Winner of Major Culinary Challenge announced

Gabriella Evangelou from Plymouth College has been announced the winner of the Major Culinary Challenge Hot Chicken dish live final.

Following a 12 month national competition open to juniors and senior novices, sponsored by Major International, in conjunction with The Craft Guild of Chefs and in association with City and Guilds, eight finalists were invited to take part in the Major Culinary Challenge Hot Chicken dish live final at the Hospitality week Salon Culinaire.

The competitors had one hour to produce two separate plated chicken main courses from a 2 ½ lb chicken using a choice of Major Mari-bases. 

The lucky winner, who won the Major Culinary Challenge trophy and £1,000 CCS vouchers, is in her second and final year at Plymouth College and is from a family of chefs, including her twin sister. 

Speaking after the final an excited Evangelou explained: "The Major Culinary Challenge is quite a tough competition but I enjoyed every minute. It gave me a chance to stretch myself, to work under pressure and to meet other chefs. I can't believe I've won because it's only the second competition that I have entered."

Evangelou produced two chicken dishes which demonstrated her flair and creativity in using the Major Thai maribase and Major Tandoori maribase.

Her brasserie style dish was a Thai style prawn broth with coconut chicken and egg noodles. Taking her inspiration from the authentic flavours in the Major Thai mari base, Evangelou used fresh ingredients including lemongrass and chilli. She also used the Major Tandoori mari-base in her second dish of Bombay potato wrapped chicken with sweet potato puree, gobi sag and puy lentil. 

Major International development chef, Brian Eastment commented on the standard of the competition: "All our finalists were outstanding and demonstrated a high level a creativity.  It was great to be able to reward outstanding talent in our industry and to encourage the chefs of the future."

Runner up was Chris Munroe from the Royal Garden Hotel, London.

Words: Maria Bracken

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