Have I told u guys that I joined a cooking competition today? Well, now you know. David and I competed with 7 other teams to emerge, surprisingly, in 5th placement, bagging ourselves a consolation goodie bag.
This was pretty surprising because we didn't manage to cook exactly what we had planned. As I said, there were a total of 8 teams, but there were only 4 sets of cooking utensils. Therefore, we split into two sections. David and I were Team 8, so we got to sit out during the first round and plan our dish. We were throwing ideas off each other as we surveyed what we were given. We were provided with oil, sugar, salt, cornflour, soya sauce, and oyster sauce. For ingredients, we had a small chicken breast fillet, garlic, onion, carrot and tomato. Off at the side were some spring onions, lemons, ginger, green bell pepper, and eggs that we could take if we wanted. There was a limited amount of each, and that became a problem as we didn't manage to get the ginger needed to make our.... ginger fried chicken.
So we quickly changed recipes on the spot. Instead of ginger we'll just have to go with onions. Generally what we did was to fry the chicken in 2 different batters - one with flour and another with egg. It was David who suggested the double batter thing, and while it impressed a judge, I still don't quite get the point of it. There were some panicky moments in between, such as the time when I realized our golden brown chicken turned black when fried with egg and onion. Furthermore, we were the last group to put our dish on the table, and I only prepared the sauce in the final minute. David got a sauce recipe from his mum, but what he produced looked like water plus mud, so I quickly minced some garlic and stirred in the chilli sauce. That worked pretty well.
We also had to give a name to our creation, and I had to pull something out of my ass and name it (drumroll please) "Flavours of the Orient". I figured that since it contained a rojak of everything easternly, might as well call it that. Though a little corny, it sounded better than other names such as "Confusion", "Honeymoon", and "Mummy's Recipe".
When the winner announcement came about, surprises were abound. Obviously, the first group called out for the Consolation prize was us. But the second consolation prize was also a surprise as it went to "Confusion". I seriously thought they would clinch the top spot, as their decoration was really nice, and the chef acted in a very professional manner. However, when the event ended and we finally went to try out each other's creations, I discovered that Confusion was too salty where there was too much oyster sauce dabbled on it. But I'm also surprised that the first prize winner's dish tasted surprisingly mediocre. I think our dish tasted more unique, but we definitely lost out because of the decorations.
For all our effort, we got a Lee Kum Kee (they were the main sponsors) goodie bag containing...
1. Large bottle dark soya sauce
2. Large bottle oyster sauce with dried scallops
3. Sauce sachet for Black Pepper chicken
4. Sauce sachet for Sweet and Spicy Beef Ribs
5. Cook show VCD
Obviously all that stuff is worth more than the RM3 entry fee. I am really happy that we did pretty good for something I'm experimenting for the first time. As a celebration, I'll be cooking Black Pepper chicken this weekend for my friends, using the free sauce of course. And since I'm not constrained with the 30 minute time limit, I'll put more effort into doing a special popiah as well.
Dee-leash-ous!
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