Just caught an episode of the latest season of Masterchef and tonight was Chinese cooking night, with guest judge Kylie Kwong, a Chinese chef maestro, whom I used to watch occasionally on cable tv. The dish of reckoning that each contestant had to come up with was,… you guessed it, none other than our traditional Chinese staple – fried rice. It was entertaining watching the various permutations of fried rice with the weirdest combination coming from a Malaysian-Chinese contestant (irony) who delivered a “two kinds of pork” fried rice (pork belly with prosciutto) with ensuing disapproving looks from the judges. To them, belly fat and Italian ham did not make a happy marriage.

Guts vs glory aside, there’s truly a fine line between taking risks (that might lead to failure) in cooking and pushing the boundaries towards creativity. The decisions you make about what you cook, really does reflect who you are as a person. Are you a heck-it and whack-it kinda of person or do you try to keep close to the authenticity of the original. I think I fall somewhere in between. A case in point, is this green curry I dished out the other day; threw in some leftover pumpkin and mint to give it a ‘twist’… worked pretty well for me but not sure if it would have worked on every palette 🙂. In any case, my head is not on the Masterchef chopping board. No guts to get there, so no glory. What about you, care to share what kind of cook you’d rather be?;)