11 April 2019
Ringing Star Brendan Pang: The young chef who made dumplings his destiny
Sue Yeap The West Australian
Friday, 25 January 2019 11:53AM
Brendan Pang quit his job to cook on TV in 2018, but the huge risk is paying off for the Perth-based cook.
Growing up making dumplings alongside his mother and maternal grandmother, little did Brendan Pang realise the simple dish would define his career.
The former architecture student of Mauritian and Chinese heritage threw in his job as a social worker in Broome to take a chance on last year’s 10th season of reality cooking show MasterChef Australia, winning a place in the top 24 with his audition dish of dumplings.
“My most influential moment growing up in the kitchen was based around dumplings and noodles and those kinds of foods,” Pang said in the kitchen of mum Dany McEwen’s Applecross home.
“And I remember growing up learning to plait dumplings from scratch, making the dough for noodles as well and rolling it out with a machine.”
Food was always part of his life but Pang had not realised until MasterChef that it could be a career.
Pang, 25, has worked alongside professional chefs at events such as the Gascoyne Food Festival and hosting dumpling-making sessions at the Good Food and Wine Show and Kitchen Warehouse.
He has also completed Pang’s Palate, a 10-part series for his YouTube channel.
Last year he was taken under the wing of acclaimed expatriate WA chef Mark Best.