NEW DELHI: The ingredients are: a Bollywood star, months of auditions around India, thousands of candidates, one of the biggest potential audiences in the world, satellite TV, and lots and lots of cash. Welcome to MasterChef India.

The country’s latest reality TV show, and its first devoted to cooking, launched this weekend at prime time on Saturday night, going head to head with the hugely popular reality show heavyweights.

Presented by Akshay Kumar, an actor better known for his martial arts skills, the format borrows heavily from the British original. The winner will get his or her own cookery show, their own cookbook and GBP130,000.

The top chefs who join Kumar as judges wear shiny suits rather than the western chef’s uniform of toque hats and aprons.

At one point, they dip their fingers into a contestant’s spinach and banana dish, compliment the “innovative combination” before dismissing it with “It’s a no”. Kumar glares balefully at contestants before telling them that their rumali roti, a famously thin type of flat bread, have “thick edges” and they will never succeed unless they throw them in the air.

The publicity campaign has promised a semi-hysterical matron screaming complaints at the “treatment” she and her “spreads” have received on the show and a sobbing sari-clad teenage girl throwing herself into Kumar’s arms. Ajay Chopra, an Indian chef recently returned from London, said there was a difference between “being nasty like Gordon (Ramsay) and giving them a glare that says ‘we are not here to play games’”. “I am very strict in my kitchen and I am on the show, too,” Chopra said.

Ajit Andhare, the chief executive of Colosceum, the programme’s production company, told Mint newspaper: “Adapting the international format to reflect Indian tastes was a big challenge.”

One problem was that Indians view food “as meals, and not as single dishes”, he said. Cooking has become a significant new trend among the wealthy Indian classes who previously relied on domestic staff. Top chefs earn big salaries and cookery books sell in huge numbers.

More than 2,400 potential contestants were interviewed in six cities before being cut down to 40, who were then sent to a boot camp where their first task was to chop onions.

Sanjeev Kapoor, one of India’s best-known chefs, said he was unsure the reality format would work immediately. “At the moment they are relying on the star power to get the show going,” said Kapoor, who was approached to participate in the programme.

One problem may be the judges’ attitude. Audiences in India have often sided with the underdog in reality shows, from Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, which inspired the Oscar-winning film Slumdog Millionaire, to more recent variants which have seen minor Bollywood stars living in villages competing at domestic chores.

“My mum watched (MasterChef) and asked me why they are being so rude to contestants. ‘Don’t they know how hard it is to cook?’ she asked me. That’s an issue,” Kapoor said.

Chopra said that “60 to 70 per cent” of Indians did not know the difference between “a cook and a chef” and it was time they learned.

“This is not about family cooking. It’s hard work. A chef is someone who makes something out of nothing, day in day out,” he said.—Dawn/ Guardian News Service