Megan is a Tabasco hot chef

Level 3 Professional Cookery student Megan Connor was named runner-up in the Tabasco Street Food Challenge 2014. 

Competitors had just 90 minutes to create a dish for four using the famously-firey Tabasco sauce. The dish had to be suitable for serving from 11am-4pm as a brunch item from a street vendor’s stall or vehicle. 

Megan decided on an original street food approach to a British classic: ham, egg and chips. So that it was easy to serve in a street food environment, she produced the dish as a quail Scotch egg in a potato basket. To give it that Tabasco twist, she offered it alongside special Tabasco ketchup and sea salts infused with the famous pepper sauce. 

The judges were looking for flavour, ease of service in a street food environment and the creative use of Tabasco sauce from a choice of original red, green jalapeno, chipotle and habanero. 

Megan got her idea from 1930s cartoon “Ham and Eggs”, which was produced by Walter Lantz – the creator of Woody Woodpecker. She then decided to use it as an overall theme for her dish, marketing it as “Oswald’s Ham and Eggs” and featuring the cartoon on her packaging. 

“I did lots of local research around Birmingham and into the street food market before making my application,” said Megan. “I’m really pleased that my hard work paid off and I got to compete in the final alongside other student chefs from around the UK.” 

Megan was awarded a special certificate, a personalised Tabasco jacket and a year’s subscription to the Craft Guild of Chefs magazine.