Honestly, we wonder how many times mat sallehs have to say our Asian food isn’t crispy enough. First, it was rendang, which if you already had your fair share of it, should be well aware that most rendang recipes are not, y’know, crispy. That scathing and frankly bizarre critique was first heard on MasterChef UK, from celebrity chef judge John Torode and caught Malaysian audiences in a fury.
Now, this latest incident of crispy Asian recipes came about after the show’s Australian counterpart requested that contestants come up with a dish that is crispy to the bite in their latest episode, in order to avoid being put under the guillotine of elimination.
And predictably, when it comes to crispy fried food, you can get quite inventive la. Some chefs served up prawn fritters, fried chicken, and of course, some crispy desserts like Italian canolis. Sounds tasty right.
But for 26-year-old Brendan Pang, he decided to rely on a good old Asian favourite: crispy fried wontons, for the judges.
When it comes down to dumplings and wontons, you can say that Brendan definitely knows his way around cooking them because he opened his own store that serves them too!
While we may enjoy crispy wontons for every meal if we could, the judges didn’t seem too keen on it when the dish was served.
In fact, judge Andy Allen said that his wonton was not crispy enough, and emphasised that point when he tekan on the wonton filling to show it.
“Sorry, but mine is not crunchy. That’s soft,”
“So, in my opinion, that doesn’t meet the brief,” he said.
As a result, it landed him immediately into the second round of the show’s elimination.
But as you can imagine, the idea of wanton filling being crispy has raised plenty of eyebrows. In fact, it even caught the attention of MasterChef Season 2 winner Adam Liaw, who pointed out that wanton filling isn’t supposed to be crispy.
Adam isn’t alone in arguing that fact either, with plenty of other Twitter netizens rallying behind him, pointing out that if fried chicken can be moist on the inside with crunchy skin out, when can’t fried wontons?
But someone did ask, if the dish itself wasn’t completely crunchy throughout, then does it really fit the brief for the recipe, when they asked for a crispy dish?
Well, what do you guys think? Are the fried wontons justified? Did Brendan pick the right recipe for this challenge?
Also read: “Chicken Rendang is Never Crispy,” Says British High Commissioner of Malaysia
