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For Jainesh “Jai” Bali , food is life.
“The way that my grandma and my dad taught me is that as we’re cooking, because it’s done over a fire, it’s basically like a prayer,” says the Edmonton-born Bali, who will be competing on season 9 of MasterChef Canada , which premieres Sept. 22 on CTV. “So I’m actually putting myself spiritually into the food, and that’s what people are eating. I have to be in a good mind, in a good state, calm and happy, and wishing for people to be happy and satisfied from eating the food.”
Calm and happy aren’t descriptors that normally come up when discussing MasterChef Canada, one of the more intense cooking shows out there. Bali describes it as “hectic,” and notes that before every task laid before him he made sure that he was grounded in the moment. That meant that while other competitors were scrambling into position Bali was taking a deep breath and preparing himself.
That set him aside from 15 other home cooks selected from around the country to compete in the 11-episode season. Bali was the only Albertan chosen, his standout dish named as Lamb Loin with Peas, Roasted Leeks & Potato Pavé in a Red Wine Jus. Tuesday’s premiere will have the chefs squaring off in Battle Wellington, with Gordon Ramsay judging alongside series hosts Mary Berg, Hugh Acheson, and Craig Wong.
It’ s a tough competition, and Bali readily admits that he learned a lot from it.
“I really had to learn to trust my skills and my intuition,” he says. “You know, you kind of second guess and question things, and when you’re in such a high level competition, you can’t doubt yourself. You have to make a choice quickly and stand by it. For all of us on MasterChef we felt a bit of imposter syndrome because we all brought such different skills and such different expertise. So you’d look at someone whose plating is a work of art, and you look at yours and go ‘oh my god, does mine really stand up to this?’”
Bali comes from the Indo-Fijian community, which has its own distinct culinary traditions. He says that his earliest influence would be his mom, but that his grandmother looms large in matters of food. Immigrating from Fiji to Alberta in 1974 she had to make do with ingredients that didn’t quite match up with what she used back home. According to Bali, she essentially became an early underground star in the community for her fusion of local ingredients with traditional foods.
“She has this one pickled lemon chutney that she only knew how to make, and people used to come from places like Vancouver and California and invite her to weddings so she could make it for the guests,” says Bali. “She taught my mom to make it, and one day mom asked if I’d like to learn it when I was working in Toronto.”
Bali started making the chutney, which became a hit among his neighbors. He then gave it to neighbors who were eating it faster than he could make it. Bali eventually began selling it to groceries in Toronto and then leveraged that and turned it into a business making vegan products for independent stores in Toronto for about three years.
Bali moved back to Edmonton last November, so he’s still in the process of figuring out future plans while he works in the family business. He enjoyed his time on MasterChef, adapting in quick moving situations and continuously improving after each challenge. The dream now that it’s over and he’s sitting back to watch the season with his friends?
“A little cafe where you’d have coffee, tea, and bistro style food that’s Western but with a Fijian influence,” he muses. “So that’s kind of solidified in me that ‘yeah, you know one day I think I would like to have that.’ But also what I’d like to do is collect a lot of these old grandma recipes. Recipes that are kind of dying out, or people have forgotten them. I think right now with the TikTok-ification of food people are really obsessed about what’s worthy for Instagram, and how perfect something is. They’ve kind of forgotten that food is meant to be eaten.”
Season 9 of MasterChef Canada premieres Tuesday on CTV