In the end, the desert or salt got him.
Malibu home chef and recent competitor on the Fox network hit, “MasterChef,” Leslie Gilliams, hung up his apron in the next-to-last-round of the reality cooking show, bowing to the better man in the semifinals, or in this case, the better women. Gilliams almost edged out runner-up Elizabeth Cauvel to compete in a cook-off with eventual winner Courtney Lapresi.
“The old man made it to the top three, and got rid of all the other guys,” Gilliams said.
His bête noire was likely the dessert challenge, with the chefs having to create three classic deserts: a cheesecake, a key lime pie and a Boston cream pie. Lapresi won the cheesecake bake-off, Gilliams won the key lime pie contest. But he put too much salt in the chocolate ganache and his Boston cream pie ripped victory right out of his oven mitts.
Gilliams spent three months living, cooking and filming with 21 other contestants — most of them 20 to 30 years younger than him — for the fifth season of the top-rated show. He said he learned a lot and that a true master chef comes with time, experience and the ability to get past making mistakes.
“My future is in home cooking,” he said. “Just because I spent three months on ‘MasterChef’ doesn’t make me a master chef. None of those contestants can think they are. The only real master chefs around were [show judges] Gordon Ramsay and Graham Elliot.”
Gilliams said while he found the experience rewarding and would do it again, he was always keenly aware that it was a competition and that he would be judged.
“The biggest challenge was dealing with all those young people,” he said. “Every last one of them had it in for me. I got no respect.”
Indeed, he said behind the scenes, he stayed to himself. The other contestants would gather for a drink at the end of a long day over the stove. Gilliams would head to his hotel room and study recipes, trying to memorize cookbooks because “you never knew what you would have to cook the next day.”
The competition incorporates different challenges for the chefs, including a team challenge, a pressure test, an elimination test and a mystery box challenge, wherein chefs are each given a box with the same ingredients and must use only those ingredients to create a dish within a fixed amount of time. Gilliams’ mystery challenge was a box full of seafood.
“That’s one thing about cook ing on ‘MasterChef,’” he said. “I’ve never seen fresher seafood, more perfect produce or more top-of-the-line protein in my life.”
In a pressure test opposite contestant Victoria Scroggins, Gilliams was confronted with a live Santa Barbara spot prawn and instructions from judge Elliot to make ceviche, from judge Joe Bastianich to make shrimp tempura and from judge Ramsay to make scampi.
“You really need to know how to cook,” Gilliams said. “If you told me to write out a recipe, I wouldn’t know where to go. They had the ingredients and you have 60 minutes to prepare, one dish every 20 minutes, all prepared at the same time. It’s pressure.”
Over 19 episodes, Gilliams had plenty of time to expand his culinary repertoire. He said that he most enjoyed preparing a veal dish that last season’s winning MasterChef, Luca Manfè, had featured in his new cookbook, “My Italian Kitchen.” Now that the season has ended, Gilliams plans to return to his home and cook for his favorite critic, his wife, Paula Hart. He doesn’t see himself opening a restaurant anytime soon, but he would not be adverse to running a local eatery with his daughter, saying she would cook and he would just advise.
To Gilliams, Malibu already has plenty of worthy dining establishments, although he confesses he is sometimes shocked to go out and find appetizers he claims are priced in the triple digits. And he thinks Malibu should offer public transit so that diners don’t drink and drive.
When asked what lessons he learned during his “MasterChef” experience, he laughed.
“Well, I’m out the $250,000 [in prize money],” Gilliams said. “My kids are in college now and they’ll have to get a job to pay for it. But we had some laughs.”
Gilliams will be a featured guest at the auditions for Season 6 of “MasterChef” this month. He hopes some adventurous Malibu chef shows up with a signature dish.
“Someone from Malibu has to win this thing,” he said.
“MasterChef” will hold auditions for Season 6 at the Andaz West Hollywood on Oct. 18. Interested chefs can register for the open call at masterchefcasting.com.
