I' m fascinated by Indian culture

When asked what about India was she looking forward to the most when she learnt that she would be coming here, Renae Smith, former contestant of ‘MasterChef Australia’, quickly says, “Curry!”

It doesn’t come as a surprise though; she spent a large part of her time on the Australian cooking show making saucy and spicy curries that never failed to leave an impression on the tastebuds. She was in the City recently, where she spoke to ‘Metrolife’ about her time on the show and after.

“I want to eat food, all of the curry! I would also love to see a tiger walking down the street! I’m fascinated by Indian culture, not necessarily the most Western things around here, but I want to see traditional Indian things and the stuff that inspire Indians; stuff that not everyone gets to see,” she says.

Renae, a vegetarian, is known for her ability to cook meat despite not having tasted any herself. “When I would initially cook meat, I would cook it for about 45 minutes and I used to like it when the outsides were a little dry – I didn’t know how it was supposed to be. So when people came over, they were probably dying! Same goes for the chicken – I thought if it was rock hard, it was good!” When she entered ‘MasterChef’, she bettered her skills.

“I studied how to cook meat. I can cut apart a chicken, a cow, I’ve studied it all. I know how to cook lamb medium rare, steak, what it’s meant to feel and look like...I only taught myself to go on the show. But I tried to avoid it as much as possible.”

Talking about her life after the show, she says the hardest part was adjusting to ‘real life’. “For six months, we are looked after, we are told what to eat for breakfast, we don’t have to go grocery shopping, you don’t have passkeys...so when you go home and your phone rings, it feels a bit weird.”

When she left the show, she had many expectations, which soon disappeared. “When you think of a chef, you think of a celebrity chef. You leave ‘MasterChef’ and you aren’t a celebrity chef anymore. Once you get out there, you have to chop carrots everyday, and that’s not fun.

People come to us and ask us for tips on how to be a chef but we aren’t chefs. If I wanted to be a chef, I’d have to start washing like everyone else. Just because people see us on TV they think we are incredible, which is fine, but it (‘MasterChef’) is not a university where we’d get recognised; we’d still have to start out from the bottom.”

Renae, who has her own PR and marketing business, says she never planned to become a chef.  “I have a child so I’m not willing to compromise. My dream was never to be a chef because I don’t have the time to be one. My dream is more about teaching people to be healthy or work with what they have. I did ‘MasterChef’ because I thought it might be fun.” She also has a cooking school where she teaches kids to cook healthy.