Press Release
Refilwe is out!
Episode 9
Refilwe Tselanyane (36), a service consultant from Carltonville, became the third person to leave MasterChef South Africa Season 3 on Thursday (9 October) when she was beaten in a prawn curry challenge by the ambitious assistant train driver from Durban, Roxi Wardman (26).
The drama started when the losing Blue Team from last week’s team challenge gathered on the Umhlanga Rocks boardwalk, where they were greeted by the amazing sight of judge Benny Masekwameng making his entrance in a traditional rickshaw.
“I could get used to traveling like this!” Benny laughed as he placed a mystery dish covered under a cloche on the table. Pete Goffe-Wood explained that the cloche hid a local speciality dish that contained 15 Robertson’s spices, seasoning and herbs.
“You need to come up one-by-one, taste this dish, and identify those ingredients,” he told the contestants, and the first two people to get an ingredient wrong would go into an Elimination Challenge.
Reuben Riffel explained that it was fitting that they should taste spices in this challenge, since the KZN coast has historically been the world’s link to the exotic tastes, flavours and colours of India and the East. “And what do you get when you combine the traditions of Indian cooking with local ingenuity?” he teased ...
The one, the only, Bunny Chow, of course!
“It’s a beans bunny chow and I’ve never made it before,” Refilwe worried, but Cape Town domestic worker Siphokazi (38) was secretly pleased. “Right now I’m feeling happy. I know all the spices that go into the bean curry,” she grinned.
One by one the contestants went up to the table to taste the bean curry chow and identify one of the spices, herbs and seasonings that went into the dish, until Refilwe and Roxi were the first two to make the wrong guesses.
Meanwhile the winning Red team claimed their Team Challenge reward: a delicious vegetarian lunch with owner Louis van Loon at the world famous Buddhist Retreat Centre outside of Ixopo in the KZN heartland – a National Heritage site that has been rated as one of the ten finest meditation centers in the world by CNN.
Back in Umhlanga Roxi and Refilwe faced off in their Elimination Challenge at the glamorous 5-star Beverly Hills Hotel, where chef Pete Goffe-Wood first got his culinary start.
Pete introduced the dish that he said would challenge the contestants and hopefully keep their MasterChef dreams alive: Chicken Prawn Curry with roti, raita and some basmati rice. “Immediately I felt nervous because I don’t do seafood and I’ve never cooked prawns,” Refilwe panicked.
Then Pete revealed the competition’s customary twist: this recipe is a closely guarded secret of the Beverly Hills Hotel kitchen, he pointed out, so the contestants would only be getting the list of ingredients for the recipe, but not the Method. “That, you’re going to have to glean from tasting the dish,” he said.
“Roxi, from Durban, has probably cooked more curries than Refilwe,” fellow contestant Ian (49), an advertising consultant from Cape Town, noted, “so I think Refilwe’s probably going to be a little more challenged as to what to put in when ...”
Roxi presented her finished dish to the judges first and Pete commented that the prawns were a little overcooked, but there was “a lovely depth of flavour to her curry”, he said.
“You can taste Roxi’s fried all of those aromatics off to begin with in the ghee, to release all that oil, and then straight away the onions, the garlic and the ginger, and she’s built that foundation,” he remarked to his fellow judges. “And I think it’s the secret to all good curry-making, is to get that foundation right – there’s nothing you can add later to repair that ...” But Reuben pointed out that Roxi did mess up her rice.
Tasting Refilwe’s dish, Pete noted that unlike Roxi, Refilwe fried her onions first and then added her dry spices afterwards, “so they didn’t fry off really nicely to release all that oil, and she didn’t add her garlic and the ginger in until much later.
"As a result you can taste that – that spice doesn’t live through the curry,” he commented. Reuben also complained that the prawns were a bit overcooked and Benny was disappointed that the rotis were hard and stiff and couldn’t be rolled up.
And so Refilwe’s MasterChef dream came to an end, but not her food dream. “I’m happy that I got this far - I’m Top 10,” she said philosophically. “I’m still going to push my dream.”
“Roxi, you’ve survived. From winning challenges to being this close to being eliminated - it’s a rollercoaster ride,” Reuben told Roxi. “But well done - the dream is still very much alive. You did good today.”
“I have to cook with my heart and soul and just make sure I don’t ever go into a Pressure Test again,” said a relieved Roxi.