September 17, 2010
CULN 207
Weekly Reflection 4

Coming into the fundamentals of competition I was under the assumption that competition was about cooking; flavor profiles, skills, and technique. Of course it’s all that, but there’s a whole component to it that was quite vague to me – the whole set of skills that’s involved in producing a cold platter.

The skills needed to develop a cold platter for competition is of course the most important skills necessary in this industry, and that is to cook. But the cold platter takes that to a whole new level. Not only do you need to understand the fundamentals of cooking, but you also need to be creative to the point of pushing the bar, and very, very critical of yourself. And personally, despite all the necessary skills and attitudes of a team, what’s ironic is that what’s least necessary in a competition team is a competitive nature.

The cold platter that our group was in charge of was to create a salmon “teardrop “terrine with accompanying garnishes and salad. When we chose the protein among the other proteins (reindeer and red snapper being the other choices) it seemed challenging enough for our group. (And out of all honesty, I don’t think I could’ve handled much more that that personally and as a team.) I honestly didn’t understand the concept of the particular teardrop terrine; I didn’t understand how we were to do it, or what exactly we were doing with it. I was quite oblivious to the whole concept of this section of competition. After our task was explained more in depth I better understood that not only would we be doing this preparation as a competition skill, but that we’d also be doing this for our Ho’okipa function to actually be cooked, served, and eaten.

So, the first step was to create flavor profiles; what was going to work with salmon? This was not only a challenging task, but it was also educating. The resource we relied on for flavors was the book The Flavor Bible: The Essential Guide to Culinary by contributing authors Andrew Dornenburg, Karen Page. This is an excellent resource that I could get just as lost in as I did in Escoffier. In the end of our team’s research we came up with: a salmon teardrop with a scallop and chive mousseline center with a champagne vinaigrette, an arranged salad of asparagus, artichoke heart, and red onion with a grapefruit vodka vinaigrette, and lastly pineapple compote in a lavosh cup garnish.

After the developing phase we were happy with the results – everything came together and flavors worked well. The next step was the “glazing”. Now, I’ve heard of this term being used, but I didn’t know the mechanics of glazing. So, this was a completely new skill I learned this week, and any additional knowledge (even though this particular end product is inedible) will impact of my overall success in life as a cook and chef. I realized this when I took my camera to work and showed Town Restaurant cook Mark Noguchi and Chef Dave Caldiero; they both new of this aspect of the culinary industry and had helpful critiques of it, and then they both joked and asked how it tasted.

Although neither of them got fully engaged in competition they obviously are aware of the skill, and I’m sure if needed they could pull it off as well. What would’ve really changed my view of the competition course and it’s relation to the industry is if they had no idea of what terrines, and the skill of cold platter and glazing was. But now knowing all the skill, creativeness, understanding of flavors, and extreme attention to details it takes in competition, I have a newly developed understanding and appreciation to the culinary competition industry.