The Rising Stars 2013 champion crowned

Lubabalo Ndlazi has just made a name for himself by winning the prestigious 2013 Rising Stars competition, sponsored by SAMFA (South African Mushrooms Farmers’ Association).

Five talented young chefs (selected from 129 entries) presented creative mushroom dishes that showcased the best in versatility, flavour, innovation and presentation despite the huge pressure that top class cooking competitions, such as this one, generate.

Their brief was to produce an honest, easy-to-make and tasty dish, with
fresh cultivated mushrooms the heroes and they certainly did so!

The judges tasted and debated but finally named Lubabalo from the Chez Gourmet Cooking School as the 2013 Rising Stars winner with his highly imaginative Mushroom crust pizza.

They applauded his incredible mouthwatering mushroom pizza, which showed extraordinary innovation with the traditional dough crust being replaced by thinly sliced and overlapping Portabella mushrooms. 

By winning the prized Rising Stars trophy, Lubabalo proved that, when you have a passion for what you do, you’d get far in life.

Veripi Kauta of Institute of Culinary Arts with his Mushroom Soufflé took 2nd place whilst Sholto Ojura from Institute of Culinary Arts in Cape Town, took the 3rd place. Robyn Mapstone and Sandhya Beerbul both from Durban University of Technology took 4th and 5th places respectively.

Recipe here.