Ready to cook up storm at competition
Some of Timaru’s Ara Institute of Canterbury hospitality students are practising hard ahead of a big competition in Auckland next week.
Fresh from winning awards at the Southern Lights Salon Culinaire in Timaru in June, Ara cookery students and a food and beverage student will take on nine other tertiary institutes at the Nestle Toque D’Or.
Level 5 diploma in cooking student Joelle Snook, 20, is returning to the competition for the second time to try and take out National Commis Chef of the Year again.
Snook won the award the first time she entered in 2015.
Next Saturday night she will prepare a vegetarian entree, a pork main dish and a dessert which needed in incorporate Equagold.
‘‘You get to do any dessert you want to do,’’ she said.
Denice Marayag, 22, a Level 5 cookery and patisserie student, and Edsant Obillo, 22, a Level five cookery student, and their server, Level 3 food and beverage student Torryn Williams, 17, will compete on Thursday night.
Williams won the the top trainee waiter of the Southernlight competition, while Marayag and Obillo won medals for their efforts in the June competition.
Marayag said she and Obillo had had just five weeks to put together to put together their three course meal - a Japanese inspired salmon dish, lamb for their main dish and a dessert incorporating mango, strawberry and coconut.
The trio get 10 full run throughs in the Ara kitchen before the real deal.
‘‘Every day we’re doing the same thing better, every day we’re doing better and better,’’ Marayag said.
Marayag and Obillo both study full time and work full time at the Speights Ale House.
They will be up against students from tertiary institutes such as Otago Polytechnic’s Central Otago Campus, AUT University and New Zealand Defence Force.