Mixers whir. Pots bubble, steam escaping from lids. Teen chefs in tall, white hats madly chop vegetables. The clock is ticking. The countdown is on.
Once again, NAIT hosts the 12th annual High School Culinary Challenge (HSCC) and 18 teams from the region are competing for bragging rights.
All Grade 12 competing chefs also have the opportunity to apply for three $5,000 scholarships to NAIT’s culinary program that cover tuition, books, knives and uniforms.
“It doesn’t matter how you performed in the competition – whether you won or lost. It’s great to have a winner, but we believe the educational opportunity is paramount,” said Red Seal chef Peter Keith, one of the event organizers.
In its inaugural challenge, Morinville Community High School (MCHS) competes against heavyweights such as St. Joseph’s Catholic High School, M.E. LaZerte School, Archbishop Jordan Catholic High and Bev Facey High School.
The teams are given three hours to cook a three-course, restaurant-style dinner from pre-planned recipes. Judging is strict and based on more than just presentation, taste and temperature.
Teams are judged from the minute they walk in the door. Are they wearing the right uniform? Are they using proper safety and sanitary protocols while preparing food? Do teams serve each dish on time or do they miss deadlines?
The pressure is on and most teen chefs are bent over pots stirring soup, slicing garnishes or sliding sheets of pasta through a pasta maker. A few walk to the sink carrying dirty bowls, a slightly dazed look on their faces as the challenge’s complexity finally hits.
Unlike some groups that ease tension through jokes and laughter, the 27 students competing in the afternoon session are a quiet bunch. They are serious and focused on repeating the successes they rehearsed at school.
“The toughest thing is the timing and staying at ease throughout the day. When you look at the clock, it’s three hours until the end and it seems like a lot of time. But there are so many intricate things that have to be done,” said MCHS Grade 12 student Brad Bullock, 17.
The other two Morinville students are Grade 12 student Alicia Brost, 18, and Grade 10 student Conan Bolen, 15.
The trio is tasked with preparing a creamy ginger-carrot soup, followed by a chicken cacciatore entree served on pasta noodles and vegetables. The pièce de résistance is a mouth-watering chocolate raspberry mousse.
Brad is the team’s grill master and cuts up two fresh chickens. He takes out the wishbone, removes the spinal cord and cuts the remainder in eight pieces as breasts, thighs drumsticks and wings.
“We were given a very tight list of ingredients. We weren’t given much leeway for creativity. All we did was add salt, pepper, flour and brown the chicken pieces in olive oil and baked it in the oven,” Brad noted.
Meanwhile Alicia cuts carrots and measures ingredients for soup. The cooked carrots are pureed and returned to the pot.
“The difficulty is making sure the carrots are sweated enough to puree. If not, you’re left with chunks and you want it to be smooth.”
In the process a bit of broth is taken out of the pot and mixed with cream.
“I’m tempering the soup and making it more creamy. You don’t want it to curdle. You want it to be nice and smooth,” Alicia explains. At one point she turns the gas-fired burner down to better regulate the thick orange liquid.
In between stirring soup, she also slices green pepper julienne (sticks), and celery batonnet (sticks) for the tomato-based chicken cacciatore sauce.
At the other end of the table, Conan is busily melting bittersweet chocolate and butter for the dessert. He allows it to cool down and adds golden egg yolks one at a time. Gently, he folds in beaten egg whites and adds sugar.
“It did not turn out the way I wanted it to,” mutters Conan taking a tablespoon of mousse, dropping it on a plate while watching it spread out like a pancake.
“It’s not supposed to be this runny. It should be more fluffy.”
To try to salvage the mousse, he picks up the bowl and rests it in the freezer hoping the cold will firm up the dessert. Next he simmers raspberries, sugar, water and cornstarch to create a raspberry sauce and sets it aside.
Quietly working on another counter, Brad mixes flour and olive oil into balls of dough, and allows it to rest for 30 minutes. Once rested, the dough balls are passed through a pasta maker multiple times to create sheets of pasta.
He appears relaxed and self-assured running the pasta maker, and is quite chatty.
“We’ve had one or two practices a week for the last month. That’s allowed us to have the skills to be ready for the challenge,” Brad said. “I felt ready and I wanted to come in with a very relaxed approach.”
Once the sheets are completed, Brad rolls them up one by one and cuts matchstick size noodles about one-eighth-inch wide by four inches long.
It’s 2:55 p.m. and suddenly out of nowhere a voice shouts, “five minutes” to the soup presentation.
Alicia ladles the soup into bowls gently wiping any spills. She grabs a knife and quickly chops basil and spreads it over top the carrot-ginger liquid.
“Basil brings out the flavours of both the carrot and ginger,” she explained.
As soon as the bowls are laid before a row of judges, the students return to complete the chicken dish that will be called in 30 minutes.
“They have a five-minute window to present with no marks taken away. If they’re later than five minutes, they lose marks,” Keith noted referring to the prescribed rules.
As Alicia nervously plates the first course, Conan makes a white chocolate garnish. He melts two-thirds of his chocolate in a double boiler. Once the chocolate is melted, he adds the final third allowing the blend to cool and harden.
“It’s basically, tempering the chocolate,” Conan says.
Over at the stove, Alicia puts a pot of water on the burners to cook the fettucini-shaped noodles. While the water bubbles, Brad and Alicia check the tomato-based sauce and the chicken pieces baking in the oven.
Another voice shouts, “15 minutes.” The pressure heightens.
Time to cook the noodles. Brad drops them in boiling water for about four minutes.
Meanwhile Alicia stirs the tomato sauce and with a clean spoon samples it.
“It’s tangy, slightly bitter and a little bit salty,” she states.
Not quite ready for presentation, she tweaks it with a sprinkle of basil.
Brad drains water from the pasta and plates it creating a bed for the chicken and sauce. At almost the same moment, Alicia arrives to gracefully mound three pieces of chicken – breast, thigh and drumstick – on the pasta. Sauce is liberally ladled on, and voila, the plate is presentation ready.
“When I look at it, it looks pretty good. There was only one other group that stood out and I think we might be doing quite well,” Alicia says.
Both feel a weight is lifted from their shoulders. Conan, however, is still trying to revive his flattened mousse. He attempts to shape an oval and flips the mousse on a spoon multiple times.
Around the mousse, he dots the dessert plate with raspberry sauce. Retrieving the white chocolate garnish from the freezer, he breaks it into shards and tops the mousse along with a nice dollop of whipped cream. The dessert is then refrigerated until the call to present.
While wiping his hands on a dish cloth, Conan says, “It was a fun experience. I feel I could have done better, but it was fun.”
For competitors, the challenge is an opportunity to up their kitchen skills while testing the waters of a professional kitchen. And there’s the opportunity to apply for a generous scholarship.
As Paul Shufelt, chair of the high school culinary challenges, puts it, “I’m always impressed with their calibre of skills compared to myself at that age. I like to see what they come up with and I’m often most impressed by the desserts.”
The Canadian Culinary Federation also hosts the 2019 High School Culinary Challenge Awards Dinner, where the winners will be announced, on Monday, March 4. It takes place at Shaw Conference Centre at 6:30 p.m. Tickets range from $35 for a single ticket to $245 for a table of eight. Visit http://highschoolculinarychallenge.ca/awards-dinner/.
