Gabriela Evangelou, a City College Plymouth catering student, has won the judges' approval at the Major Series Culinary Challenge, and walked away with her second gold medal in less than a year.

Her dishes of Thai style prawn broth with coconut chicken and egg noodles and Bombay potato wrapped chicken with gobi sag, spiced sweet potato puree and puy lentil cream awarded her with best in class and winner of the National Culinary Challenge title.

Gabriela's entry through to the final was achieved by winning a gold medal and the highest mark against 55 other competitors from the South West at a major series event held at City College Plymouth last November.

Chef lecturer at the College, Richard Farliegh her mentor for the competition commented: "I am thrilled for her, she put a lot of hard work into the competition and deserves this high accolade."

City College Plymouth's, chef lecturer Steve Bowers who accompanied Gabriela to the final and worked with her and Richard to select and practice the dishes, said: "She is a credit to the College, she worked with real professionalism and was spotted by a number of leading chefs judging and watching the final, job offers were in the offering as soon as the results were announced."

Gabriela, who will now concentrate on successfully finishing her level 3 catering craft course, said: "The whole experience was amazing. I couldn't have done it without the help and support from lecturers, friends and my twin sister who is also studying on the same course - I'm looking forward to my next competition!"