Although she didn’t win Season 7 of “MasterChef,” Tanorria Askew gained enough exposure to quit her day job and concentrate full-time on being a chef.Tanorria Askew was still tweaking her original recipe for shrimp and grits when she took the dish into work for a co-worker to sample.
“She said, “Girl, this recipe is gonna catch you a man!'” laughs Askew.
Well it certainly caught the attention of “MasterChef” Judge Gordon Ramsay. After Askew cooked it for Ramsay on “MasterChef,” he predicted the dish “would go down as the best shrimp and grits in show history.” The celebrity chef handed over one of the show’s coveted white aprons and made Askew a competitor on Season 7.
“I had only made it two times before making it for Chef Ramsay,” Askew says of her famous dish, whose special ingredient is fried okra. “Now I can’t tell you how many times I’ve made that shrimp and grits. Everybody wants it.”
Out of the 40 home cooks who started this season on “MasterChef,” Askew advanced to the Final Four. In fact, tonight’s “MasterChef” finale (Fox, 8 p.m.) seems almost anti-climactic since the big surprise happened last Wednesday when Askew was eliminated.