Laura Londoño, known for her leading role in the soap opera “Café con aroma de mujer”, won MasterChef Celebrity 8 in the early hours of this Tuesday. In addition, she won the last duel against the rider Álvaro Muñoz Escassi, after which others were eliminated. Two candidates for victory, the social media star Daniel Illescas and the presenter Toñi Moreno. The actress won with a menu that paid tribute to her family and her Colombian roots. She succeeds Lorena Castell, winner of the previous edition of the celebrity version of the La 1 gastronomy competition.
In addition to the title and the program trophy, the winner took home 75,000 euros, which she could donate to an NGO of her choice. Both she and Escassi, the runner-up, will enjoy a week-long cooking course at the Basque Culinary Center, San Sebastián’s renowned gastronomic sciences faculty.
The usual jury trio of Pepe Rodríguez, Samantha Vallejo-Nágera and Jordi Cruz were this time joined by Brazilian chef Alex Atala to choose the winner. He is one of the chefs with the greatest international reputation, holder of two Michelin stars and who also visited MasterChef Spain for the first time.
Londoño’s winning menu began with an appetizer titled “Eterna Primavera,” a nod to Medellín. It was a soup based on pine pollen and flower honey, dried apricot, cardamom, violet essence, pine vinegar, fennel, mango and green papaya salad, tempura marigold and flower cucumber. Pepe Rodríguez stressed that it may be “the most complex dish” he has ever tried on MasterChef. The main course, Aventura de Crayfish in River, combined the flavors of Colombia and Spain. Composed of a beurre blanc based crayfish, with beetroot, turmeric, yellow chilli and annatto, pumpkin puree, a beet sponge cake and a noisette butter air. This palette of flavors and tones was reminiscent of the Caño Cristales River in the Amazon, also known as the River of Seven Colors. The dessert, titled “Inner Magic,” consisted of a pyramid that hid a gold coin of the Quimbaya, a native Colombian pre-Hispanic people. The coin was actually made from Colombian coffee, with different cocoa textures and hints of banana and cupoazu. To enhance the flavor, Laura recommended that the judges first drink a few drops of a wine that is 200 years old, the same age as her country.
Laura Londoño presents her final dessert to Samantha Vallejo-Nágera.RTVE
Before this final choice, the first challenge of the evening put the first duelist’s jacket at stake, which Londoño received. He achieved this by winning a classic MasterChef kitchen test: the Follow the Chef test. From El Celler de Can Roca (with three Repsol soles and three Michelin stars), pastry chef Jordi Roca brought with him a complex dessert that the four finalists had to prepare at the pace set by the chef who cooked the recipe in front of them.
The final outdoor test of the season took the finalists to Atrio, the Toño Pérez-run restaurant in Cáceres that received its third Michelin star last year. The chef designed a menu exclusively for this challenge with very complicated preparations that required the contestants’ full attention. Some of the dishes they prepared included a lobster with red fruits and pepper emulsion, an Iberian pork with carrot and orange, and a kalamansi ganache, lemon curd and detox smoothie.
The finalists cooked for nine chefs who have been awarded three Michelin stars: Martín Berasategui, Pedro Subijana, Joan Roca, Elena Arzak, Sergio and Javier Torres, Jesús Sánchez and Jordi Cruz and Toño Pérez. Álvaro Muñoz Escassi came second in the final duel of MasterChef Celebrity 8. The athlete dedicated his victory to his mother, who died during the taping of this season of the show.
Álvaro Muñoz Escassi in a moment of the finale of “MasterChef Celebrity 8”.RTVE
As usual in this final phase, the two duelists had to design and prepare a complete menu consisting of a starter, a main course and a dessert. All of this had to reflect their personal history and roots as well as what they had learned in the competition. Alex Atala and the jury trio tasted and evaluated the duelists’ dishes. And they decided to leave the victory to Laura Londoño and her tribute to Colombian gastronomy.
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