The Blind Chef

Christine Huyentran Hà is an American chef, writer and TV host from Houston, Texas. She is the first blind contestant of MasterChef and the winner of its third season in 2012.

Hà suffers from neuromyelitis optica. This is when a person's own immune system attacks the optic nerves and spinal cord. In 2004 she was diagnosed and started losing her vision. By 2007 she was almost completely blind. She describes her vision "as looking at a very foggy mirror after a hot shower".

Christine never studied cooking but has a large number of followers on her food blog. She says: "I have to depend a lot more on the other senses to cook – taste, smell, and how certain ingredients feel” She also says that cooking without sight just involves "a lot of organisation".

When Christine went to university, she had to cook so she wouldn’t be hungry. She experimented and tried a lot of different recipes. She soon found out she could create delicious dishes. But she didn’t enjoy cooking for herself so she invited her friends for dinner and they loved her food. Christine’s mum was a good cook but died when Christine was 14. Unfortunately, Christine couldn’t learn from her but still tries to make the things her mum used to cook for the family.

On September 10, 2012, Hà won the cooking show MasterChef. She beat 30,000 other home cooks from America to win the competition. Her prize was $250,000, the MasterChef trophy and a cookbook deal. Christine’s first cookbook, "Recipes From My Home Kitchen: Asian and American Comfort Food" was a New York Times best seller.