Audience cheers on teen-chef teams in cook-off

At 6:04 p.m., a cry for garlic punctured the din of 15 voices in various stages of panic, with cleavers pounding, knives fasttapping toward the prepping deadline.

“Keep it moving, y’all!” A blender roared, plantains sizzled. “Need olive oil!” “Knives behind you!” Chop-chop-chopchop. “C’mon Yellow Team, big push right here!”

Upstairs, a crowd was gathering in the theater at the Ryan Arts Center in McKees Rocks for the long-awaited Steel Chef Cook-Off — a recent live cooking competition of three teams, each consisting of two chefs and three students from area high schools.

The cook-off was a fundraiser for Focus on Renewal, an organization founded in 1969 to support McKees Rocks and Stowe. It sold 105 tickets at $20 each.

Including a raffle, it raised $4,000 for its teen programs, which include cooking classes, said Peter Spynda, the director of arts and culture.

The students applied to take part. They met the chefs eight weeks before, visited their restaurants and then met every Monday for training.

Most of the students said they hope to build careers as chefs or food entrepreneurs.

Lights went up on the stage a little before 7 p.m. The teams carried containers of prepped ingredients and equipment to their tables.

The students shot grinning glances up at the full house, but they quickly got on their game.

As emcee Bill Fuller, corporate chef of the Big Burrito Group, kept the crowd busy with a trivia contest, the ensemble on stage began stirring, sloshing, reaching, pouring, turning, whisking and darting like 15 avantgarde dancers.

Soon, smoke and aromas wafted from each team’s burner — basil, citrus, garlic, coconut milk and hissing slabs of steak.

Each team’s chefs got to use a secret ingredient. Otherwise they all had access to the same ones — ribeye steak, goat cheese, many vegetables, fruits and herbs, eggs, milk, heavy cream, bread discs that resembled English muffins and, of course, butter and oil.

At the outset, each team separated to brainstorm and plan duties.

“Do you like garlicky kale?” Kevin Sousa, owner of Superior Motors in Braddock, asked his Red Team. “It’d be awesome with the [onion] puree.”

Tom DeGori, director of nutrition at Ohio Valley Hospital, suggested to Team Blue a tomato jam.

“Sweet or savory?” asked his partner chef, Norraset Nareedokmai, owner of the Silk Elephant and Bangkok Balcony in Squirrel Hill.

“What do you want to marinate it in?” Claudy Pierre, founder of Eminent Hospitality Solutions, a catering and consulting company, asked his yellow team, referring to the steak.

“Lemon,” said Ry’Anna Moore, an 11th-grader at Obama Academy.

When they all convened in the kitchen to begin prepping, they shared everything but their secrets.

Mr. Nareedokmai said he had never done anything like this and “has had such a good experience.”

Team Yellow, led by Mr. Pierre and Keyla Nogueira Cook, owner of Keyla Cooks LLC, a catering company, won the plating award for its vegetable-stuffed apple, coconut pepper soup, root veggie medley inside an onion ring topped with two crispy plantain slices.

The teamwork award went to Team Red, led by Mr. Sousa and Jess Rattanni, executive chef at the Pittsburgh Zoo & PPG Aquarium. They presented an elegantly simple plate of bright kale lavished with garlic, apple and diced peppers framing a piece of steak with mole and onion puree.

Team Blue won for originality and taste and the grand prize. Its plate was, from bottom to top: garlic toast; lemongrass sticky rice; a paste of blackberry, goat cheese and basil; rare steak slices; a compote of mushroom cooked in coconut milk with kaffir lime leaves, and a dab of sauteed garlic chives on top.