Cape Town graduate Jason was the 12th person to hang up his apron in Tuesday’s episode of MasterChef South Africa Season 2, leaving the engineer and scientist sisters from Mahikeng, Seline van der Wat and Leandri van der Wat, Cape Town food blogger Kamini Pather and Johannesburg student Ozzy Osman in the Top 4.

While Ozzy was enjoying his MasterClass in sustainable fishing at the Dyer Island Conservation Trust in Gansbaai, Kamini, Seline and Jason faced off in a Pressure Test at the MasterChef kitchen, recreating Chef Kelvin Joel of the Jozi Maboneng Precinct’s magnificent lemon meringue gateau.

Chef Joel pointed out the different layers of his creation to the three contestants: meringue, mousse, lemon curd, dacquoise sponge, and a choc-chip-cookie base. “There are so many components that go into it,” Kamini observed nervously. “It’s not like any lemon meringue I’ve ever tasted,” she worried.

“It is beautifully layered,” said Seline, admiring Chef Joel’s masterpiece. “It looks like he measured it with a ruler to get everything precisely in the middle, perfectly straight. The layers are all the right thickness… This cake is perfect!”

And when the time came for Seline to unveil her own interpretation of the dish she worried if her layers would be equally perfect. “You can pipe pretty little peaks onto the outside of a cake but when you cut into it, it’s the real stuff that matters, you know?” she said. But judge Andrew Atkinson was quick to reassure Seline that she got the layers “spot-on”. “I think it’s a magnificent attempt. Superb cake,” Pete Goffe-Wood agreed.

Chef Joel liked all the flavours in Kamini’s gateau, “but the meringue is just slightly not shiny enough,” he commented. “But otherwise the execution wasn’t bad,” he told her. This was surprising to the food blogger, as she seemed to have struggled the most out of everyone in the pressure test tonight, having to re-do certain steps of her recipe while time was running out.

But when it was Jason’s turn to present his dessert, Benny Masekwameng explained that he didn’t fold the egg whites into his mousse correctly. “That’s why the mousse is a little on the heavy side and also your dacquoise shrunk and became thin and chewy,” Benny explained. At the Top 5 stage of MasterChef “it’s all or nothing,” Andrew reminded Jason, and so unfortunately this meant the end of Jason’s MasterChef dream.

“It’s the end of the journey now but, you know, I’m Top 5,” Jason commented happily as he said his goodbyes. “I never pictured being in the Top 5 of MasterChef South Africa.”

Images courtesy of MasterChef SA

Jason Steel reaches the end of his MasterChef SA journey first appeared first on Gourmet Guys

The MasterChef South Africa Season 2 contestants are down to the Top 5: 25-year-old Mahikeng engineer Seline, her 23-year-old sister Leandri, 29-year-old food blogger Kamini and 22-year-old students Ozzy and Jason, and in Wednesday’s episode they faced possibly their hardest challenge so far when they found themselves confronted with an almost empty pantry.

The MasterChef judges explained that challenge to the Top 5 was to create something delicious and flavourful from a bare “end-of-the-month” type pantry. “I’m sure you’ve all had that experience at some point at the end of the month – you get to the fridge, there’s not too much in there …” explained Andrew Atkinson. “You got some tinned pilchards, you’ve got some olives, a little bit of gherkins … little leftovers of everything …”

And to set the bar even higher Pete Goffe-Wood also revealed that only two of the Top 5 contestants would be safe after this challenge – the three least impressive cooks would find themselves back in the black aprons for another Pressure Test.

“We don’t have a lot of food going around in our house most of the time, so most of our dinners are ‘get home, see what’s in the fridge, try and make something from it’,” Leandri shrugged philosophically as she set about to prepare a fish pie, toasted ciabatta with olive tapenade and some mushy peas to go with it.

But it was Ozzy who carried the day with his cornflakes-crumbed fish cake with “Indian” French toast, spicy fried sardines and braised cabbage with peas. He won an exciting MasterClass at the Dyer Island Conservation Trust at Gansbaai, outside of Cape Town!

Seline found herself totally thrown by this challenge and she was in helpless tears by the time she presented her open sandwich wrapped in bacon, with poached egg and tomato sauce. “I should not be putting out food like that!” she cried. “Not in the Top 5. Not even at home!”

The judges agreed, and Seline, Kamini and Jason were left to face off against each other in the next Pressure Test. Seline was just happy for one more chance to cook in the MasterChef kitchen. “And if it’s my last time I’ll be disappointed,” she declared, “but I’ll go out fighting.”

Images courtesy of MasterChef SA

It’s tough at the top as Kamini, Seline and Jason go into the MasterChef SA elimination challenge first appeared first on Gourmet Guys

In Tuesday’s episode of MasterChef South Africa Season 2 the Top 6 enjoyed an inspiring chat over tea with a culinary legend, South African-born Prue Leith, and 32-year-old former video store clerk Tiron Eloff had to bid his MasterChef dreams farewell.

Upon their return to the MasterChef kitchen after their long Ethiopian adventure, the Top 6 were surprised to see an impeccably set table waiting for them, laid with an exquisite array of cakes and pastries for tea, and even more astonished to be served tea by the remarkable Prue Leith, whose international culinary empire comprises two cooking academies, a Michelin-starred restaurant, one of the most highly-regarded catering companies in the U.K, a television programme, and numerous books.

Over tea and some sumptuous South African goodies like melktert, koeksusters and “vetkoek-and-mince”, Ms Leith told the Top 6 that she ascribes her success to being a South African. “Because South Africans are enthusiastic, generally, and keen to say yes, and generally ‘up for stuff’,” she declared.

For their Elimination Challenge Ms Leith challenged the Top 6 to turn any kind of iconic South African ingredients into a dish worthy of a Michelin star. “Maybe even two Michelin stars!”

Leandri, the 23-year-old scientist from Mahikeng, was especially inspired by Ms Leith’s tea-time encouragement and she presented an extraordinary composition of apricot and brandy ostrich fillet with roast sweetcorn sorbet, pea mash, and a “pampoen poffertjie”, or pumpkin fritter.

Chef Leith admitted that if someone had told her at the start of the challenge that one of the contestants would want to put six elements on the plate, she would have thought it was overly ambitious. “I was wrong!” she told Leandri. “It’s perfect!”

Leandri confided to the judges that Chef Leith’s example gave her a clear sense for the first time of how MasterChef can change her life. “Today I had that epiphany that I can create my destiny and my future from this journey in a really beautiful way,” she told them, and the famous guest chef was clearly equally inspired in turn. “That is one adorable girl,” she whispered to Pete as Leandri left the tasting room.

Unfortunately Tiron had a less successful day in the kitchen. He came up with a pan-seared medallion of venison with a biltong-and-rosemary crust, rooibos-infused sweet potato, buttered asparagus and a meebos red wine jus, but some lackluster plating and an under-reduced red wine sauce saw him having to hang up his apron.

But Tiron departed the MasterChef kitchen with a new vision for his future. “Just because I can’t be MasterChef doesn’t mean I can’t be a celebrity chef. A great chef … A Michelin star chef,” he resolved. “I just feel like a new person,” he said. “I just feel like whatever weights were holding me down before are gone.”

Images courtesy of MasterChef SA

A lackluster Tiron Eloff is the next to leave the MasterChef SA kitchen first appeared first on Gourmet Guys

In Wednesday’s dramatic episode of MasterChef South Africa, the Top 6 contestants were back in South Africa, but not yet back in the MasterChef kitchen on the Nederburg wine estate. Instead, they were headed for the Johannesburg suburb of Cyrildene and the heart of Johannesburg’s famous “Chinatown”!

Here they were introduced to Chef Chang An Song of the Tsogo Sun hotel group, who is famous for his traditional Peking Duck. Chef Andrew Atkinson explained that the Top 6 would be divided into two teams and they would compete in creating magnificent Asian-inspired dishes for a distinguished panel of Chinese food experts, headed up by Chef Chang An Song.

Chef Chang presented each of the Top 6 with fortune cookies which revealed which team they would be in: 22-year-old Cape Town student Jason was in the Blue Team with 34-year-old former video store clerk Tiron and 23-year-old Mahikeng scientist Leandri, and her sister, 25-year-old engineer Seline, and 22-year-old Johannesburg student Ozzy and 29-year-old Cape Town food blogger Kamini made up the Red Team.

Chef Pete explained that the teams had to create platter-style duck dishes using Asian flavours as their inspiration. They were provided with their primary protein ingredient, the duck, but they had to source the rest of their ingredients themselves from the little shops and street vendors dotted all across Chinatown. “Each team will have a budget of R1000,” he explained.

Ozzy announced that the Red Team would make five-spice duck breast, Chinese fried rice with duck eggs, and a Chinese cabbage with crispy duck neck and a sweet chilli sauce, and Tiron explained to Pete Goffe-Wood that his Blue Team planned to marinate duck neck in spices and garlic and coat it in rice-flour and deep-fry it in duck fat.

“It was a huge task for a team of three to take on, cooking for ten people, traditional Chinese food, where no-one was in their comfort zone,” Ozzy pointed out, and in the end the task proved too much for both teams. “The food that you presented today was abysmal,” Chef Pete chided the Top 6 at the end of the challenge. “Today, as far as I’m concerned, you are all losers.”

The Red Team’s dishes of sweet chilli and sesame duck with won-ton crisps, duck neck with honey, ginger and soy sauce, black fried rice, beans and cauliflower, and black sesame cabbage won the day and they got to visit South Africa’s first MasterChef winner, Deena Naidoo, for a master class at his restaurant Aarya.

The Blue Team served vegetable spring rolls with sweet-and-sour chilli dipping sauce, vegetarian Asian-style broth, honey-and-soy marinated duck with egg-fried rice, and bok choy with garlic and ginger, which ended up sending and Jason, Tiron and Leandri back to the MasterChef kitchen to fight it out in the Elimination Challenge.

Images courtesy MasterChef SA

Red Team cruise to victory leaving Tiron, Leandri and Jason to face the elimination challenge first appeared first on Gourmet Guys

MasterChef South Africa bid a sad, tearful farewell tonight to Sanet Labuschagne (47), the bubbly, larger-than-life financial manager from Boksburg, who failed to impress the judges in her Elimination Challenge with Jason and Tiron in tonight’s episode of the hit cooking series.

For this Elimination Challenge Sanet, Jason Steel and Tiron Eloff had to perfectly replicate a signature dish from one of South Africa’s top chefs: Chef Henry Vigar of La Mouette restaurant in Sea Point, Cape Town. Chef Vigar has worked in Michelin-starred restaurants in the U.K., France and Australia, and he explained that his philosophy is to provide “normal people” with a fine dining experience, without them feeling that they’re breaking the bank. Being a chef is about more than hard work and perseverance, he explained, it’s also about having a flair for flavour and a balance of different ingredients and techniques.

The dish that the contestants had to replicate was Chef Vigar’s Salt-and-Pepper Prawns with popcorn, chorizo, sweetcorn purée and shaved radish, and a tamarind dressing. “I’m just in awe!” exclaimed 32-year-old former video store clerk Tiron. “The colours and the seasonality that he’s put on that plate – it’s beautiful!”

Chef Henry carefully explained the intricacies of his dish: “We have salt-and-pepper prawns which are lightly put in milk and then put in the salt-and-pepper flour and deep-fried,” he pointed out. “And you have a sweetcorn purée underneath, a fine dice of chorizo, and a popcorn that’s just been cooked with a little bit of smoked paprika, and then you’ve got some grilled baby corn.”

“The sweetcorn purée is creamy and it is sweet and savoury and … just amazing!” Sanet raved when she tasted the dish. Chef Vigar pointed out the pressure points of the dish: the purée can’t be too loose or too thick, he warned. The dish had to be seasoned properly and the home cooks would have to make sure that their prawns were not over-cooked or under-cooked. “And also today you’re going to be making four portions,” he revealed. “They’ve all got to look identical, and that’s going to be a key factor.”

“If I can do one, I suppose I can do four,” Sanet reckoned. “It’s just focusing and getting my head around it.”

Chef Benny explained that the contestants would be given the recipe and all the ingredients that they needed, and they would have one hour to complete the task. “Maintain composure and I think it’s doable,” said 22-year-old Jason, a student from Johannesburg.

Sanet started off by reading the complicated recipe carefully, to the concern of her friend Joani, up in the gallery. And when she finally did start cooking, Sanet started with the popcorn. “If there was one thing I was going to forget, it was going to be the popcorn!” she explained. But by this time the contestants were already ten minutes into the competition, and in the corner of the kitchen Chef Vigar explained to the MasterChef judges that he would have started with the purée first, and he would also have gotten the fryer going to fry the prawns later because it would take some time to get the oil heated properly. At this point only Tiron had started up his fryer yet.

Halfway through the test Sanet was struggling to get her sweetcorn puréed, wrestling with what she called “the fancy machine” – the blender. “Obviously I have to get the challenge with the fancy machine in it,” she complained. By this time her friends up in the gallery were seriously worried about her. “Sanet doesn’t have her oil on. She doesn’t have the hot grill on,” her friend Herman (34), the electrician from Witbank, pointed out. “She took so long on her corn purée, and she still has to peel her prawns. Half an hour… I don’t think Sanet is going to finish this,” he worried.

To make matters worse Sanet forgot about her tamarind dressing reducing on the stove and it burned, and because she had to make a second batch from the ingredients allocated to her, she didn’t have enough sugar left for the sauce. “I’m not too positive,” she admitted at this stage, near tears. And then, with five minutes to go, the nervous Sanet accidentally touched her very hot deep fryer and dropped her bowl of popcorn on the floor. “Sanet is in a frantic panic and it’s just, for me, an absolute emotional nightmare,” Joani commented sympathetically from the gallery as Sanet desperately started popping fresh popcorn.

When Chef Andrew counted them down to the end of the challenge Sanet broke down and sobbed on her workbench.

Meanwhile, the winner of the Beef Invention Test, Karen, the 35-year-old stay-at-home-mom from Howick, was missing all the drama and happily learning to make ice cream at The Creamery in Cape Town, from the owner herself, Kate Schrire. “I’m very, very fortunate to have had this MasterClass today because that’s going to give me an advantage in the future,” said a wide-eyed Karen as she tucked into her naartjie-and-dark-chocolate homemade ice cream.

Back at the MasterChef kitchen it was time for the contestants to learn their fate. Pete reflected that Sanet had been “at sixes and sevens” towards the end of the challenge, “but you persevered, you got four plates of fancy-schmancy food out,” he told her encouragingly. Jason’s dish didn’t have exactly the same portions as in Chef Henry’s example, Pete said, but his dish was well-balanced and tasty. And although Tiron’s dish wasn’t an exact replica of Chef Henry’s he did present four identical plates, and they were well balanced and proportioned, said Pete.

But one contestant had to go home today and Sanet was understandably emotional when Andrew announced her name. “It’s not the end of the journey. You haven’t seen the last of me,” she sobbed. “I expected MasterChef to be amazing,” Sanet said in her farewell. “I never, never, never expected it to change my life. And it has. It’s been absolutely, absolutely magic!”

Sanet says a sad goodbye to the MasterChef SA kitchen first appeared first on Gourmet Guys

Neil Lowe who had impressed in the early rounds and considered by many to be an early favourite has left MasterChef SA kitchen.

Neil, a 40-year-old visual communications consultant from Cape Town who loves molecular gastronomy ended up in the Elimination Round thanks to being on the losing Red Team in the #MCSA Episode 9 Food Truck Pizza Challenge.

This was Neil’s second elimination round after having to endure the experience in #MCSA Episode 6 in which he survived to claim a safe spot, he was not so lucky this time.

First up for Neil and the six other contestants, Jason Steel, Khumo Twala, Sanet Labuschagne, Leandri van der Wat, Karen Els and Joani Mitchell was a spice identification test.

Each of them were presented with several tasting plates and they had to correctly identify two spices or herbs used in each dish.

At each stage whoever correctly identified the correct spices or herbs would be safe until only three were left.

Leandri was the only person to correctly identify the first dish, being garlic and oreganum ensuring her survival in the competition.

The next two to scramble to safety were Joani and Khumo leaving the rest for fighting for one safe spot.

Neil and and Karen both guessed wrong and went into the elimination round leaving Jason and Sanet to battle it out for the last spot with Sanet winning it by correctly identifying both the dried parsley and the cayenne pepper.

The three talented cooks were tasked with replicating one of Chef Pete Goffe-Wood’s signature dishes, pan fried white stumpnose fish fillets with a fennel and saffron risotto and a nicoise salad on the side.

The key to this type of challenge is to replicate it as close as possible and on this occasion they were given the recipe.

The first pressure point in the dish was filleting their own fish and this was where Neil had his first setback with only one being good and the other just acceptable.

It really fell apart when it came to the risotto where he talked a good story but in reality had only made it once before and even then it wasn’t all that good.

What you want with risotto is you want perfectly-formed little grains of rice that have just absorbed the right amount of moisture and flavour
You don’t want to stir it too vigorously and break it.
You don’t want to let it dry out.
You don’t want to add too much liquid at any time so that it becomes soggy

When the judges tasted his dish they immediately zoned in on the risotto.

Pete explained that when you cook risotto “almost paella-style”, not stirring the rice, you run the risk of not releasing the saffron’s colour.

Chef Andrew complained that his portion of fish was slightly overcooked and that Neil’s risotto lacked the depth of flavour of Pete’s version.

Benny thought the dish wasn’t seasoned properly and Pete agreed. “The answer to that is taste, taste, taste, all the time,” he advised Neil.

Neil was rightly devastated, along with many of his fans;

I’m gutted.
Devastated.
So, so disappointed.

It is a sign of things to come as we whittle through the contestents, talented cooks will be going head to head in a battle of survival to become MasterChef.

Neil’s departure opens up an opportunity for the other contestants as he always appeared to be a strong contender but to be a MasterChef you have to be able to see your way through many cooking challenges and in Neil’s case risotto was surprisingly one challenge he could not overcome.

The moral of today’s story is “practice makes perfect risotto”.

Subscribe to our MasterChef SA Newsletter for all the latest news or follow us on Twitter and Facebook… a little to the right

Watch a disappointed Neil Lowe in his exit interview

Shock elimination from MasterChef SA as Neil Lowe, the Science Guy heads for the exit door first appeared first on Gourmet Guys

In one of the most tense MasterChef SA challenges to date the contestants teamed up for the Food Truck Pizza Challenge to be judged by ten of South Africa’s top foodies.

It was the first time this season that the MasterChef hopefuls were split into teams which guarantees some of the early favourites will find themselves in an elimination round.

The very nature of the challenge and random team selection, they drew red or blue out of a dutch oven with only one team winning would result in someone who has thus far avoided an elimination round, thanks to their culinary skill, would now be at the mercy of how well they and their fellow team members perform as a unit.

If you have ever looked inside a restaurant kitchen that is exactly what you will see, a team working together to produce one plate of food, each responsible for a different component.

Scroll down for video

On the Red Team; Leandri van der Wat, Jason Steel, Karen Els, Neil Lowe, Joani Mitchell, Sanet Labuschagne and Khumo Twala.

Herman was delighted with his team;

I’m pretty happy about the other people also choosing the Blue Team ’cause we’ve got Kamini which won the first challenge, we’ve got Ozzy which is our spice king, we’ve got Seline which is like, the sugar wizard.
I think we’ve got a very strong team and I think we can win this challenge.

On the Blue Team; Mary Martin, Tiron Eloff, Kamini Pather, Herman Cloete, Amanda Beck, Ozzy Osman and Seline van der Wat.

The fact that the Blue Team has some very strong cooks in it’s line up was not lost on Sanet but this was only going to spur the Red Team on;

I’m in the Red Team, we are so motivated, we’re so excited and because the other team has got the two team challenge winners in we’ve got such a point to prove.
We are so going to win it.

With that the two teams got stuck in to making two pizza’s, a mains and a dessert in some trying conditions.

A truck by it’s very nature is not designed to be a kitchen and conditions in the galley are cramped and claustrophobic, add to that seven cooks, a cameraman, an occasional judge and you’re not left with much room for the elbow grease.

I like small kitchens but they must have clean surfaces and limited wall fittings, a man needs his wing span.

To make matters even more trying once they were outside prepping the pizza’s for the oven the wind picked up, as it does in Cape Town, with Seline getting a smack in the face from a pizza box.

We are always guaranteed a ‘pic of the day’ from Seline, even if it is a little blurry…

The food bloggers had assembled from Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town and was a mini reunion for most.

While the contestants were battling away in the food trucks we were completely oblivious to all the goings on as we sat about 100 meters away next to the sewage works sipping on iced teas and sucking on ice creams.

When we finally got the call we displayed a complete lack of ability to adhere to the directors “direction” with the latter half of the blogging line up failing to sit in the correct spot, hence a slight lack of continuity in terms of the seating arrangements.

What little we understood about “direction” was soon made up when it came to the task at hand, judging the pizzas boxed up by the two teams.

The Red Team was up first with a Crispy Duck & Chorizo Pizza with Caramelised Onions and Aubergine.

The bloggers didn’t agree entirely with the duck, some thought it was a great component and well cooked while others were not to keen on it.

This was down to a lack of consistency in what was served, I would have preferred just the crispy duck skin, some of the slices of meat were too thick and left me chewing on the meat while the rest of the pizza bite had been swallowed.

If pizza ingredients could sing it would be “We all go down together…”.

Fritz Brand was mightily impressed with the duck;

I love the duck, it’s cooked beautifully, it’s nice and soft, it’s not chewy.

Ishay Govender-Ypma was in agreement with Fritz while Aubrey Ncgungama wasn’t;

The duck to me I think is actually just not right, its overcooked for a start.

On the whole it was a good combination of flavours and deserved the praise it received.

Next up was the Blue Team with a Chorizo & Buffalo Mozzarella Pizza with Chanterelle Mushroom Cream.

It was in a word, ‘boring’ with the only saving grace for some being the Chanterelle Mushroom Sauce while the biggest crimes being the size of the pizza and the fact that the base was burnt on some.

The best comment came from Luvo Nteo, Head Sommelier at the One & Only;

I would like to say something quite nice about it but it’s difficult, really.
I’m sorry.

There was one dissenter amongst the bloggers, Candice Le Noury who made it through to boot camp in season one of MasterChef SA, she voted for the Blue Team leaving the score 9-1 to Red after the first pizza.

Next up was the dessert pizza the concept of which tends to leave many people with a funny look on their face.

Dessert pizza’s are delicious as long as you get your priorities right, they are first and foremost a dessert and a pizza second, it is simply a delivery format.

What I found lacking on both teams pizzas was the amount of fruit, they had designed it to look like a pizza which meant a far too spacious arrangement when it came to the most valuable components.

With one bite I would have a piece of fruit and the next a mouthful of ganache, my view on this subject is to have more fruit if that is in fact the main component.

You wouldn’t expect a mouthful of fruit tart to simply consist of the base would you?

The Red Team presented a Creme Fraiche with Stone Fruit Pizza with Thyme infused white chocolate ganache.

The chocolate was burnt and let the entire pizza down, no other component could make up for this fatal error.

The moral of this story is spread the chocolate ganache on afterwards, it simply will not work if you put your pizza in a 400°C oven with chocolate spread on.

The Blue Team under severe pressure and somewhat deflated energy still managed to pull together and served up a magnificent Tiramisu Pizza with a Trio of Ganache, Creme Fraiche, Basil Coulis and Spun Sugar.

The Basil Coulis was a triumph which when we first read the menu left some of us concerned.

Once we tasted it however it pulled all the flavours on the dessert pizza together and lingered for a little while leaving everyone with a memorable food moment that will not be forgotten.

The Blue Team pulled back with a perfect 10 out of 10 to win 11-9 and send the Red Team into the #MCSA Episode 10 Elimination Round.

Neil Lowe, Leandri van der Wat and Sanet Labuschange have all been there before and this time will be joined by fellow team mates, Jason Steel, Joani Micthell and Karen Els.

The moral of the story is that with virtual unanimity in the food bloggers voting pattern they all know what they’re talking about, a triumph for South African bloggers.

Subscribe to our MasterChef SA Newsletter for all the latest news or follow us on Twitter and Facebook, a little to the right and up a bit.

Images courtesy MasterChef SA

Biggest comeback ever on MasterChef SA as the basil coulis takes it for the Blue Team. first appeared first on Gourmet Guys

Jason Steel sneaked through the episode three Mealie Challenge on MasterChef SA with a sweetcorn soup recipe served with a sweetcorn purée and toasted ciabatta.

We say sneaked through because we did not see him as the man of steel flew under the radar and into the next round.

Jason was in the first group of ten to receive the good news and continued on to the Big Breakfast Challenge.

More: MasterChef SA Recipes | Jason Steel Recipes

Sweetcorn Soup Recipe with Sweetcorn Puree and Toasted Ciabatta | Jason Steel first appeared first on Gourmet Guys

JASON STEEL
AGE: 22
CITY: Lakeside, Cape Town
OCCUPATION: Graduate and front-of-house waiter

Scroll down for video

Jason is a quantity surveyor graduate and has worked in Chef Luke Dale Roberts’ restaurant as a front-of-house waiter.

Chef Luke is not only one of South Africa’s top chefs, but is Jason’s culinary hero too. Jason is just as passionate about food as he is about the outdoors and extreme sports.

This fly fisherman is also a surfer, skater and cyclist – when he’s not putting together immaculate plates in the kitchen, you’ll find Jason outside!

More to follow…

Jason Steel | MasterChef SA Profile first appeared first on Gourmet Guys