Chef Sanjeev Kapoor brought Indian flavours to the forefront as a guest judge on the latest episode of MasterChef Australia Season 18, where contestants were challenged to cook with a mystery box built around Indian ingredients.
The mystery box included onions, tomatoes, mussels, raw turmeric, guava, palm jaggery, pickle, lamb rack, whole coconut, sweet potato, garam masala, spinach and curry leaves.
Along with the show's standard pantry staples such as flour, milk, butter and sugar, contestants were also provided ingredients that judge Sofia Levin described as “essential for Indian cooking”. These included basmati rice, moong dal, ghee, mustard oil and spices.
The challenge produced a range of inventive dishes, including a moong dal sweet dosa with lassi ice cream, a lamb tart with turmeric and coconut foam, lamb rack served with dal, spiced lamb cutlets with sweet potato and coconut puree alongside pickled guava, and a choux bhaji.
The challenge was won by Casper Kenworthy, whose dish featured sweet potato and spinach curry with pickled mussels, pickled guava, finger millet roti, and a moong dal curry-leaf coconut podi masala.
“You think this is Indian? You think you can do anything and call it Indian?,” Kapoor questioned Casper. The nervous contestant replied, “No”.
Kapoor then asked whether he believed that, because this was MasterChef Australia, he could get away with doing whatever he wanted. Casper answered “yes,” prompting laughter from Kapoor.
Kapoor then went on to call the dish “outstanding”. “This is what India is,” he said.
For winning the challenge, Casper secured immunity from Tuesday's elimination and earned a one-on-one cooking session with Kapoor.
MasterChef Australia streams on JioHotstar in India. The judging panel this season includes returning judges Andy Allen, Poh Ling Yeow, Sofia Levin and Jean-Christophe Novelli.
Kapoor has served as a judge on the Indian edition of MasterChef in the past. He is widely known for hosting Khana Khazana, Asia's longest-running television cooking show, for 19 years. He also launched FoodFood, India's first 24-hour Hindi-language cooking channel.