After a seven-year break, the popular TV cooking show MasterChef NZ returns to TV screens this Sunday night.
Auckland restauranter Michael P Dearth is one of this year's judges, along with chefs Nadia Lim and Vaughan Mabee. He tells Wallace Chapman what we can expect from Season 7.
Michael P Dearth, Nadia Lim and Vaughan Mabee - the judges of MasterChef NZ 2022 Photo: Three Now
"MasterChef - in which amateur cooks compete by creating a range of dishes - has become a gigantic worldwide phenomenon because it's relatable," Dearth says.
"Human beings, we all love to cook and everybody has their dish they like to make and who they like to make it for.'"
The cooking in this series of MasterChef - by a "big diverse group of people from many different cultures" - was of outstanding quality, he says, and for the judges it was a really close call deciding on a winner.
In a number of different cooking challenges, it become clear which contestants were specialists only in baking and which had just one signature dish they had mastered.
The MasterChef judges were looking for something much more in their winner.
'We wanted to see the passion, the excellence and really what they were going to do after MasterChef."
As a MasterChef judge, Vaughan Mabee can come across "pretty tough", Dearth says, but their role as judges is more about mentorship than criticism.
After two decades of working as a restauranteur, he sees his own job as a kind of coach.
"I'm more sort of the 'you and I know you can do better than this' sort of vibe'."
While shooting MasterChef in Central Otago, Dearth enjoyed spending time on fellow judge Nadia Lim's "wonderful" Royalburn Farm.
"I've always loved going to Queenstown but to be there at the end of summer and the beginning of autumn was really special. I was there for nine weeks in total."
Dearth really enjoyed working with Nadia Lim, who he's known for a while, on shoot days of up to 19 hours.
Lim - a former MasterChef winner who was previously a clinical dietitian - is a force to be reckoned with, he says.
"She's so beautiful, she's so intelligent and if Vaughan and I didn't lift our game she would just kill us and eat us."
- Read / Listen - Nadia Lim on life in Central Otago: 'We have a lot of rabbit parties'
