Master Chef Goes Prime Time

Master Chef Goes Large is back on our TV screens larger than ever!

With its now familiar format and its new prime time slot, this series promises to be even more exciting, and for the contestants at least, more emotional than the other brilliant predecessors.

The only thing missing of course is me.

I took a slightly unconventional route into restaurant ownership, by entering this popular television competition; celebrity judge Greg Wallace had in the previous series promised that winning “would change someone’s life”. Weary of the nine to five rat-race and keen to live out a long held dream of mine, I thought it was worth a shot, but disappointingly I never made it as far as the televised stages and exited the competition following an un-glamorous damp day filming at a Birmingham Travel Lodge.

I thought my Thai Chicken Samosas were little triangular pockets of culinary delight, but evidently the judge did not concur. I’ve met Greg Wallace before, as I have Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsay, and thought maybe that would have gone someway towards securing my television debut, but obviously I was just placing too much importance on that Saturday morning book signing event at WH Smiths.

Undaunted by this minor setback, my wife and I took the more traditional route and secured the lease on The Riverside, a small, quaint 32 covers establishment in the Lake District, and so without any help from Greg we changed our lives ourselves, although whether this was for the better or not still remains open for lively debate.

Good luck to all the contestants – I just hope you know what you are letting yourselves in for.

Recipe: Thai Chicken Samosas

Serve these hot as a starter, perhaps with a cucumber, spring onion and coriander salad with a lemongrass dressing, as I presented to Master Chef, or cold as a lunchtime snack or a perfect picnic item. Either way delicious, despite the misguided opinion of them at the BBC.

Ingredients

For the Thai curry paste:

4-6 medium hot green chillies, de-seeded and roughly chopped
2 shallots, roughly chopped
5cm/2in piece of fresh ginger, peeled and grated
2 garlic cloves, crushed
small bunch of fresh coriander, stalks and all
2 lemongrass stalks, chopped
1 lime, grated zest and juice
1 tbsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp Thai fish sauce
3 tbsp olive oil

The rest:

2 large chicken breast chopped into small bite sized pieces
Tin of coconut milk
¼ pint of chicken stock
Handful of boiled rice (Thai Jasmine rice is perfect but long grain will suffice)
6 sheets of filo pastry
Butter

Method

Preheat the oven to 200°c

Throw all the paste ingredients into a food blender and blitz into a paste. You will have more than you need, but the rest will keep in the fridge for up to 3 weeks.

Heat some oil in a pan add a quantity of paste, according to taste. Once it begins to start sizzling, throw in the chicken pieces and stir fry for a few minutes. Add the coconut milk and stock and reduce until you have a thick sauce. Stir in the cooked rice and allow to cool.

Take 1 sheet of filo and brush it with melted butter. Lay another sheet on top and coat it with butter and then repeat with the third sheet. Turn it over so the buttered side is down, and vertically slice 5cm strips.

Place a spoonful of the Thai chicken at the bottom of each strip. Starting from the left, fold the filo sheets across the mixture into a triangle, then across again to the other side and so on until you form a tightly closed triangular parcel.

Place on a baking tray and cook in the centre of the oven for around 15 to 20 minutes, or until golden brown and crispy.