8 Moves and Counting!: Black Box Cooking Challenge

Tested my culinary skills at the Regents parents cooking challenge. What a fun event. The Sheraton hosted the event which was led by their head chef. Quite professional I must say and a bit intimidating. We were broken up into groups of 6 and given all fresh ingredients. Only had one burner at our station, the use of a shared grill, shared fryer, and a rice cooker. All ingredients and spices were based on traditional Thai cooking but our dishes could be as inventive as we wanted and didn't have to be Thai.

My group was a mix of nationalities. We had an Italian, a Mexican, a Thai, 2 Americans, and a man who was Portuguese in our group. The blend of nationalities gave our dishes a unique spin. We had 3 exceptional chefs on our team so we let them take the lead. The rest of us were the sous chefs running around collecting ingredients and chopping. The goal was to make 3 dishes for the judges to taste. We were judged on taste, creativity and presentation. Unfortunately we did not win but the experience was a win in my book. The dishes that were created from all the teams were fantastic. I was completely impressed with some of these peoples culinary skills. It put my recipe following cooking skills to shame. The team that won worked tamarind into all 3 of their dishes. I tasted the sauce of one of their plates and it was outstanding.

Overall a fantastic fun day. Following the cooking challenge the head chef then prepared us lunch with a little bubbles added to make the day a very festive event.

5 stations