The Malaysia National Youth Culinary Team won the gold medal for the “Restaurant of the Nations” category at the 25th IKA/Culinary Olympics held in Stuttgart, Germany from 14 to 19 February.

Yay!

Two medals in the bag

According to a report by News Straits Times, the Malaysian team -- consisting of Sunway University School of Hospitality students Amanda Cheah, Tsen Jun Yan, Alicia Tay, Pang Jin Yong, and Amirul Ashraf, as well as Ilya Dayana from Kolej Yayasan Pahang -- defeated more than 2 ,000 chefs from more than 60 nations to clinch the gold medal.

To add the sprinkle onto their cake (heh!), the team also won a silver medal for the “IKA Buffet” category.

What’s the secret to their winning?

Team captain Tay told the daily that their menu was called ‘Rasa-Rasa Malaysia’, where they combined modern cooking techniques with traditional flavours and came up with mouth watering dishes.

The dishes include warm trout and seafood mousseline with laksa sauce, lentil and trout fritters, pickled salad with puffed tofu, coriander and ginger-torch flower crusted chicken with tamarind sauce and five-spice roll, among others.

Tay said the team trained between 10 to 14 hours, six days a week.

“The training was to sharpen our skills and ensure that we were well prepared. For me, the preparation of ingredients played a crucial part in cooking a dish. When the cutting or chopping of some elements is not done properly, the results will show when we serve our dishes.

“Besides, ingredient preparation was one of the criteria judged in the competition,” she said.