"As many housewives as there are recipes," MasterChef contestant Kateryna Dubchak

What is Odesa cuisine and is it possible to learn it on MasterChef? We talked about this with Kateryna Dubchak, a MasterChef 16 participant, volunteer and makeup artist. Watch the interview and read the short version on Intent about cooking, the show's challenges, her favorite judge, and helping the military.

Watch the full interview on Intent's YouTube channel

Katya, the new season of MasterChef has just started, so we don't know all the secrets, the finale is still a long way off, and we won't ask you any secrets, but we will definitely talk about your journey with cooking. Tell us at what point did it become an interesting activity for you, how did you start doing it more often than usual?

I love to cook, and my mom and dad are very good cooks. In general, when we go to someone's house for a holiday, there are a lot of goodies that I love to try. So it's not something new for me.

At the beginning of the full-scale invasion, I started making tactical makeup for special forces. At first, I sent only tactical makeup and started baking some goodies, pies, bagels, and other things together. But in the summer it is very difficult to transport this stuff. And Nova Poshta refused to transport any food that could spoil quickly. That's why I started making retort bags with food. I came to the MasterChef casting with a retort package and offered the judges to try something besides the main dish. They liked it. There were potatoes with fries and mitballs. And this is the kind of food I brought to the judges that I make and send to our guys at the front. So I cook all the time.

Also, at the beginning of the full-scale invasion, I started a food blog. There are different recipes there. I did it for myself, for my grandmother, because she often called me and asked: "Oh, what about this? What about this?" And at first it was a closed page, open only to my family, where I just uploaded a photo of the result and signed what I was adding. And then I decided to post a video, and it took off.

Let's look at retort packages. What are they? Tell us why they allow you to preserve food? How long does it last? How did you come up with this idea?

The idea of retort bags is not mine. I got it from the volunteers. On TikTok, a lot of people are live streaming how they make food. And I really appreciate the fact that they shared their recipes with me. My close friend Valentyna, who owns a store called "From Valentyna," provides me with most of the products, all fresh vegetables, fruits, herbs, seasonings, helps me with my preparations, and buys meat.

A retort bag is a special bag, most often green in color, that contains raw food. We vacuum this bag and cook it in an autoclave. This is a special device that heats these bags to 115-120°. The bags heat up slowly, all the food is cooked there, and they cool down in a day. And it can be stored in a jar for up to several years. I started making all this and went to the show.

When I was at the show, I turned off the sound to sleep. That was probably the only night I turned off the sound. And I woke up at night to drink water. And I saw that I had a lot of missed calls from my neighbors. From my neighbors, from my sister, but not from my mom. And my mom was at home. We have houses in the same yard. And the plane landed in my mother's room. And everything in my mother's room burned down. My roof burned down, part of my property was destroyed. Basically, most of my house was flooded. We have already restored the roof, windows and doors. My mom and dad's house burned down. They cannot live there.

PHOTO: Intent, Natalia Dovbysh

Did you do all the reconstruction with your own money?

I started a collection on the very first day. We used part of the money to restore the roof, install windows and doors.

But in general, this element of fixing after the arrival - I don't know fully how this system works, but I understand that people are in some kind of a queue for reimbursement.

This is very important when the arrival happens. The first thing to do is to call the police. I didn't know that. You have to call the police to record that it was the arrival of a shahed, a rocket, that it was no accident. The police should record everything as it is. Of course, we called the police, and it took them a day to arrive. During this time, we had already cleaned up. As I said, we didn't know. Dobrobat helped us a lot. It's a charitable foundation. They just cleared everything in one day. My sister joined them. My sister is now volunteering with Dobrobat, going to all the arrivals. After that, she became part of this battalion. This is very valuable to me.

Then let's get back to the kitchen. Why MasterChef?

I grew up watching MasterChef. I watched it all the time. I always wanted to be there, in that kitchen, and try myself. When you sit on the couch, it seems very simple. God, can't you just take those potatoes, peel them and fry them?

It seems very stressful to me.

I don't. It always seemed so easy to me. How can you not find meat or how can you not make that cutlet? I just don't know. When you're there... First of all, it's very stressful, but somehow you get these opportunities, somehow your imagination starts to work, and you combine products that you would never have combined.

Or, for example, so you understand: I came to the casting with molecular spaghetti. What is molecular spaghetti? This is the easiest thing anyone can do in their kitchen. I bought drops at the pharmacy, a syringe, agar-agar and juice. I poured out the orange juice, boiled it, added rosemary, a little sugar, salt, and poured it into the drop system. Then you just blow the air out of the syringe, and this pasta comes out by itself. It's not anything super, but because it impressed the audience, it impressed the judges, I tried to do something molecular every competition, and everyone was like: "Damn, you're the queen of molecular!" But for the next competition, I had to make a dish for the auction. And I said: "Okay, I'm going to make a molecular dessert. It will be scrambled eggs." But in fact, it was a dessert. It's gelled cream whipped with powdered sugar. And they are very elastic and very tasty. And the yolk is a hemisphere with apricot, with carrots, and colorful pasta made of beets, mint, and carrots with apricot. And it looked like scrambled eggs with something colored. But in fact, it was all dessert, but the right kind, which can be consumed by children.

PHOTO: Intent, Natalia Dovbysh

Tell me, who is your favorite judge? I've watched two episodes of the show, and they keep saying that Yaroslavsky is very strict. I don't think he is.

No, I think Ector is the strictest. When you are preparing something, they can come over. Volodymyr and Olha, when they come over, can make comments or advise you to do something differently. And Hector comes over and says: "Nothing seems strange?" And you: "Uh, am I doing something wrong?" And he: "Think about it." And every time Hector comes over, you think: "I must be doing something wrong."

A trashy story. The first away competition. In fact, this is the first competition of this season. The first contest of the twenty. I sit in the evening and think: "I'm going to floss and clean my teeth." Why? Tell me. I don't know, I clicked something and my crown fell off. I run to the producers and say I need help, I need to do something about it. And they said: "But this is content, let's leave it like this." I didn't know what to do. And we lived outside the city in a village, in a roadside hotel. And there were no hospitals, no dentists, nothing, and no one could help. The next morning, I come to the pavilion, do my makeup, and that's it. And I'm without a tooth. I have to go to the competition. I'm without a tooth. So I asked the producers for half an hour off to get my tooth fixed. I didn't know where to do it. I ran out of the pavilion. I looked for a place on the Internet. There I found a booth called "Shvydkozuby". I call them and say: "I'm coming to you". The doctor said: "You realize that it's impossible to do something properly, to do something well." I said: "I don't know, put it on glue". What do you think?" He takes this tooth and puts it on the glue. He said: "I don't know when it will fall off. Maybe today, maybe in a year." We don't know anything. He just puts it in. And I look at my watch. I have 10 minutes to go back. A month later, I went to the doctor and had it replaced with a normal crown. I went a month with that tooth. Doctor, thank you. I told you all this, and we sent photos to STB, but I think they didn't put it in because of the lack of airtime.

Марія Литянська