MSSCC 2022: Irdina and Camelia share their journey to success

Boarding school students Irdina Sofiya and Camelia Ivana from SM Sains Rembau, Negeri Sembilan are the grand prize winner in the Maggi Secondary School Cooking Competition (MSSCC) 2022.

The prize-winning dish called “Spaghetti Lomak Berapi Bersama Ayam Percik Maggi” featured pasta, roasted chicken and coconut milk gravy cooked with bird’s eye chilli and Maggi seasoning.

The competition garnered entries from more than 2,000 aspiring young students aged 13 to 15 from 500 schools nationwide.

“This cooking competition is something I’ve been waiting for ages to participate in, so I immediately rushed to Camelia and asked her to be my partner.

“She’s the only person who sprang on my mind at that time because of her top-notch skill in video editing. This would definitely give us an edge over others in this competition,” Irdina recalled fondly.

It was their first experience in a cooking competition and as luck would have it, the dish was chosen as the winning dish and they became the 26th edition champion.

Things did not sail smoothly for Irdina and Camelia as they were already quite occupied with many other school projects and activities.

“However, our teacher Cikgu Huszaifah insisted that we should give it a try. And we managed to submit our application within the last ten minutes before the deadline. 

“We came up with a simple fusion menu we named as ‘Spaghetti Lomak Berapi Bersama Ayam Percik MAGGI’. The menu was inspired by the combination of our favourite local dishes which are ‘lemak cili api’ and ‘ayam percik’. With that, we developed our own recipe using the Maggi seasoning,” Irdina explained.

Despite all the challenges the duo faced throughout the competition, especially as a boarding school student, they were happy with the final outcome of their submission and credited Cikgu Huszaifah for her suggestions and ideas to improve both their video and recipe.

“We were on cloud nine when our dish was chosen as the winning dish, beating all other participants in Negeri Sembilan,” said Irdina.

It was during the school holidays when the two received an email stating that they had been chosen as the state winner for Negeri Sembilan, and were invited for a Zoom interview – the final stage before the next Grand Winner of MSSCC 2022 were announced.

“We knew that this is our golden opportunity to prove ourselves and we needed to nail this interview. We practiced for three days straight on how to make a good impression to the judges.

“Throughout this competition, I gained so much experience alongside Camelia, who supported me a lot. We are extremely grateful to all of the wonderful mentors who have guided us and help steered us closer to our end goal, especially our wonderful teachers at SM Sains Rembau and the MSSCC 2022 team who supported us until the very end,” shared Irdina.

For Camelia, she was invited by Irdina to be her partner for the cooking competition, due to her video editing skills.

“The competition sounded exciting and I was intrigued to know more about it since it was my first time participating in such a competition.

“As we were brainstorming, Irdina came up with a brilliant idea to combine our favorite dishes, ‘lemak cili api’ and ‘ayam percik’ hence we called it ‘Spaghetti Lomak Berapi Bersama Ayam Percik Maggi’. Perhaps you are wondering, “Why spaghetti? Don’t people always eat masak lemak with rice?”. Pssstttt, I am allergic to rice, so spaghetti fits the bill as an alternative,” she recounted.

Video editing was not an easy task but Camelia has learned every single thing in detail from her favourite YouTubers, such as Azfar Heri and Bella Khan.

“Cikgu Huszaifah also shared her insights to make the video more interesting and compelling. And finally, after many rounds of editing and revisions, we submitted our final video to Maggi via Google Classroom – feeling trilled and hopeful,” she said.

“It has been an intense journey but the toughest parts are now well behind us. All our hard work over the past few months has come to fruition. When Maggi announced both our names as the grand winner of MSSCC 2022, I felt on top of the world, and that I’ve never been this proud of myself.”

Camelia said the entire journey had taught them valuable lessons such as editing skills, building self-confidence, decision making and time management.

“We would not have come this far without the guidance of our teachers at SM Sains Rembau and the MSSCC 2022 team.

“I have become a better person as a result of this experience, and I hope to achieve more in the future. I realise that life is too short to be scared and learning to take risks is the key to living a fulfilling life.”