Talented young chef tantalises tastebuds
A Highland Perthshire teenager is celebrating after winning the regional heat in a top cooking competition.
Fione Cruikshank won the Pitlochry High School heat of the UK National Rotary Young Chef of the Year competition, and will now go forward to represent Pitlochry in the next stage of the competition later this month.
Staged at the East Moulin Road school by the Rotary Club of Pitlochry, a total of 15 pupils put themselves forward for their nailbiting competition, with a ‘cook-off ’ held to find the best three young chefs.
They were then judged in the final for the chance to claim the soughtafter top prize.
The pupils’ two course meals were judged and scored by Chris Rowley, chef and proprietor of Ballintaggart Farm cook school in Grandtully and Louise Lothian, proprietor of Pitlochry’s Knockendarroch Hotel, at the school.
Fione wowed the judges with her main course of Cluniemore pheasant cooked in apple juice, with apple, celery and chestnuts in a cream sauce, served with a skirlie mashed potato cake and wilted kale.
The aspiring 14-year-old chef then presented a stellar dessert of blackcurrant posset with chocolate mint, using blackcurrants and mint collected from her own garden at home.
Fione had to see off stiff competition in the Pitlochry High School final from fellow pupils Mhairi Macfarlane and Lewis Murray.
Overall winner Fione was presented with a book token and a certificate for her success, as well as a special embroidered chef ’s jacket by Jenni Moncrieff, president of the Rotary Club of Pitlochry.
Fione will now go on to the district final in Dundee.
The showpiece occasion takes place in the City of Discovery on Saturday, January 27.
Louise Lothian, Pitlochry High pupils Lewis Murray, Mhairi Macfarlane and Fione Cruikshank, teacher Louise Wilkie, with Jenni Moncrieff and Chris Rowley