Culinary competition heats up
Bill McKay slices some scallions during the Boiling Point competition at the University of Connecticut’s annual Culinary Olympics in the Rome Commons Ballroom on Tuesday.
STORRS — While the University of Connecticut campus seemed barren due to students being away on winter break, one building was filled with tantalizing aromas and competitive spirits.
UConn’s Department of Dining Services held its 19th annual Culinary Olympics in the Rome Commons Ballroom Tuesday.
It was an opportunity for the talented chefs representing various dining halls on campus to flaunt their culinary skills.
The morning kicked off with a recipe contest, a presentation on decorating cakes and pastries and a hands-on demonstration of making homemade Greek food, including keftedes — meatballs — and horiatiki — classic Greek salad — by chef George Giotsas, owner of Little Mark’s Big BBQ in Vernon.
The day-long event, which was open to the public, transitioned over to the popular Boiling Point competition in the early afternoon.
This was a high-energy contest modeled after Food Network shows “Iron Chef America” and “Chopped.”
Previously held in the smaller Putnam Refectory building on campus years ago, Robert Landolphi, UConn’s assistant director of culinary development and the event’s host, said the Culinary Olympics have taken off in recent years.
“As you can see when you look around, there’s hundreds of people here whereas, when we did it at Putnam, we were lucky if we had a couple dozen,” Landolphi said. “It’s kind of taken on its own momentum.”
Similar to the format of “Chopped,” each of the 12 teams comprised of chefs from different UConn dining facilities were tasked with whipping up three tapas for each of the four judges within a 75-minute time limit.
However, there’s a twist — each team was required to incorporate ingredients provided to them in a mystery basket.
While tapas are a popular Spanish appetizer or snack, the following unconventional ingredients had to be utilized: duck wings, a black bean and sweet potato mash, a jelly doughnut, goat cheese and Indian pickled vegetables.
One team of three representing the McMahon Dining Hall — chefs Scott Chapman, Susan Chang and Charlie String — were no strangers to the challenge and had a system locked down.
“Charlie is our desserts guy and Susie is very good at pastas, wraps and she’s very good with her hands,” Chapman said as he was chopping red and green bell peppers.
After 75 minutes of high-intensity cooking, the team presented a sweet potato and bean empanada with sweet chili sauce, “Western Meets Eastern” fusion dumplings and fried doughnut bread pudding with a Chambord raspberry-lemonade sauce.
Their finished product ultimately earned second place at the end of the day.
Taste wasn’t the only quality the judges were looking for in the completed dishes, according to New York Times food critic and travel writer Rand Richards Cooper, who served as one of the four judges on the panel.
“The things we’re looking for is not just the taste of the food, but the look of the food, how well is it plated, is it colorful,” Cooper said. “Some things taste good, but three ingredients that are brown doesn’t look that great.”
Being a restaurant reviewer and a skilled kitchen chef who’s served on the judging panel for a number of years, Cooper said he continues to be impressed by the grace under pressure shown by the chefs year after year.
“A kitchen chef like me would quake in terror faced with this stuff,” Cooper said. “Some people have specialties in different kinds of cuisines, so they’re taking an unexpected ingredient that, say, wouldn’t be found in an Asian cuisine and then they assimilate it to the form of something like a dumpling. There’s a lot of spontaneous innovation that I think is so cool.”
Other judges on the Boiling Point competition panel included public relations, strategic marketing, community development and social networking representatives Kristen Fritz and Jeannette Punsoni Dardenne of Eat IN Connecticut and chef Christopher Prosperi, owner of Metro Bis Restaurant in Simsbury.
Originally published in The Chronicle on January 16, 2019.
