Imparting Culinary Skills, Knowledges and Recipes To You ♥: 2015

Chips and Guacamole Recipe

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Part two - How To Prepare for a Culinary Competition

Link to part 1 - Click here

After the chef has decided on the category and section for you, skim through the competition rule book again. Make sure that you go through the small details thoroughly. To give you a more realistic scenario, I will use my competition experience as a guide. I was assigned to Hot cooking, Individual, Class GH 15 - (Fish/Seafood, either alone or as a combination)

This is what I’ve gathered from the rule book:

1. Judging criteria are as followed: Mise-En-Place 10 points, Professional Preparation 25 points, Service 5 points, Arrangement and Presentation 10 points, Taste 50 points - First rule

2. We are given 45 minutes to present one main course dish for 2 person on individual plates with appropriate garnishes - Second Rule

3. While one plate is for display, another is for judging - Third Rule

4. The competition hall is a open kitchen. Each kitchen station will be equipped with 2 double burner stove and a power socket. Sink, fridges and oven will be provided on sharing basis - Fourth rule

5. Pre-preparation is allowed but only if stated - Fifth rule

This is what each rules means:

First rule: Taste basically covers half of the score sheet. After all, it is a cooking competition. Likewise, taste is the only judging criteria that is bias and unpredictable. If one dislike your dish due to personal preference, you can get low marks. It can go either ways, good or bad. Therefore it is important to plan smartly.
Second rule: With the given time of 45 minutes, plan a dish that you think is possible to execute. Do not create a dish just so to impress the judges. No matter how good the taste or the presentation is, if you can’t present your dish on time, you are penalize for late service; or worst, you can get disqualified. A bad dish example would be cod fish with spinach and herb butter wrapped in puff pastry served with hollandaise sauce, vegetable cassoulet and saffron risotto. If you can present the given dish in 45 minutes, you are a genius.
Third Rule: One dish is only needed for judging. Therefore, if you think that you are not going to make it on time, focus on just one plating. Even though the plate that you submitted for display is messy, it will not be judged. I have witnessed it myself. I remembered this person who presented a unfinished plating and still manage to win gold.
Forth Rule: You will be surprise if you went there unprepared. Since the oven is provided on a sharing basis, you will have no control over it. As one says, every man for himself. I have seen a few trying to sabotage other people dish by altering the temperature. Therefore, it is best to bring your own oven. As the kitchen provides a power socket, it should not be a problem at all. Also, I recommend that you bring a multi power adapter that has several power sockets. In this way, you will be able to plug in more kitchen equipments like the food processor, food blender, immersion blender.
Fifth rule: Be mindful of what you can bring and what you can’t bring, what you can do and what you can’t do. This is because your points will be deducted if you did not follow the rule. For example, it says that fish/seafood/shellfish can be clean, filleted but not portioned or cooked. However, to cut time, you decided to portion the fish beforehand. If you got caught, you will leave a bad first impression and throughout the competition, you will be judged more harshly. Nevertheless, play with the rules. Ask your mentor for advice. Their experience will tell you the right thing to do. For example, I wanted to remove the skin of cherry tomato to make confit tomato. Side Note: Confit, is a cooking process that cooks food in flavored oil under low temperature. The best way to remove tomato skin is by blanching in hot water and quickly soak in ice water. However, the rule stated that vegetables can be peeled and cut but not cooked. Since the cherry tomato undergoes some sort of cooking, I thought that blanching is not allowed. It was until my chef told me that it’s fine to do so. Why? Ask your mentor for answer…

What the judges look out for in a dish and how to plan a dish smartly?

Taken from CityGas FaceBook Photo

The weightage for the judging score on a dish is as followed: protein (50%), sauce (25%), starch (20) and vegetable (5%).

As my category suggested - fish/seafood either alone or as a combination, it is important that the meat is the star of the dish. I used both fish and seafood. Choose your ingredients wisely. I preferred those that can be found easily in the local supermarket. In this way, I can practice more with the ingredients and hone my skills. Having to said that, uncommon ingredients such like (zucchini flower, baby squash, edible flower, pigeon, rabbits) can set you dish apart from the rest. For fish, I recommend cod fish, sea bass, salmon and halibut. For seafood, I recommend tiger prawn, squid, baby octopus and scallops. Marinate/cure the meat helps to intensify the flavor and mist the odor of the meat.

For sauce, I recommend something that pairs well with the protein. It would be the best if it goes well with the other components in the dish. A good sauce is flavorful, clear looking and has a good flow consistency. I highly suggest basic sauce such as velouté sauce or jus. If not, try something that can show off your technical skill such as tbeurre blanc and hollandaise sauce.

For starch, it is up to you. Bread, legumes, grains, risotto, polenta, potato are few of the excellent choices. In recent news, Quinoa has been named as one of the few food trend. This is because quinoa is packed with nutrients and it’s beneficial to our body– something that is worth trying.

For vegetables, try to include both leafy and non leafy vegetables. When vegetables are use right, it can help to brighten the dish. This is because vegetables are colourful. Few great choices are tomato, broccoli, spinach, yellow squash, brussels sprouts, carrot, asparagus, chervil and parleys. Also, the best way to cook vegetable is by poaching in butter stock. Butter helps to glaze the vegetable, making it look more appetizing.

What I go through and what I learn from my training?

I always start by writing a bunch of ideas on a piece of paper. For some inspiration, look through culinary magazine and books or google search ‘fine dining plate or famous chef creation’. At the end, I decided to go ahead with Seabass topped with Croton and saffron beurre blanc sauce, pumpkin puree, baby corn, red onion relish, confit tomato and quinoa cracker.

The next step was to sketch the dish out. Since I can’t draw, I decided to make the dish out. The dish does not need to be tasty as it’s only for sketching. The image below is the dish I created.

I transferred the photo to the computer, used photoshop to rotate canvas and traced it using a tracing paper. I took the drawing to my chef and asked for opinion. After an hour of fruitful discussion, we decided to change pumpkin puree to lemon risotto, baby corn to carrot and asparagus. The following week, I try out the recipe and attemptted to perfect it.

Every Saturday, we headed back to school for a feedback session. All students participating in the competition are gathered together for the chef to taste and to give feedback. From the comments we received, we will go back to our respective school and work on our dishes. Once more, my dish changed again to Seabass topped with Pistachio & Croton served with beurre blanc sauce, prawn risotto, red onion relish, confit tomato, asparagus, baby carrot, broccoli and fried fish skin

It is common for chef to change your dish frequently. Thus, it is important to adapt make the changes and move on. For instance, I had to make last minute changes. I was told that the portion size was too small for the fish. The chef decided to add prawn farce to my fish dish. Final presentation is down below.

Each time you cook, it varies. Sometime it can be just nice; sometime it can too sweet, sour or salty. Adjusting seasoning during cooking competition can lead to time wastage. Therefore, it is important to perfect your recipe. Bring your recipe card to the kitchen. Use sensitive weighting scale to measure ingredients and seasoning.. When the chef commented that it is too salty or sweet, you can adjust the seasoning right away.

According to the time you are given to present the dish, type out a work flow/ Timeline . In my case, I was given 45 minutes. Therefore, during practices, I would try to hit the 35 minutes mark. We tend to cook slower in a unfamiliar environment. Thus, give yourself 10 minutes buffer time. Work in a small area as you never know how big the competition kitchen is. Believe me, working in a small area is super challenging as there is space constraint and you need space to put your kitchen instruments. Don’t rush, be calm and work neat, clean, fast and precise.

Training is tough and it can demoralize one person’s self esteem. Never give up. In the end, when you stand on the podium receiving your award, it will be all worth it. If you have any question that you would like me to answer, feel free to comment in the comment section down below or email me at officialfoodinstyle@gmail.com.