Multiculturalism triumphs on My Kitchen Rules

From cooking in a conventional home kitchen to winning a cookery show, sounds like a long journey, isn’t it? But Veronica and Shadi Abraham made it last night beating Victorians Noah Rose and Clint Yudelman, with both teams cooking their ultimate three-course meal in the home-cooking contest.

I in particular ws not favouring any one team as I watched the show for my passion of cooking and learning new dishes and cooking skills, but Veronica and Shadi's simple style of cooking and their way to cook has re-invigorated my passion for cooking and sharing food and recipes with people.

'Childhood Sweethearts' as they like to call themselves, Veronica and Shadi were the most humble couple on the show. More than the humbleness, I liked the recipes that they would choose for each episode. The Orange Blossom custard that they made was absolutely delicious by the looks of it. More than cooking it was their presentation every time that made it mouth watering. And sausages? Who makes sausages from the scratch? Well, they did in the last semi finale. Not only that, they even made fresh pasta serving it with a pancetta, silverbeet, ricotta and goats cheese sauce. And this dish,which was though not up to the mark, led them to the finale, beating Mossy and Gabe from NSW who cooked Poisson De Coeur. Poisson De Coeur which means (fish of heart) was thought to be overcooked by the judges as Mossy cooked it on a very high temperature.

But after sweating blood and tears to create that perfect dish for the finale, it was at last the winning which was worth the sweat and tear shed. But Veronica and Shadi said that their toughest challenge was not cooking that perfect dish, as the tougher part was yet to come. It was when they had to keep quiet of their triumph and the prize that they won ($ 100 000) even to their closest family members and friends for three months as the episodes were shot in December. They said, "It was a hard secret to keep but we weren't going to risk getting into trouble over that."

After the delicious looking octopus entree prepared by Veronica and Shadi that only finished as the deadline siren sounded (which has happened with them in the semi finale too) they impressed the judges most with their sword fish main and custard and pastry dessert.

These dishes beat their rival's Carpaccio of tuna, roasted duck breast and tart of hazelnut and raspberry, impressing the guest judges and regulars Peter Evans and Manu Feildel.

Apart from their cooking and dish selection, something that I always liked about the couple was that they would always kiss each other at frequent intervals, which one could see, relieved them of the whole stress of cooking the best dish and cooking in time.

Veronica and Shadi, both 29 from Italian and Lebanese backgrounds respectively, though haven't made much plans on what to do of the prize money, one thing they sure want to do is conduct food tours in Italy and Australia that they both have dreamt to do for long time now.

Way to go Veronica and Shadi, you truly deserved it!

My experiment on Chocolate Mousse (read mouse)

I was talking about experiments on food in my last post and before it was time to post again, I have already done an experiment. Successful or not? Well, read further and find out for yourself.

Chocolate Mousse was catching my eyes everywhere, on the internet, in magazines and finally on a TV show. Even the ingredients were traveling to me by some magic force. A friend of mine who went on holidays for a month gave me a bottle of whipped cream, thinking that it may probably go off by the time she's back. My hubby bought some thickened cream from Woolworths which we never wanted. This was enough for me to conduct an experiment.

Finally after a week or so, on weekend, I went on a much awaited Mission: Chocolate Mousse. In the first steps itself, which was simply melting chocolate, I stuffed up. Instead of melting, I cooked the chocolate in the microwave. So much so that, it couldn't melt after that at all. After 45 mins. of my try to melt the chocolate, with my hubby's suggestion I added some water and beat it with an electric mixer. Remaining procedure was fortunately completed without any errors.

But I had lost the hope of serving a perfect chocolate mousse to my hubby and friends who were coming over in the evening as the mixture looked too skinny. Miraculously, when I checked the refrigerated mixture after an hour, it had nicely transformed into chocolate mousse. It's consistency cheered me up and I then decorated it with whipped cream and grated chocolate.

It's a great idea to serve this dessert to your loved ones on special occasions. I am sure others can make this quick and easy dessert without much goof-ups.

Check out the recipe that I tried from www.taste.com.au

Ingredients: (Serves 6)

• 300g good-quality dark chocolate, roughly chopped
• 3 eggs
• 1/4 cup (55g) caster sugar
• 1 tbs good-quality cocoa powder, sifted
• 300ml thickened cream, plus extra whipped cream to serve
• Grated chocolate, to serve

Method:

1. Place the chocolate in a heatproof bowl over a pan of gently simmering water (don't let the bowl touch the water). Stir until melted. Remove bowl from heat and set aside to cool slightly.
2. Place eggs and sugar in a large bowl and beat with electric beaters for 5 minutes, or until mixture is pale, thick and doubled in volume. Fold in cooled chocolate and cocoa powder until combined.
3. In a separate bowl, whip cream until thickened (be careful not to over-beat). Use a large metal spoon to carefully fold the cream into the chocolate mixture, trying to keep the mixture as light as possible. Spoon into 6 serving glasses and chill in fridge for at least 1 hour. Remove from fridge 15 minutes before serving, then top with extra whipped cream and grated chocolate to serve.