Wok Stars Episode 6

Warning: Spoilers ahead!

Take #54 and counting.. @#$% cameraman
Image from XinMSN

This Wok Stars episode featured the first ever team challenge, which also made it seem more like a Master Chef clone. Wonder if they will be introducing a revival episode too, where contestants who were previously knocked out have a chance to return?

In any case, I like Master Chef so i am not complaining.  The team challenge, held at the kitchens of Shangri-La Hotel, was to cube potatoes with both speed and precision.  This meant having as many potatoes that were cubed shaped as possible within the allocated time of 1 hour.

Reality TV means drama, and so they showed Kenneth proclaiming how he was so good that he would pick himself if he was a team captain, and Sen telling his teammates that safety was a priority, before proceeding to cut his own hand.



Back to the challenge, it was Maya's Team vs Sen's.  It was a 3 vs 4 situation though, so it was not entirely surprising that Sen's team won.  However, rather than the disparity in numbers, the reason for the outcome was put down to Sen's leadership and Maya's lack there-of.  Maya was later recounting how she should have picked KS to do the cutting on hindsight instead of Violet.  I thought it was a fair comment, but Violet proceeded to declare a feud with Maya upon learning of this, although KS had also made similar comments about her cutting skills.

On the face of it though, the final score of 97 to 123 cubed potatoes, was fairly reflective of the ratio in manpower for the two teams. so it could well have been a matter of number of people instead of skills.. 

The team challenge was followed by a Masterclass session, where Chef Alvin Leung demonstrated how to cook chicken 5 ways:

1. Chicken fat on toast
2. Crispy chicken skin
3. Sous-vide chicken breast in mayonnaise
4. Chicken stock jelly with pickled cucumber
5. 63 degrees sous-vide egg

Glenn Ong explains why he is the people's DJ
Screengrab from XinMSN

I didnt know what "sous-vide" was, but according to wiki, it refers to cooking food sealed in an air-tight bag in a water bath, which gives even cooking.  It was quite an eye-opener, and i wish they could have uploaded a more detailed video recipe onto their website.  The website does have other recipes though, and is worth checking out.

Onto the elimination challenge! The guest judge was Mr Tien Boon Hua of Boon Tong Kee chicken fame (no relation to Tian Tian chicken rice).  The challenge was to cook two chicken dishes within an hour.  I thought this was pretty tough, cos i would need 1 hour alone just to think of what to cook.  I assume these guys couldnt google for help, so they would have had to do alot of homework before coming onto the show.

Keeping in his character, Sean went for something inventive and i think he is really cool. The problem with trying something new is that there are many things that can go wrong, and he ended up with raw chicken skin in his curry puff.  I can imagine Gordon Ramsay cussing and throwing the food into the bin, but the judges here were nicer and just politely declined to put it into their mouths.

Erm.. how about No?
Screengrab from XinMSN

Maya once again chu power and showed her cooking prowess.  Although she had used the wrong shrimp paste to make her shrimp paste chicken, she added honey, ginger flour and lime to balance out the flavours, demonstrating her versatility to the judges.  The judges were also impressed by how she combined coconut with mustard, and she easily won the title of best cook of the day, much to Violet's disgust.

I also wanted to point out KS's strategy, which was to cook for the judges, specifically Mr Tien and Chef Alvin.  While it worked to some extent, i guess it can also fail quite badly, since Devi also tried to impress Chef Alvin by going for stronger flavours, but ended up exiting the competition instead.

All in all, quite an interesting episode and I am looking forward to the next, in which the contestants will have to work in actual hawker stalls.

Wok Stars airs on Mediacorp Channel 5, 8-9pm on Wednesday.  You can also watch it online on XinMSN Catch Up TV, but the videos are only available for a short period of time.