High anxiety rising

This is getting serious. Preliminaries begin this Saturday, and the students gathering in culinary instructor Jeff Stanhill’s kitchen at Liberty High School, Peoria, are not so much grim as intent.

With 21 here for competition practice, it’s crowded, too. Several have already completed at least one competition practice; all have been practicing technique and recipes at home and school.

Jill Smith gets things started with a lengthy review. If it had a formal title, it would be What Judges Want – Previews of Competition.

What judges want, it turns out, might be summarized by exacting technique, attention to detail and perfect presentation. Oh – and that stuff on the plate should actually taste good, too.

(We’ll post a summarized list of important points about competition later this week.)

Students were taking their time during this mock competition. Salads, set for a mere 35 minutes prep to presentation, were taking anywhere from two to 20 minutes more (most took around 10 or 12 more minutes, but every minute counts and anxiety levels were rising).

Omelets went more smoothly in terms of time and overall technique. As plates went down in the judging area, students eyed one another’s work carefully.

Judgment – and advice

Jill’s brought along Kirsten Kromann, a “professional foodie and blogger” from Seattle, Wash., to help.

As they begin working their way through the salad and omelet line-up, the kitchen quiets with Jill’s announcement that, with preliminaries on Saturday, she intends to be “extra hard today.”

She picks up a salad plate and begins.

“Your slices and cuts need to the same size. Look, here’s a slice that’s up a little. Use the tip of your paring knife as a tool and push it down before you turn the salad out. Shake it, tip it – no liquid should come out. Your plates need to be clean. Now, I’m gonna spread it out…”

Judges spread the salad apart to “look for something wrong,” she says. “See, here’s a weird piece of onion (it’s unevenly cut), and here’s two pieces still together – the cut isn’t finished.

“You need a little more cilantro. It should be evenly minced, almost like dust.”

Then she and Kirsten taste. “Not bad,” Jill says. “But it’s kinda blah. There’s no zing.”

They grill the student chef closely on the amounts of oil, sugar, salt and lime juice in the dressing.

Then they’re on to the omelet.

“I need to remind you, you’re not doing an American omelet. You need to shake and stir, shake and stir the eggs. Everything should be creamy. And back off on the pepper.”

When the omelet’s finally tasted, though, she says – except for the pepper – the taste is good.

Down the line they move, salads, then omelets, picking apart technique and taste as easily as the salads spread across the plates.

Brianna Z. has been taking notes. “Make it faster, watch the seeds (in the cucumber), keep your cuts in proportion…I’ve learned a lot and she hasn’t even judged mine yet.”