It’s the ultimate cooking skill, being able to whip up something gourmet – or even just edible – from a handful of arbitrary ingredients. But what makes good chefs great is the ability to find the sweet spot where all these flavours meet, putting them into context and making them work together.

This idea became excellent fodder for entertainment when BBC’s show Ready Steady Cook debuted in 1994. Two teams, each consisting of a member of the public and a celebrity chef, would concoct a meal using five random ingredients. They had to use everything given to them, could utilise some basics and extras like eggs, milk, flour, sugar and seasoning, and had to do it all in under 20 minutes. After much hilarity and some amazing feats, the live studio audience would vote for the winner.

To showcase the talents of local chefs, we filled a shopping basket with seasonal parsnips and leeks, a whole chicken, and lemon or lime, and asked a handful of experts to come up with an idea or recipe. The results range from comforting classics to cutting-edge dishes with inventive techniques, but each recipe is testament to how you can make anything work with a little imagination.

Andrew Atkinson, MasterChef SA judge and executice chef at the Michelangelo Hotel (Piccolo Mondo, Maximillien and Parc Fermé)
Lime and dukkah-spiced chicken galantine: deboned and roasted rolled chicken, accompanied by saffron parsnip purée, porcini mushroom and leek ragout, and gruyere-filled potato croquettes, napped by a sweet onion soubise sauce.

Andrea Burgener, chef and owner of The Leopard  
Poach a whole chicken with the leeks, plus some onions, plenty of flat-leaf parsley and thyme. Very gentle flavours. Roast the parsnips separately with maple syrup, ginger and lemon. Take chicken meat off the bone, reduce the stock till quite intense, put the chicken back. Plate up with lots of the broth, and some olive oil drizzled over. Serve the parsnips on top and some crusty bread to mop up the broth.

Richard Carstens, executive chef of Tokara  
Salt roasted chicken breast with potato starch parsnips, ginger carrot purée, and leeks with a dashi lemon purée. (Read the full recipe here.)

Evan Coosner, executive chef of Granny Mouse Country House & Spa
Lime and coriander grilled chicken supreme, seated on a wet-braised leek risotto, topped with a parsnip chip and arugula salad, and a lime and coriander Thai dressing.

Abigail Donnelly, editor of Eat Out
I would make something very simple. Definitely a purée of parsnips with cream and butter, and then a lovely roasted chicken, baked on sweet leeks with lemon halves to make a kind of sticky marmalade.

Fred Faucheux, executive chef of Nobu  
Roasted chicken stuffed with leeks and rice, served with cubed parsnips and steamed baby bok choi. (View the full recipe here.)

Henrico Grobbelaar, executive chef of Azure Restaurant  
Chicken with vanilla parsnip purée, confit leeks and lemon gel with Madeira reduction. (See the full recipe here.)

By Linda Scarborough
Photographs, from top: Tokara (Wilhelm Kühn) and Azure