Give us only one hour to prepare, cook and serve a three-course restaurant quality meal, and you’d be lucky if anything made it on the plate, let alone food that was actually edible.
Okay, maybe it wouldn’t be that much of a disaster, but it wouldn’t be the type of food you’ve come to expect when you hear the words restaurant quality.
But we’re also not training to be professional chefs like the students who make up the Concord Regional Technical Center culinary team.
If you hadn’t heard, the team recently traveled to Dallas (that’s in Texas) to compete in the National Prostart Invitational. It’s just where the best high school culinary teams from each state gathered to decide who was tops in the country. No big deal.
Well actually, it was a pretty big deal for the CRTC squad because this was the first year the program competed in Prostart and they made it all the way to nationals after winning the state cooking battle.
So in just 60 minutes, the team of Anthony Costello, Chase Haines, Megan Fraser and Katherine Killam (Brandon Diaz was the alternate) had to whip up an appetizer, entree and dessert for the judges to taste, critique and analyze.
It may have taken them an extra 75 seconds to put the finishing touches on the meal, but that’s not bad considering the fact that at one point they were 13 minutes behind schedule during the competition.
“They did very well,” said CRTC culinary instructor Bob McIntosh. “Their plates looked really good.”
Out of 46 teams, the CRTC squad placed 22nd overall with 68.966 points, out of a possible 105.
The meal consisted of a braised bistro filet starter with exotic mushrooms and shallots, atop a gorgonzola and basil potato pancake with a Merlot sauce. The entree, Salmon Shoals Style, came with a three cheese couscous and quinoa, butternut squash, cranberry sauteed Swiss chard, a New Hampshire maple mustard sauce and fried leeks.
For dessert, it was a white chocolate, strawberry and poppy seed mousse in dark chocolate tear drops with strawberry coulis, poppy seed brittle and sugar spirals.
And for the icing on the cake, they all got job offers
“Those kind of things speak for themselves,” McIntosh said.
And we’re sorry, because we know this probably made you hungry.
