On the second episode of “Chef Artois”, we head to Marben, a gastropub known for elevating British classics with local ingredients and international flavours. For the past 13 years, Marben’s sprawling patio and its not-so-secret downstairs speakeasy has made it one of the best places in the Entertainment District to enjoy a meal—be it brunch, lunch, dinner or a late-night tipple.
Tonight, Marben head chef Chris Locke joins “Chef Artois” series host Pay Chen to welcome contestants Karen Ahmed and Joel Hansen. Their task: impress Locke by executing a flawless tandoori chicken scotch egg.
This India-inspired twist on a traditional scotch egg swaps out pork sausage for a tandoori-spiced chicken mix. The result is a spice-forward deep-fried delight that pairs perfectly with a chalice of Stella Artois. According to Locke, getting the right cook on the egg is key. Uncooked and the white will still be runny—overcooked and the yolk will be solid. According to Locke, this is a dish that “seems simple, but it’s exceptionally technical.”
Although both competitors are food YouTubers—Ahmed does recipe videos, while Hanson’s followers tune in to watch him eat ridiculous things like pillow-sized burritos—neither has experience cooking today’s challenge dish. Ahmed, though, is intimately familiar with tandoori. The Goa-born blogger has more than a dozen tandoori recipes on her YouTube page. Hansen, meanwhile, is going to have to wing it. He’s apparently terrible at following recipes and didn’t know what a scotch egg was prior to today.
With 60 minutes on the clock, the frenzy of chopping, mixing, boiling and frying begins. Will Hansen’s improv prove fowl? Or will Ahmed falter and end up with egg on her face? It’s anyone’s cookoff to win.
“Chef Artois” is a new limited series that’s inviting diners back inside Toronto’s top restaurants. On this bite-sized cooking show—episodes are a satisfying 12 minutes long—the city’s chefs aren’t doing the cooking. Instead, diners are donning aprons and letting chefs judge their culinary chops.
The series was created in support of Rally for Restaurants, an initiative founded by Stella Artois to help support the restaurant industry as it rebuilds in the wake of the pandemic. In each weekly episode, two Torontonians will step inside the kitchen of a Toronto restaurant to compete for the title of Chef Artois and win a $1,000 prize pack.
Tandoori Chicken Scotch Egg
Makes 6 Scotch Eggs
Ingredients
The eggs
The farce
(NB: Farce is a uniform mixture of lean meat with fat made by grinding, sieving or puréeing the ingredients)
The spice mix
The breading
Method
Serving suggestion: delicious with pickled vegetables and a tangy relish.
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