Corn silk and seaweed were part of the gourmet dishes prepared by competitive MasterChef Professional winner Clare Lara and recent MasterChef winner Tim Anderson in the supertheatre setting at the BBC Good Food Show Scotland on 21 October 2011. The annual food event, running for three days at the Scottish Exhibtion and Conference Centre Glasgow, pitched the Masterchef champions against each other with a 30 minute cooking challenge.
Clare Lara Cooks Red Gunard with Fennel and Caramelised Grapefruit
Winner of MasterChef: The Professionals, Clare was the first ever female professional chef winner of the British BBC television series. In the 30 minutes of competitive cooking in the MasterChef Champions League, Clare set to baking a whole red gunard wrapped in seaweed and preparing a fennel salad with sticky grapefruit pieces and zest.
A white fleshed fish in abundant supply, red gunard can easily become tough when baked and has a strong rich flavor. Clare knows that the seaweed wrap will keep the whole gunard moist although requiring a longer baking time. In another version of the recipe used in the MasterChef Champions League competition, Clare has used sticky orange in her fennel salad served with the baked gunard. Today grapefruit, glazed and blow torched, features in this classic dish.
Observing Clare using twice the fish weight in butter, MasterChef co-host Gregg Wallace comments on stage "I don't mind clogging an artery for a beautiful dish". Clare Lara cooked on stage with rapeseed oil rather than olive oil and spoke about professional kitchens using rapeseed oil more than other oils due to the reduced fat content and distinctive taste compared to olive oil.
The final dish raised a "boom boom shake the room" from Gregg Wallace, MasterChef Champions League co-host with John Torode.
Tim Anderson Creates Barnyard Dish with Wild Yeast Beer
Tim Anderson was the winner of the 2011 MasterChef title in the British TV series. Based in London, Tim was raised in Wisconsin and has lived in Los Angeles and Japan. During the Masterchef amateur competition, Tim used liquid nitrogen preparing his dishes, catered for lunch in the Australian rain forest and cooked in New York fine dining restaurants. The London Slider is a Tim Anderson signature dish, composed of curried lamb cheeseburger, apple and ale chutney, raita mayonnaise with a cumin and coriander seed bun.
Tim walks onto the noon staging of MasterChef Champions League second to Clare Lara and he appeared on good form. The MasterChef Champions League is, in the words of MasterChef co-host John Torode, a competition between "beautifully classic and bordering on crazy inventiveness".
In the 30 minutes preparation and cooking time, Tim stripes a head of maize, deep fries the corn silk to make a nest for a soft boiled egg resting on a yellow sauce prepared from the sweetcorn kernels, peaty whisky, butter, polenta, stock and acidic lime juice. Tim promises to create, in his words, a "funky farmyard aroma" that is grassy and earthy accompanied by his own wild yeast beer. The dish by Tim Anderson is judged as "mindblowing".
Having met the Japanese ambassador in the last week and starting to brew his own beer, Tim is exuberant in saying that Masterchef is "the best thing I've ever done". Tim has publicly stated on the Masterchef British TV series that he intends to have a chain of restaurants around the world and on the BBC Good Food Show 2011 cooking stage he spiritedly said that he intends to build a restaurant empire before retiring to a crab shack in Hawaii.
MasterChef Champions League Winner 21 October 2011
A clash of styles, competition between the best professional chef to appear on MasterChef: The Professionals and the best amateur cook of MasterChef 2011, Clare Lara was victorious. Working with an abundant and ugly headed red gunard, Clare worked at speed and precision albeit with some equipment malfunctions notably a mandolin abandoned during the fennel preparation. A professional chef and showing the Glasgow audience her good humour, Clare Lara was a popular victor at the BBC Good Food Show Scotland 2011 at the noon competition on its first day. The two champion cooks Clare Lara and Tim Anderson were expected to compete again during the BBC Good Food Show Scotland event in Glasgow.
Susan Morris - Susan Morris, Scottish food and drink business manager, organic gardener, author and editor
