“I like to work with a lot of big, bold flavours, I like to try and get as much flavour into my dessert as possible, when Greg Wallace tasted it and said, wow, there's nothing subtle about that, that just made me really happy as it was exactly what I wanted to do. McClurkin said: “My dessert did really well, Marcus and Greg gave me some amazing feedback, but Marcus said my dessert was like a creme brulee from the east, that really made me happy, It's such an amazing compliment coming from Marcus.
“I realised there was a speed controller and that cost me three or four minutes, which would have been enough time to get me to serve the chicken on the plate.”įor his ‘signature dish’, McClurkin cooked duck breast with pak choi, spicy rosti and pickled cucumber followed by a lapsang souchong tea infused dessert with a black pepper granola, orange syrup and burnt honey. “We've got a mincer at work I use all the time and another in the butcher's I worked at during lockdown, but the one on the show was different as it had a speed setting, so it was mincing really slowly. “I would have sped up the mincing machine, I’ve never used one of those machines before. McClurkin said: “If I could have a second attempt, I could definitely do it, I would definitely have approached it a little bit differently and I feel like I could have done it in the 20 minutes. Ultimately McClurkin did not cook his chicken through in enough time, though this did not stop him being chosen to go through to the next stage of the competition and judges were pleased with his cucumber salad and flatbread. The first two chefs in the twenty-minute technical task were asked to make a prawn, avocado and pepper omelette served with prawn oil, as tasked by judge Marcus Wareing, while the second two, which included McClurkin, were tasked by judge Monica Galetti with producing a chicken kofte, flatbread and a cucumber salad.
Monday (29 November) night’s heat saw four professional chefs tackle a twenty-minute technical task set by the shows judges as well as producing a ‘signature’ dish of the contestants choosing. It's easier to assess yourself from a sofa than it is when you're in the studio.” Difficult task “You watch yourself back and think you would do certain things differently, but when you're there, you're under so much pressure, you're not really thinking straight. “We all gave ourselves a little bit too much to do, but you want to challenge yourself because you have to prove yourself. McClurkin said: “The stress levels were really high, as you can see, in the episode everyone was running around constantly.
Samuel McClurkin, head chef at the Dog at Wingham, Canterbury, appeared on series fourteen, episode thirteen, of the 2020 Bafta nominated series on 29 November 2021.