled to properly butcher a duck, yet she still won’t forgive me for the time we had friends over and I served them a bowl of raspberry-ripple ice cream covered in a smoked mackerel and rosemary crumb.
“Who would have thought that those three things could go together? Nobody. Because they don’t. It was bloody disgusting, but at least I had the balls to give it a go.”
At press time, there are reports that Taylor has been admitted to A&E after attempting to heat a tin of soup using his wife’s hair straighteners.
