A couple weeks ago I was approached by the good people from PrimeWorks Studio (a company owned by Media Prima – ala TV3) to see if I’d be interested to participate as a judge in a cooking competition – Versus 1001 Rasa by Baba’s. I agreed pretty much immediately right after figuring out that I could fit it into the calendar, which also coincide with the 13th anniversary of this blog!
Also almost immediately regret the decision since the program is in Malay language, but alas, I was able to cope. 12 years of Malaysian education did not disappoint at the end. *phew*
with my fellow judges, and celebrity chef hosts
We shot 2 episodes of the program in the same day, both hosted by Chef Kamarul & Chef Adu. I was also joined by Aiman from EatDrinkKL & Norshalina from Baba’s QC & Halal department.
There are two contestants for each episode, challenging each other by cooking two dishes that are drawn from a recipe box by their respective mentors.
shooting in progress
The contestants are given ingredients, including Baba’s product, to come up with the dish to impress the judges while being guided by their mentors. All this is done within the stipulated cooking time, which is dependent on recipe. For the episodes that I was a part of, each dish was given an hour’s time to prepare.
#cookingcompetition #versus1001babas
When the time is up, we the judges then gets invited to taste them and gives point to the dish based on predetermined criteria of taste, ingredients used, uniqueness, presentation, and completeness.
dishes from the contestants for judges to sample
It was overall quite an interesting experience. Quite a bit different from my previous experience as judges at R.AGE Food Fight and Blogger MasterChef Challenge. The three judges have the final say without input from the hosts or mentors, and everything is audited. I thought that was very genuine.
I’m not going to announce any spoilers here, but if you have access to TV3, do try to catch the program when it comes out and see how I struggle with our national language.
