The cooking program "Das Perfekte Dinner" is a popular TV format.
In the coming week you can watch an Olchinger and an Allinger indulge their guests with a three-course menu.
A candidate does not sit at the table voluntarily.
Olching / Alling
- Nadja Özkardes owes her participation to her husband.
"He secretly registered me on the show," says the 28-year-old.
For years, the VOX show has been running in parallel while she cooks in the evening, reports the Olchinger.
But that she could be one of the candidates herself, her husband said some time later.
"Then about a year passed before I received the call from VOX in August," says Özkardes.
The anticipation was huge.
Born in Dortmund, she immediately got down to the preparations and thought about what she would like to cook.
"Above all, I wanted it not to be an everyday occurrence and to challenge myself a little," says the 28-year-old.
She also succeeded with the main course.
Serbian roots
“There was ravioli with venison ragout, cranberry sauce and mushroom salad,” says Nadja Özkardes. On the day of shooting, she filled around 80 pasta pockets in her kitchen for at least three hours. For the cranberry sauce, she rummaged through all the stores. But there were no fresh berries anywhere. “They only have a season for about a week in October,” says the Olchinger. So she had to switch to dried berries. In the end, she managed the main course anyway. And the hobby cook incorporated her husband's nationality and Serbian roots into the dessert.
"I learned a lot from my grandmothers while cooking," says Nadja Özkardes, "especially in Serbo-Croatian cuisine." As a child, she helped a lot and also looked over her mother's shoulder.
As a teenager, she cooked dishes and wrote down the recipes.
“The interest in cooking was there very early on,” says the 28-year-old, who works full-time as an internal sales representative.
Your biggest critic over the years?
“My papa,” says the 28-year-old and laughs.
“If he says 'it's okay,' then that's the greatest praise.” That's why her father was not allowed to be absent from her husband and sister during the trial cooking before the show.
Trial cooking at home
And in Alling, too, before Lara Wieland took part in the “Perfect Dinner”, samples were cooked and presented to the family. But competitive cooking was not entirely alien to the 26-year-old bank clerk. "We have been imitating the Perfect Dinner in the Freundeskreis for years," says Lara Wieland. Two people from the group of six were each allowed to give a dinner evening - including invitation cards and subsequent evaluation by friends. The traditional get-together had to pause since Corona - but Lara Wieland was able to conjure up a dinner again for the show.
Especially when it came to dessert, she reached into the bag of tricks: "Smokey ice cream on a stick" was the title of the dessert.
The homemade mini popsicle was served with smoking dry ice on a slate plate.
The latter only occurred to her shortly before the start of shooting: “I was eating at the Asians and the sushi was brought to our table smoking.” So the dry ice had to be found quickly.
In the end, it worked out with her perfect dinner.
“It was an exciting week,” says the 26-year-old.
Her cook colleague Nadja Özkardes agrees: "It was eventful and great friendships developed."
In the VOX program “The Perfect Dinner”, five amateur cooks compete against each other in a cooking competition.
The winner is whoever gets the most points from the others in the end.
