It’s like a chocolate cream egg on acid, said a perplexed Gregg Wallace as he pondered the hopelessly ill matched food from a culinary wannabe on MasterChef: The Professionals (BBC2).

He’d been presented with prawns, chocolate sauce and a poached egg. It looked like the sort of thing a sleep-deprived child made have come up with in a fiction contest at junior school; all shapes, swirls, squiggles and mismatched colours. Remarkably, Gregg managed to eat it without bursting into laughter.

There was worse. One poor man tried to make ravioli but gave up when his pasta came out of the machine with the texture of plaster. So, thinking on his feet, he turned the pasta into, ahem, ‘dumplings’. Greg and fellow judge Monica Galleti were not so easily fooled. “A bad day at the office,” they offered, diplomatically. The chef’s shoulders sagged as he made his way back to his work station, disconsolately, realising all that he had to look forward to was another 40 years of serving haddock and double fried chips at his local pub.

Oh well. Another night, another programme about cooking. What is it about food? It’s become the new rock ‘n’ roll. Fifteen years ago, every other programme was about decorating as make-over TV captured the zeitgeist. Then we became a nation obsessed with gardening programmes. Soon after, all we wanted to do was tune into transmissions that told us how to make a packet from property. But, as gardening, DIY and property have become passé, we’ve become addicted to cheffyvision.

Every night there’s a different take on food. We’re shown how to make British classics: sausage rolls, beef pies and other favourite dishes. There are shows about high-end Michelin-starred food; where cutting edge chefs reinvent the wheel. And then there are the reality quasi-goon shows: Come Dine With Me, How To Make Lemot Opiks Sandwiches and so on.

MasterChef is a perennial favourite, a brand that is spun in all sorts of ways – celebrity, amateur, professional and so on. It can’t be too long before they run out of new ideas and have to merge it with other shows. What odds do you think the BBC would offer on this: MasterChef Crufts – watching prize-winning dogs cook their own food.

Last night was an enjoyable hors d’oeuvres; a taste of better things to come. Ten chefs were given an invention test in which they were asked to cook a meal from six predetermined ingredients: prawns, lime, chilli, micro coriander and a chocolate bar.

The group of chefs ranged from the good to the ought-not-to-have-been selected. A small number dazzled with creations that were impressively ambitious and cooked with style and panache. Others were the type of dish that would have been sent back had they been ordered in a local bistro.

The ones who win in tonight’s second leg will get the chance to be humiliated in front of one of the nation’s great cooks, Michel Roux Jr as Gregg and Monica tell that that they’re not fit to lace his boots. One or two, however, will shine. Their food will be like the sweetest, freshest nectar; as inspired as a Caravaggio, as sublime as a Beethoven symphony. And, within a year, you’ll see them at flower shows, food festivals and vast indoor arenas.

Yup, food is the new rock ‘n’ roll, and MasterChef is the X Factor for wannabe cooks.

By Andy Richardson