The Masterchef Challenge

Near the beginning of the year I happened upon a book called ‘Jamie’s 30 minute meals’, where Jamie Oliver claims that following his recipes and methods, you can produce a 3-course meal in 30 minutes. “Really?” I thought. It seems too good to be true. And so began the idea of having a cooking challenge.

With some modifications to allow more people to be involved (thanks Marielle!), we had East London’s first Masterchef challenge on Friday night.

Marielle and I provided the basic ingredients (milk, flour, potatoes, spices) and everyone had to bring a mystery ingredient to the value of R30. Some were told to bring a dessert ingredient, and others savoury.

After a late start due to some illiteracy in reading e-mails, we drew out of a hat to split into teams and allocate the course. I drew and was in the starter team along with Juliet and Roelof. As mystery ingredients, we got puff pastry, peppadews and beef pieces.

Marielle, Pete, Rog and Craig were in charge of mains and they got chicken fillets, cashew nuts and peppers.

Finally, Simone, Lara and Jannes drew for the dessert. They also had puff pastry, as well as nutella and almond flakes.

Rolling out the puff pastry, we added cheese, diced peppadews and the beef, whivh had been cooked with wine, onions and garlic. Adding some herbs, we were ready to cook. Minor panic when our first choice baking dish didn’t actually fit into the oven. But ‘adapt, adopt, improve’ and after transferring and cooking them – ‘Et voila’. A delicious starter.

Marielle doing mains was sheer genius, and their team managed to produce mashed potato (don’t forget the cream!) with more onions and garlic cooked in wine and chicken crumbed with the cashew nuts. Gravy was red wine, cream and sweet chilli sauce – funny colour, but a delicious taste. Presentation, something we had overlooked in the interest of eating, was also great.

Dessert was more puff pastry encasing nutella, cinnamon-coated apple with pecan nuts and topped with grated chocolate. The coffee was also amazing.

Can’t wait for the next one.