Ida puts on a cooking masterclass

AN East Clare girl has been cooking up a storm overseas after taking the top prize in Finland’s first Junior MasterChef cooking competition.
Ida O’Mahoney and her family moved from Feakle to Finland four years ago. Her prizes for winning the competition are €5,000, a set of professional kitchen knives and a cruise to Sweden with her family.
The 12-year-old will be jetting off even further afield, as she has been invited to take part in the World of Food and Music Festival in Hong Kong, where she will meet with Junior MasterChef winners from all over the world.
“She was barely three years old when she patiently baked ginger bread biscuits with her grandmother here in Finland and she has been interested in food ever since,” Ida’s father Gavin explained,
Ida is a former pupil of the Raheen Wood Steiner School in Tuamgraney, where she still has many friends. Her very proud grandparents, Geraldine and Jim O’Mahoney from Ennis, have been following her progress and are looking forward to seeing the final show on DVD.
“Taking part in the programme has been a wonderful experience for Ida and both myself and my wife, Anna,” Gavin said. “There have been lots of interviews and Ida has been invited to take part in the festival at the Stanley Plaza in Hong Kong next month. Our bags are packed.”
Ida has even begun sharing some of her favourite Irish recipes with food lovers in Finland.
“She has done an interview for a well-known food magazine here to be published before Christmas. She decided to introduce the Irish mince pie to the Finns.”
Over 1,200 Finnish children applied to take part in the competition and just 24 were chosen for the actual show. It has been one of the most popular programmes of Finnish station Nelonen, the second biggest commercial television channel in Finland.
“Ida has shown great talent in every given task and created portions that would have been challenging even to professional chefs,” said Paula Rintamaa of Nelonen Media.
“Ida has given numerous interviews to the media and visited many cooking fairs. But school is number one in her life and all the rest comes second,” she concluded.