PETALING JAYA, Sept 1 — UK-based Malaysian comedian, whose real name is Nigel Ng, recently rose to internet stardom after going viral when he made fun of BBC Food host Hersha Patel for washing cooked rice.
Now, “Uncle Roger” is back again, using his Asian cooking expertise to critique British chef and restaurateur Jamie Oliver’s egg fried rice recipe, after being persuaded by his fans online.
Ng uploaded the video onto his YouTube page two days ago optimistically noting that he was “looking forward” to reviewing Oliver’s cooking skills, as he considers the Brit to be “professional, very established” chef.
Ng however was almost immediately displeased with Oliver’s choice of pan to use.
“Two seconds into the video and I already see a saucepan. Haiya, where your wok? Jamie, where your wok?
“Egg fried rice need to use wok. Cause you need to wok hay. When you cook with wok, the wok give the food flavour. Get the wok hay, no such thing as saucepan hay,” said Ng in his trademark accent.
“Jamie you have 25 cookbooks but you can’t afford one wok? Uncle Roger send you one wok for free Jamie, no problem.”
He wasn’t too happy about Oliver using olive oil to cook the dish either and criticised the restauranter for choosing to fry spring onions to begin the dish, saying that spring onion should only be used as a garnish.
Ng said that garlic should always be the first ingredient in a fried rice dish and became even more upset when he realised that Oliver was using pre-cooked packet rice.
“Packet...This guy owns so many restaurant and he still can’t be bothered to make his own rice. Packet rice…
“Imagine if you go to Japanese restaurant and you ask for noodles and the chef give you instant noodles. That is what this guy is doing,” he said.
Ng even took a dig at Oliver for telling his viewers to “drain” and chill the rice if they choose to cook it for themselves, saying that he’s already covered the whole “draining rice” debacle.
And when Oliver added chilli jam to his pan, Ng just couldn’t make quite make sense of the whole dish anymore.
“No, no, no! Putting jam in rice. This is disgusting. Who puts jam in rice? First of all, what is chilli jam? I’ve known fresh chilli, chilli oil, chilli flake, never heard of chilli jam. Chilli jam is so weird thing to use.
“What are you going to put in there next? Peanut butter? Okay, why not you go make PB&J egg fried rice,” joked Ng.
And if that wasn’t enough to unsettle Ng, Oliver even washed the rice halfway through cooking it and then broke pieces of tofu and added it into the mixture.
“He make Uncle Roger put leg down from chair. Breaking tofu. Asian cooking when you cook tofu, you preserve the whole shape of tofu and serve the customer.”
“This video so many sad things happening. He waste the spring onion, he wet the rice, now he tear apart the tofu like paper. I don’t know if I can go on. This depression is too much.”
While Oliver seemed pretty pleased with his final product, Ng just couldn’t come to terms with the renowned chef’s recipe.
“The rice looks so wet. Look at this, you can see your reflection. Mulan is going to start singing when she see the rice.
“Jamie is a professional chef but all the step he messed up. Uncle Roger don’t like this recipe. Too wet, no MSG, he break the tofu, no wok — it’s all wrong. I think he just hate rice in general. Maybe he’s sponsored by a potato company. They are competition.”
Ng’s video has since garnered over 2.1 million views on YouTube, with over 190 thousand likes.
He even urged his fans on social media to tell Jamie Oliver to make a video with him, so that they could “make egg fried rice properly” together.
