I think this belongs here. One of my Chinese friends has stumbled across Masterchef US videos and wanted to me to watch a couple as she had some questions. I'm not a fan, mainly because I find Joe Bastardanich an unbearable, ignorant, arrogant bully.
Anyway, the first sample was from the first season - part four. In the early part of the episode a contestant had won an advantage by being allowed to choose one of three ingredients for everyone to make a Chinese dish.
She was offered a range of Chinese mushrooms (some of which Ramsay listed using their Japanese names), mandarin oranges or duck. The contestant said she didn't know of any Chinese dishes using duck! Peking Duck is probably the most famous Chinese dish!
But she chose the mandarin oranges, something I have never, ever seen in any Chinese cooking - domestic or professional.
The fourteen contestants then cooked a range of 'Chinese dishes' none of which anyone in China would recognise. They used ingredients unknown in China - allspice, for example. And all the 'wrong' cooking techniques. But every cliché in the book. My friend asked "What are they doing?
Using his best American English, Ramsay asks one contestant if her dish is a starter or my least favourite word, an 'entreé'. There are no such concepts in Chinese cuisine.
My friend, an Americanophile, was utterly baffled. "Ramsay claims that no one knows more about food than he does. How can he get this so wrong?"
Then we moved on to Series 8 Episode 1 for some comedy. One would-be contestant at the audition stage stated:
"I spent a lot of time in China. I have studied the culture and the food."
Three minutes later she said "I lived in China for two months."
As my friend reminded me, I have lived in China for 25 years and am nowhere near an expert in Chinese food or culture. No one is. Two months barely gives you time to work out where the nearest restaurant is! And she didn't speak Chinese.
Her audition dish was, according to her, a 'Beijing Duck Taco'. The duck component was nowhere near a Beijing duck. And it didn't even look like a taco.
She failed the audition and was sent packing.
Now I'm trying to find a Chinese video of people trying to cook western food and getting it totally wrong.