The first episode of MasterChef South Africa Season 4 was broadcast on M-Net last night (read a review here), and I watched the show with some close friends and family members. Everyone brought a pizza of their choice - I wasn’t going to cook this time!

It was bizarre to watch myself on TV, so many weeks after filming took place, and the emotions I felt at the time all came rolling back.

The auditions that got me in the Top 20 of MasterChef South Africa

With hours of filming, there are bound to be elements of the experience that don’t make it in the episode. In order to get into the Top Twenty, thirty-six hopeful foodies had to audition. At the beginning of the first episode, you see some of the top twenty contestants lifting the silver cloches to reveal the white aprons below, which told us we made it to the top twenty. However for sixteen others, there was nothing underneath the cloche and their Masterchef SA journey had come to an end before it had even truly started.

So what did we have to do to deserve a white apron and make it through to the Top Twenty? I recently added a blog post to the The Roasted Dad website in which I describe How I became a MasterChef SA Contestant: I submitted an application form and a video featuring myself in the kitchen showcasing my skills, thereafter I was invited for a Zoom interview with Hannerie Visser from Studio H and cookbook author Errieda Du Toit. The interview must have gone well because I was then invited to join for the auditions!

The thirty-six wanna-be contestants were divided into two groups. The group I formed part of was first up to do the challenge. This was a proper cooking challenge like the ones you see in the MasterChef show. We were briefed that it was a breakfast challenge and we were given access to a limited pantry. A classic component to breakfast, the egg, had to be the hero of the dish. Of course you can poach, fry and scramble an egg, or you can make an omelette, but I quickly decided that if I wanted to stand out from the crowd on MasterChef SA, I would need to think outside the box.

What I cooked for the auditions for MasterChef South Africa

And for some reason I thought back to the humble beginnings of The Roasted Dad instagram account, when I made a Breakfast Egg Roll. As I shared in the blog post The Early Beginnings of The Roasted Dad, being stuck at home during the hard lockdown of 2020 wasn’t all doom and gloom for us. I have always enjoyed cooking, but when we had to be home all the time, I found myself with a lot more spare time to spend on preparing good dishes. In May 2020, I started to experiment with cooking more, trying out new techniques and buying different ingredients to create nice dishes with. To capture that journey, I opened a new Instagram account: The Roasted Dad.

Scrolling back on my Instagram profile today, I found some pictures of that Breakfast Egg Roll, which was inspired by this Foodies of SA Sheet Pan Omelette Roll Recipe. My sister had given me the Foodies of South Africa Top 100 Cook Book for Christmas the one year, and one Sunday morning in May, in the middle of South Africa’s hard lockdown, it seemed like a good idea to try it.

It was an absolute hit with my wife and son (my daughter was just three months at the time - so she would have only received a little taste through her mother’s milk), and for some reason it came back to mind when we were briefed on the challenge during the auditions.

The Breakfast Egg Roll I made during the MasterChef auditions

During the MasterChef audition, I filled my egg roll with cream cheese. The trickiest part about the Breakfast Egg Roll dish is to very carefully roll the egg up into a long roll, and to then use a sharp knife to cut it into equal-sized pieces. Fortunately I managed to do this without issues and I was happy with my plating in the end. 

In the afternoon, whilst the other group cooked their egg dish, the group I formed part of went in for a camera test, which I miserably failed at - at least it felt that way. When I got back to the other contestants, they also said they had struggled a lot so I hoped at that point that my poor performance in front of the camera was at least better than some of the other contestants’ (you don’t need to outrun the lion).

So what you may not realise when watching the show, is that there are many hours between the cook, the judging and the final results. As for the auditions, the judging took place behind closed doors and so we didn’t get any feedback as to how we did with our dish. After a long day of filming, including the challenge and the camera test, we finally got to the revealing of the Top Twenty, and by this time all of my confidence in my dish had disappeared and only self-doubt and worry remained. Being part of the auditions meant that I was so close to being on the show, and to be eliminated from the competition at this point would have been soul-crushing.

Winning a MasterChef Apron

As you got to see at the beginning of the first episode last night, we found out whether we were through to the Top Twenty by lifting a silver cloche which revealed whether there was a white apron or nothing underneath. In order to get the absolute best shot (and I’m sure to also get us contestants really nervous and anxious and draw out all of our emotions), we had to walk up to the cloche numerous times and reach out - without lifting it. This way the producers and directors could see if the lighting and camera angles were correct, before the actual sequence of the lifting of the cloche was filmed.

All of the other contestants had gone ahead of me, and I was the very last person to go and find out my fate. So when the time finally came to lift my cloche, I was absolutely exhausted, mentally frazzled and so desperately desiring to find that apron underneath that I was worried about the possibility of it not being there. Not knowing whether my cloche was empty or had an apron underneath, was incredibly nerve-wracking. Fortunately when I eventually did get to lift the cloche, my apron was there.

As said before, with hours of filming, there are bound to be elements of the experience that don’t make it in the episode and so you will just have to believe me when I say I was ecstatic seeing that apron, and ran towards the other contestants with a jump into the air, nearly hitting my head on the air conditioning unit above, and fracturing my foot as a result of the awkward landing.

But all of that didn’t matter. I was through, officially part of the Top Twenty and a few short weeks later, I joined the other nineteen contestants at the Radisson RED Hotel for the filming of the competition. Over the next five weeks, MasterChef SA is broadcast on M-Net (Channel 101) at 6:00 pm, Monday through to Thursday. Give me a follow on The Roasted Dad for more scoops and behind-the-scenes footage.

About Shawn Godfrey

Shawn Godfrey is an entrepreneur based in Cape Town, South Africa. After the Covid-19 lockdown saw his business in financial distress, cooking was the creative outlet that helped to keep him sane. To keep track of his recipes, and encourage friends and families to join him, he starts his instagram account The Roasted Dad.

Fast-forward to late 2021 - on a whim Shawn (encouraged by his wife Lianne) enters MasterChef South Africa. It is a crazy time of life: running a 200 people business and struggling to keep it profitable, two small children with a third on the way, and about to move into a new house. But when Shawn gets selected to be one of the 20 contestants participating in the fourth season of MasterChef South Africa, he decides to go all in. Leaving his 7-month-pregnant wife to look after their then three and one-year-old children, he battles it out and comes back home five weeks later with the trophy and a million rand prize money in his pocket.

It all started with an Instagram account, but The Roasted Dad is so much more now. Shawn has stayed his entrepreneurial self and whilst he hosts Private Dinner Parties and Cook-with-Me Demos, does Restaurant Take-Overs, he still runs the lighting company and several other businesses.

On his blog, Shawn shares Restaurant Reviews and Accommodation Reviews, and gives an insight into the wild and wonderful life he leads together with his wife Lianne, and their three children Aiden (6), Olivia (4) and Harvey (2).

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