The mandoline challenge caught me off guard.

It was obvious we were going to have to do some gruesome challenges but for some reason I expected some technical challenges such as knife skills or ingredient guessing of some sort. Instead it was the complete opposite of ‘knife skills’, this time we had no knives at all!!!

Not asking “What chef skills can you actually see here?” was such an insane concept that I had to keep reminding myself that I had no knives to cut into things. The amount of time I wasted grabbing a lemon, for example, and only realising when I got to my station that I had no way of cutting into it, or struggling for ages to peel an onion, was ridiculous.

Those valuable minutes wasted make a tremendous difference when you get a challenge of 45 minutes by the end of which you need to present a dish AND you have no idea what ingredients you can find in the pantry, or where to find them.

Turns out, I also completely misunderstood the challenge. I thought the whole challenge was to create a potato dish. The actual challenge was to do a mandoline dish, using potatoes. So it was the Mandoline that needed to shine, NOT the stupid potato.

So obviously, when Asaf Granit comes to my station and asks me what I’m doing with the mandoline, and I answer “pickled onions”, I get a telling off. Whoopsy…

Having said that, even though I absolutely hated not having knives, and repeating in my head how silly this challenge was or how they can’t learn anything about our skills as a chef through it etc etc, at least (Thank God) I didn’t get my companions’ challenges, using a rolling pin or a Parisienne scoop!

What the hell?! I think I would’ve started grinding my own corn tortillas with the rolling pin! I probably would still have been doing it now…

And with the Parisienne scoop? I can only think of a melon and lychee fruit salad…Oh dear!

I would’ve gone down like a sack of potatoes…the “Dod Moshe” brand.

During the ceremony at the end, I could not stop my knees from shaking. I felt cold, and no amount of deep breaths would’ve calmed me down. Luckily, I was 4th to be called and so the panic was over fast. But standing on stage and seeing all these wonderful chefs in front of me waiting for their names to be called, I had no clue how I made it and they didn’t. Great people like Rafael Angel who made an off-the-bone burnt fish and confit potatoes, or Maya Davidoff who made the torn pasta with Fakus (that Zucchini that looks like a cucumber), or Itay Eyal who has a similar CV to mine and worked in some of the best restaurants in the States.

The more the names that got called and none of them chosen, made me more and more humble, needing to appreciate the fact that I did get chosen. It meant that I really needed to prove the judges right. I cannot waste my spot, and give up easily.