There were five styles chosen and five chefs (well, three chefs and two line cooks, to be perfectly honest) were asked to cook in each of the amazingly state-of-the-art kitchens. From 11:00 to 2:00, we were asked to showcase our talents and feed the 300+ passers by that paid the ticket price to join us.
My dish consisted of a local/ seasonal dish of a trinity of ravioli; Fresh thyme pasta filled with wild mushrooms and ricotta, carrot tomato pasta filled with duck confit and spinach pasta filled with spinach and cheese. Each of the three mini hand-made raviolis (900 to be exact!) were placed on a small puddle of butternut squash soup (you know, the award winner I posted about a few blogs back?) and topped with toasted butternut squash seeds, local micro greens and a really nice extra virgin olive oil. Very clean, colorful and autumnal. I, and everyone who ate it, was impressed and loved every bite of it.
My buddy in the house near me made his own blue corn tortillas and stuffed them with the peoples choice of beef, fish or chicken and topped them each with a slew of condiments, pretty delicious. So good, in fact, I was pretty concerned that his would win the little contest we were all trying to overcome. There was a gas grill on the line for the chef that had the most votes for "Best Dish". As far as everyone could tell, I was a show-in.
I spent the previous three days preparing for this "event". Hand-rolling 900 mini raviolis and pureeing 5 gallons of butternut squash soup. Unfortunately, that doesn't just happen in an afternoon. Especially when you're the chef for a busy caterer and restaurant.
Unfortunately, at the end of it all, the winning dish was not mine. The chef that won was a super nice guy, but his scallop was WAAYYY over cooked, which really annoyed me to lose to that sort of cooking 101 stuff.
But, at the end of it all I had a great time. I bumped into a couple folks from a private catering I did a few months ago and got to support a couple local farmers, all was good in the end.
We chalked the winning dish up to politics and since I know a few influential people read this blog, I'll leave it at that.
Anyway, at least the chef was a nice guy, would have made it that much worse if he was a dick, lol.
More pics to come, but check these out:
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