Masterchef - winner announced, but scoring a bit wiffy

For the non-Australians reading this blog who haven't the faintest idea about the TV phenomenon that is Masterchef - it might be time to make a cup of tea.

So, the record-breaking finale of Masterchef has delivered what all the pundits were predicting - a win to Adam Liaw from Tokyo (via Adelaide), and a win to channel 10 in the ratings.

My favourite contestant right from the 1st episode was Liaw’s fellow grand-finalist and South Australian, the happy-awkward former engineering student, Callum Hann.

Although the odds were stacked against Callum to win the title, the fact that a 20-year old kitchen hand with no formal cooking training went as far as he did in the competition is a great credit to him.

In last night's episode, I was happy with the way it all went, except for the final round of scoring - which had me raising my eyebrows to new heights.

I think Callum was robbed of three points on the final dish, the guava snowball dessert. Adam scored four nines for his effort, and Callum got one 9 and three 8s. In my opinion Callum's desert looked better and got just as favourable, if not better comments, from most of the judges. So why didn't the scoring reflect this? Surely if both contestants’ invention test dishes got nines across the board, the pressure test round should have been scored likewise. It would have made the scoring very boring, but it demonstrates how matched both Hann and Liaw were on their cooking skills. It was Liaw’s food knowledge that won him an early, and ultimately, unsurpassable lead.

Even if Callum had received four nines for his dessert, he still would have trailed Adam at the end of the night, but I would hope that, for future series, the scoring is far more transparent, and at least is consistent with the judges' comments.

Adam deserved to win the competition, just as much as Callum deserved to be in the grand final with him.

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