MasterChef Australia 2021 has served up some of the most talented home chefs we’ve ever seen, however, being a competition, each week, we’ve seen them sent home.
After bidding farewell to 11 talented home cooks on MasterChef Australia 2021, the series offered up a delicious twist by bringing all of them back for second chance week with not one, but two, chances to re-enter the competition.
In the first pressure test, Conor Curran, Eric Mao, Katrina Dunnet and Minoli DeSilva faced off in a complicated dessert challenge set for them by Anthony Hart.
DeSilva — a 34-year-old engineering project manager from the Northern Territory — was triumphant in her cook, with a chocolate oasis that most closely resembled Hart’s thanks to her impressive ability to temper chocolate.
“I went in with the mindset that I wasn’t going to fail,” DeSilva told The Latch about her winning cook. “I spoke to my mum beforehand and she said: ‘You just have to believe in yourself. You’re a good cook and you know what you’re doing. Just go in there and don’t think about not doing the right thing — put all your energy into thinking that you are going to smash it.'”
She continued, “And that’s what I did. Your mental headframe really impacts how the rest of your life and the rest of your day will go. So that was a good lesson for me.”
DeSilva was a firm fan favourite in the competition the first time around, making her May 2nd elimination both shocking and extremely sad.
“Being around so many cooks that are incredible, I did get intimidated,” DeSilva told POPSUGAR Australia during an interview after being sent home.
In the weeks between leaving the competition and returning to it, DeSilva said she made sure she didn’t define herself by her last cook and got right back on the wagon.
“I started cooking all sorts of different things. I practised a lot,” she said. “I practiced my dessert and actually had a go at tempering chocolate, but I nothing like yesterday. That was insane.
“But I just kept cooking favours that I love just to get back in a really good headspace with cooking.”
The aspiring chef, who is a breast cancer survivor, is now determined to make the most of every cook in the MasterChef kitchen and really show Andy, Melissa and Jock what she is made of.
Said DeSilva, “I felt like I didn’t show Australia and the judges how I truly cook. I just lost my way in the competition and started cooking things that I thought they wanted to see rather than what I loved.
So, that’s my motto for the rest of this competition: put up food I want to eat and to just trust my instincts with food and flavour.”
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