Tag Archives: Amanda beck

MasterChef SA Season 2 episode 16: ‘Quirky’ cooking, Mucking Afazing Charly’s Bakery, Khumo Twala flaps out!

August 1, 2013

The Pressure Test that five Red Team MasterChef SA Finalists, who lost the cook out in the Company’s Gardens in Cape Town yesterday, had to go through seemed less stressful and more fun than some of the others the Finalists have been through, in that they could let their creativity shine through. The winning Blue Team loved their visit to Charly’s Bakery in Cape Town.

The visiting Chef and ‘Bread and Butter’ column food writer for The Times was Andrea Burgener of The Leopard (no website for her restaurant, it appears) in Melville in Johannesburg, Chef Pete Goffe-Wood calling her the ‘Queen of Creative Cuisine’, well known for her creative cooking, eclectic and playful dishes created by experimentation, and tasty food. She presented three of her dishes, to give the Finalists an idea of what her restaurant serves, each dish having a twist on something well known, being ‘far removed from their origins’, she said. So, for example the steak tartare was presented on a Moroccan theme, and there was a ‘Korean spagbol‘, and a Gazpacho made with raw ginger. Textures are important, it was said, and Chef Andrea’s flavours ‘jump out‘. Chef Andrew Atkinson provided the brief for the Pressure Test: the Finalists had to create a dish of their own creation within 60 minutes, thinking out of the box, to be good enough to feature on Chef Andrea’s menu at Continue reading →

MasterChef SA Season 2 episode 15: Blue Team cooks Red Team under the Table (Mountain)!

July 31, 2013

What a beautiful setting the Company’s Garden and backdrop Table Mountain was to last night’s episode 15 of MasterChef SA, fantastic marketing of Cape Town to the rest of the country’s TV viewers! The Red and Blue Teams had to prepare a dish reflecting our country’s cultural food heritage, and the scoring was pretty close, or so the viewers thought!

Having won the Best Dairy Dish Challenge in episode 13, Kamini Pather was allowed to choose her team of five for the next challenge, as well as the apron colour, when the box of aprons was delivered to the Finalists’ house. She chose the colour blue, and the two van der Wat sisters Seline and Leandri, Ozzy Osmond and Jason Steel for her team. Amanda Beck and Karen Els appeared to be in charge of the Red Team, which consisted of Khumo Twala, Joani Mitchell, and Tiron Eloff too. The team challenge was to make a dish that would reflect the origin of our country’s culinary heritage dating back to 1652, when Jan van Riebeeck planted the Company’s Garden to serve as a halfway house trading station of fresh foods for ships of the Dutch East India Company travelling between Holland and the Far East. The South African Culinary Olympic Team, which participated in the Culinary Olympics 2012 in Germany, and returned with 12 medals for our country, was invited as judges. We recognised Chef Tanja Kruger Continue reading →

MasterChef SA Season 2: The Top 10 cook up a storm!

July 30, 2013

There are 12 episodes left in the next six weeks of MasterChef SA, and we are down to the Top 10, an amazing accolade for each of the Finalists, and will change their lives forever. This is the MasterChef SA Season 2 Top 10 Finalist list, with their performance to date:

* Tiron Eloff : Into Pressure Test in episode 12, and did reasonably well. Twitter: @TironEloff

* Karen Els : Top 5 dish in episode 7. Did well in her fish dish in the Pressure Test in episode 10, after not doing well in the Spice Test. Won best dish in episode 11, and won a MasterClass in ice-cream making at The Creamery. Twitter: @kelsfoodie

* Khumo Twala : Into Pressure Test in episode 6. Made a perfect hollandaise sauce, and was allowed to join the other Finalists in episode 6. Top 5 dish in episode 7. Was in the Spice Test in episode 10, but was allowed to join the other Finalists. Survived the Pressure Test in episode 14, making Chef David Higgs’ macaroons and panna cotta. Twitter: @Simply_khumski Continue reading →

MasterChef SA Season 2 episode 14: Chef David Higgs’ Macaroon and Panna Cotta dish the final crunch for Herman Cloete and Mary Martin!

July 25, 2013

The Macaroon, sorbet, and Panna Cotta dessert, which top Chef David Higgs of Five Hundred restaurant at the Saxon Boutique Hotel prepared for the Pressure Test on MasterChef SA’s 14 th episode last night, was a tough one to replicate, and cost two of the Finalists their aprons in the competition, the final 10 being whittled down to the winner in the next six weeks.

Chef David was introduced by Chef Pete Goffe-Wood as one of our country’s top chefs, who was named as Top Chef and Rust en Vrede Top Service and Top Restaurant in Eat Out’s Top 10 Restaurant Awards in 2010. Chef David introduced his dish, which he said he had made with one of the country’s top pastry chefs, but the name was not mentioned. He said that dining is more than about food, and preparing food for it can be tricky and technical too. A chef is more than just someone cooking, he or she is an artist too. His dessert of liquorice macaroon with a litchi sorbet and litchi panna cotta on black crumble was exquisite in its presentation. The Finalists were warned to follow the recipe carefully. A macaroon must be crunchy on the outside, yet soft and chewy on the inside. It’s all in the timing, he added. His dish ‘is difficult but not impossible’, he said. The five Finalists in the Pressure Test had 2 hours in which to replicate the dish, and Chef Pete made the shock announcement that two Finalists would be eliminated. In doing the rounds at the work stations, Chef David had a kind word for each Finalist, telling them to ‘relax’, and to ‘not get carried away‘, i.e. to not be nervous. Continue reading →