Identifying culinary talents
THE HELP College of Arts and Technology’s (HELP CAT) Centre of Culinary Entrepreneurship and Hotel Management is on a mission to d iscover and nurture young chefs.
It recently organised the HELP CAT Nutri Chef Challenge 2017. This is an annual competition and is open to stud ents in Forms Five and SIx as well as Senior Mid d le 2 and 3 from second ary schools in Kuala Lumpur. The event is to identify new talents for the Malaysian culinary and hospitality ind ustry, and encourage young chefs to show their creativity and presentation skills.
The theme for this year’s competition was “French cuisine @ Healthy Eating”, where the participants had to prepare one main d ish and one d essert within three hours.
During the competition, stud ents had to showcase their knowledge related to d eveloping and following a recipe, preparation of a dish, and displaying the d ish before the jud ging session where it would be evaluated on flavour, taste and palatability.
Participating teams were allowed to bring their own ingred ients or use sponsored food prod - ucts by top brand s. Leong Jing Ying and Amelia Low Chuan Yin from SMK Taman Connaught emerged as champions after defeating 13 teams.
The competition took place at the two French kitchens in HELP CAT, and was judged by a team of qualified chefs such as Royale Chulan Bukit Bintang executive chef Raja Kamaroszaman Raja Zainal and Prima Baguz Sdn Bhd group executive chef Chef Ahmad Shafique.
Chef Raja Kamaroszaman, who has been a challenge judge for the last three years, said the event challenges the stud ents.
HELP CAT chef lecturer Chef Shanmugam Rajoo who is chairman of the Nutri Chef Challenge, has been organising the competition for the past five years.
“Some of the stud ents d isplayed knowledge and und erstand ing of the French cuisine. This shows that they have done research before participating in the challenge,” he added .
The Champion team won a full scholarship to pursue the Diploma in Culinary Arts at HELP CAT, in ad d ition to a cash prize of RM1,000, a trophy challenge, and a certificate of achievement.
There were attractive prizes for the first and second runners-up. Others includ ed the Most Creative and Innovative Award , Most Organised Team Award, and Best Food Presentation Award .