Pressure-cooker environment
Culinary wizardry came to the class at Te Puke High School last week with a master chef competition for year 12 and 13 food tech students.
The pressure cooker environment of competitive food prep was the culmination of a course that had as its goal the creation of a new dish for Te Puke’s Daily Cafe.
Cafe manager Rebecka Billington says the idea began with a conversation last year, but it was only earlier this year that things really began to take shape.
She says the idea was to introduce students to the cafe and create a menu item that would attract their age group.
Teacher Carolyn Norquay explains.
“Food technology is about the kids discovering an issue and a number of these kids came up with things like ‘we’ve got this amazing cafe that is there for the community, but a lot of teenagers don’t chose to go there’.”
Some of the ideas involved introducing cultural elements to the menu that would make certain foods that weren’t freely available more accessible, or ways to use the produce that is donated to the cafe.
From there they came up with ideas, then tested them, getting feedback from Rebecka.
“Students also had to investigate what is The Daily, who goes there, what about the profit side of it, what about local produce, what about storage, time to prepare — all those things should be reflected in the produced they’ve come up with.”
After preparing against the clock, the eight teams’ offerings were judged by Happy Puku chef Stephen Wilson, Daily chef Aidin King and Rebecka.
“Judging was harder than we thought, but we all had the same top three with the only variation being in the second and third,” says Rebecka.
German exchange student Carla Meucke was third with a German-style crumble using kiwifruit, served with a Germanstyle vanilla cream.
She changed out some of the traditional ingredients to make the desert more healthy. Stephen said the crumble had an excellent balance and was worthy of a cafe.
Pulled pork rolls made by Pomare Butler, Hinerangi Butler and Maddison Butler were judged to be second.
Stephen said the pork was delicious.
“It put a smile on my face because I’m usually disappointed in that sort of thing. It’s the kind of thing that in a cafe is very well appreciated if its done right.”
The winners were Danielle Hook and Alazae Davis who produced soft pretzels with three different finishes — Nutella, cheese and ham, and cinnamon sugar.. Stephen said the platter was “out of the norm.”
“It was creative and introduced another culture, it had variety and was executed really well.”
He said the soft pretzels offered a variety of options and could be used with savoury or sweet additions, similar to a crepe, which made it a good product for a cafe.