So last week I went to Masterchef Live at Olympia. I was so excited and just had the most wonderful day. The American Vegetarian and I decided to cycle their, which I didn't mind as we cycled to Olympia when we went to the yoga show and I quite enjoyed the journey. The journey this time however was windy and so the resistance I felt from the wind made a 45 minute journey turn into over an hour.
Windswept and excited we headed straight away to a cook off between Lisa Faulkner and Dhruv Baker. I love Dhruv, I love the way he has fusioned his upbringing into his food I feel a certain pull towards his food. Dhruv made some green beans with mustard seeds and coconut and Lisa made a fish pie.
After that we went to check out the Invention Test. Which is where around 20 or so non professional people pay £60 to make a dish from ingredients given to them and then these are tasted by Michel Roux and Greg Wallace They all had the same ingredients, which consisted of some fish, lemon, goats cheese and chestnut mushrooms. They also had free range of everyday store cupboard essentials, like pasta, rice herbs etc. The dishes that were made ranged from, risottos and pasta. All of them were judged by the 3 finalists of the professional masterchef's and then 3 were chosen for Michel and Greg to taste. On paper I was interested in doing the invention test but given the ingredients they got I'm not sure what I would have made, seeing as I don't cook any non-veg food. A fish pie won, which was remarkable seeing as they didn't have an oven.
Next on the agenda was lunch!! Now they had this 'restaurant expirience' section, where you could buy lunch from restaurants like Cafe Spice Namaste, Luxe, Malaysia Kitchen and some others as well. I was a bit disappointed at the lack of vegetarian options available. We bought all the vegetarian options available that day, which consisted of 3 dishes out of a possible mmm I suppose around 20. Some restaurants didn't have a vegetarian option available, which I think is a bit poor. So we had some amazing Roti Canai from Malaysia kitchen, a lovely Indian tapas of pani puri, bhel puri, beetroot samosa and a spring roll, with tamarind sauce from Cafe Spice Namste, and some penne pasta with mushrooms from Theo Randell. The tapas, and roti canai were just amazing, light, fragrant and very tasty. The pasta, was well pasta. For dessert we had the most amazing blueberry cheesecake with lemon curd from Luxe. OMG, is all I can say. Pure utter heavenly delight.
So after lunch we made our way through all the different stalls, and tried as many things as our stomachs would allow, dips, chocolate wine, soup, crisps, liquor, cheese, toffee vodka, beer, more dips. It got to the point that we were turning down free food as we were so full, however the liquor kept flowing!. There was so much to try and so much to buy. I bought some amazing aubergine chutney from Purity Trading. It is so tasty its practically gone. We also bought some amazing liquor from Wales. One thing I was wanting to buy myself was a good knife. And I did I went to about 4 different knife stalls and decided on the Ziganof. Oh how I love it, it has changed the way I chop. Everything cuts like soft butter. The tops of my fingers however are a little worse for wear.
Also attached to Masterchef was The Wine show, where we tried a lot of rioja! My highlight though was winning a Masterchef mug from Andy Peters. How? By being the first to get the answer right. If only I did that at school!
