TV review
Kitchen Impossible
This woman makes maltsters sweat – and she’s not even a cook
Graciela Cucchiara is a worthy opponent for Tim Mälzer
© RTL / Endemol Shine / Florian Schuchmann
Tim Mälzer struggles with a pumpkin, inspires the Argentines and learns how to prepare pesto properly. All thanks to a chef who isn’t actually a chef, but who charms everyone.
She never learned to cook: Graciela Cucchiara is an Italo-South American with Argentinian roots. She was born with a love of food. At the age of seven she was already in the kitchen with her mother. Cucchiara is self-taught, she runs a delicatessen in Munich, she has traveled widely, is a colorful bird and has her heart in the right place. “I cook mom’s kitchen,” she says herself. That’s exactly what the sixth episode of “Kitchen Impossible” is all about: apart from one task that pushes Cucchiara to her technical limits, everything revolves around the emotional heart kitchen. What lies above all Mälzer.
These are the highlights of the sixth episode “Kitchen Impossible”
The tasks
Graciela Cucchiara in Kdyne (Czech Republic): For this challenge, Tim Mälzer uses the contacts of his best friends. He puts Lucki Maurer’s longtime colleague Rosa in front of the culinary cart and sends Graciela home to Rosa – to the small Czech town of Kdyne. Born in the Czech Republic and now retired, Rosa cooks simple but hearty Bohemian cuisine using traditional family recipes. This time the task is a real classic: roulades with Bohemian dumplings.
Tim Mälzer in Mele (Italy): For the ninth time in the eight years of “Kitchen Impossible”, Tim Mälzer has been sent to Italy by his opponents, but never before has this challenge been so motivated. In Mele, north of Genoa, at Gianni Bruzzone’s Osteria Baccicin du Caru, maltsters learn how to make Italian basil pesto in a mortar.
Graciela Cucchiara in Barcelona (Spain): Mälzer would like to see Cucchiara suffer on “Kitchen Impossible”, so she gets a job in Barcelona that she doesn’t like at all. With a dessert by Paco Méndez, the kitchen bull wants to lure his vivacious opponent out of his reserve: Because the TV chef knows very well that she doesn’t eat or prepare desserts! With “Garibaldi,” Cucchiara is given a star-level assignment and must prove herself in an area she has never entered before.
Tim Mälzer in Buenos Aires (Argentina): Tim Mälzer is sent by his opponent Graciela Cucchiara to Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina, to follow in her footsteps. Mälzer is served an absolutely traditional dish and Cucchiara’s childhood memories: the locro. A winter stew based on white corn, beans and squash with meat garnish, traditionally eaten on National Day, May 25th.
This is the most beautiful dish
Actually there are two. As is well known, simplicity is where the spice lies: Mälzer is allowed to cook basil pesto with gnocchi in Genoa, Cucchiara in the Czech Republic beef roulades with Bohemian dumplings. What matters in the courts? To the heart and the emotions. With both dishes, the spectators really only want one thing: to eat a lot.
The highlight
Graciela Cucchiara is a colorful bird, which she not only expresses with her charismatic nature, but also with her great, colorful outfits. Her colorful, oversized glasses in particular are reminiscent of a character from Flintstones.
Nobody can hear that anymore
Anyone who knows “Kitchen Impossible” now knows: Tim Mälzer is the best Italian chef outside of Italy. He repeats this sentence like a mantra every time he goes to Italy. So, dear Tim Mälzer, we got it! You are the best Italian chef outside of Italy.
The best figure
Graciela Cucchiara is Mälzer’s sister in spirit. They both understood that cooking is all about one thing: emotions. It is all the more perfidious that Mälzer sends Cucchiara to a representative of the avant-garde cuisine at El Bulli, which has repeatedly been voted the best restaurant in the world. At Come in Barcelona, Cucchiara has to recreate a technically complex dessert. And although she is neither fond of patisserie nor cooking technique, she does it with flying colors and makes a bella figura.
This vegetable hates maltsters
In Buenos Aires, maltsters must prepare locro, a typical Argentine stew containing: pumpkin. The TV chef fails at peeling and chopping and unpacks all the curses he can think of. “I hate pumpkins,” says Mälzer several times.
The winner
Tim Mälzer wins hands down because he makes the hearts of the locals beat faster with the Locro stew in Argentina. He gets 9 out of 10 points for this task. A knighthood in “Kitchen Impossible”. At no time did he “think Argentinian” when preparing it, as he says himself, but only of his great-grandmother’s swede stew. That worked. In the end, the question arises: is Tim Mälzer now also the best Argentinian chef outside of Argentina?
+++ Also read:
– Episode 1: Two against one at the “Kitchen Impossible” start – and Mälzer flattens the Stembergs anyway
– Episode 2: Tim Mälzer shows his greatest weakness
– Episode 3: Tim Mälzer has to deal with the German national team – and writes TV history
– Episode 4: In the end, love wins: Why Tim Mälzer lost his analytical skills
– Episode 5: Converted and feathered: Philipp Vogel turns Tim Mälzer to the left
The eighth season of Kitchen Impossible started on February 12th and will be shown on Vox every Sunday from 8:15 p.m. This and later all other episodes of “Kitchen Impossible” can be seen at RTL+ be streamed.