My Night as a Chef
Written By: Dylan York on Thu, Mar 13th 2008
Throughout my career I have worked in every part of the wine and restaurant industry except for the kitchen, this all changed this past Monday night. If you have been reading along, you may recall that I recently participated as a judge for the Taste of the Caribbean practice dinner for the Grenada team. These dinners are composed of two teams, A and B, which compete against each other in order to practice for the upcoming competition in Miami. In Miami, the A team from Grenada will compete against a team of chefs from every country in the Caribbean. This past Monday I was invited back as a judge but when I arrived the B team was short three people and they were in desperate need for more chefs. With fifty people confirmed for the dinner and only four hours until the first course needed to be dropped, I was roped in to cook. I have been in the restaurant business since I was 18 years old and have been cooking since I was a kid. Most of my best friends have been chefs, so I've had some great influences, but never cooked for more than eight or so friends at one time. This event was for fifty people whom I have never met and they would be judging my food!
The competition is set up much like the Food Network's Iron Chef with a community table stacked full of local ingredients. However, we had a lot more time and we had two secret ingredients of lamb and mahi mahi. Starting at 4:00 pm we had thirty minutes to design a three course menu and an hour to source from the community table. The entire meal had to be completed by 7:00 pm and the 1st course needed to hit the table by 7:30. It started out with three of us: two professional chefs and one sommelier while two other guys showed up an hour later to assist. Our theme for the appetizers and entrees were duos. We did a hot and cold Mahi Mahi appetizer, which consisted of a blackened filet and a fresh ceviche with coconut milk. For the entrée we prepared a papaya and cashew stuffed leg of lamb served over polenta and a Caribbean lamb tagine over callaloo rice pilaf. For dessert we did a chocolate ganache, made from local chocolate, topped with a banana papaya mousse with crispy sweet potato strings dusted in sugar.
I was put in charge of the lamb tagine while the rest of the pros dealt with the other courses. I prepared a Caribbean style lamb tagine using plantains, local hot peppers, and Caribbean spices and slow cooked it for 2 hours. Everything turned out great considering we had five guys who have never cooked together not to mention one of them not even being professionally trained. At the end of the night the totals were in and our team lost by a small margin of only 8 points. The manager of the competition came up to me at the end and complemented me on my tagine dish. I was pretty proud of myself in the kitchen but I think I am going to stick with entertaining at home.
