Profiteroles and pork satay?

[Dave]

Kay and I have been following the latest series of MasterChef avidly. As usual, over the weeks we've come to have favourites among the contestants.

This year one of the most entertaining has been a Thai surgeon based in the UK called Nawamin. He cooks great Thai food - John Torode rates him very highly, and he's studied SE Asian food for decades. But I must admit we'd wondered whether he'd be able to do other cuisines as well. He can, though when given the opportunity he does tend to put a Thai twist on things.

Last night he totally surprised us with his pork satay. Not only because he did a whole pork loin rather than the little bits of pork on skewers, but mostly because he presented it with...profiteroles. Profiteroles filled with spicy satay sauce and topped with, er, white chocolate.

Gregg and John absolutely loved it, and Nawamin made it into the final three. But speaking about it afterwards, the first thing he said was, "If I saw that on a menu, I wouldn't order it."

[Kay]

In an earlier round Nawamin surprised (shocked?) the judges with his "anatomy of crab" dish. On reading that on the menu, the judges thought it sounded macabre, "like something on a dissection table", without realising that that was exactly what it was! And made by someone who dissects humans and animals as part of his job. He served the crab on a slab, all labelled up with named body parts. It looked fab and apparently it tasted delicious. He's a very imaginative cook. Reckon he's in with a good chance of winning.

[Graeme]

An interesting way to present a crab dish for sure. It looked a bit deconstructionist to me and I'm not such a huge fan; the young lady's curry though with the "scotch eggs" looked divine. I wish there was a smellyvision so we could smell the aromas.

A bit off the subject but I like Alton Brown's "Good Eats" as he gets into the physics and chemistry behind the food and why it does what it does. I'm not sure if you get that program in the UK but it is partly on line on the Food Network.

I'm off to enjoy a short Mexican vacation next week with 5 specialist restaurants in the hotel. Last time I went there the French and Spanish restaurants were excellent although the Mexican take on European food doesn't always work too well sometimes the fusion is more like fission

[Dave]

Hope you get well fed this time round, Graeme. We've had some horrors in our time. Possibly the worst of the bunch was a breakfast in the now defunct Koala Bar in Siem Reap. They couldn't even toast sliced bread!