Turning up the heat
Taos High students to compete in national culinary competition
Taos High Culinary Arts will be cooking for the National ProStart Invitational in Washington, D.C., competing against nine other teams, each representing a state or U.S. territory, a trip culinary arts teacher Adam Medina already made with one team before. This time, he has gold on his mind.
A fundraising event was held Tuesday evening (April 4) to help fund their trip to D.C. A long banquet table stretched down a hallway, populated by family, friends and relatives chatting and eating, creating plenty of noise, which Medina and other mentors hoped would mimic the cacophonous atmosphere of the impending competition.
Santiago Tafoya, 18; Alimar Espinoza-Sack, 18; Meili Brown, 16; Isaiah Gonzales, 17; and Talia Tank, 16, compose the team of five students going to the nationals. On the night of the fundraiser, they were coordinated and concentrated behind butane burners. Their station, two tables in an ‘L’ shape, reflected the same one they’ll be using at the competition, meaning they had no electricity or running water — no room for mistakes.
“We try and do as many practices as we can where they’re uncomfortable,” Medina said. “They can do as many practices as they want perfectly and then go to state competition, and it’s a completely different setting, and they freak out. So, having practices like this — I think this is the second one we’ve had with a public audience — really helps them to build a laser focus.”
“At the competition, there’s gonna be a lot of noise,” Tom Schuch, the New Mexico state coordinator for ProStart, said. “There’ll be 10 teams working (all at the same time); they’ll have lots of family members there cheering them on very loudly, so we wanted to create an atmosphere by inviting 50 or 60 or 70 people here
tonight to watch and to talk and create noise. The whole idea is for the team to focus, to block out all distractions.”
The group didn’t just have a noisy backdrop; they also had a panel of five judges to cater to. Elijah Safford and Gabriel Farkash of ACEQ, Roger Mariana of Snakedance, Silva Popaz formerly of the Love Apple and Ky Quintanilla of Martyrs Steakhouse judged the team, not only on the food they made, but also on their performance.
At one point during the rush, one of the butane burners malfunctioned, a glitch they were able to remedy within 40 seconds. According to Schuch, these students have to know about the equipment they’re using, especially in case something fails.
Unfazed by the looming judges, the streamlined cooks meticulously prepared their dishes under the pressure of time. Having to prepare two threecourse meals in an hour, the team just finished wiping the plate with a cloth napkin as the clock ran to zero, all of them holding their hands up. As the proverbial smoke cleared, six plates revealed themselves on the table, two plates for each course, each one delicately presented.
Meanwhile, the banquet hall was being served by a bustling kitchen preparing the same meals as the five culinarians at their station, just at a much larger scale. Students were coordinated by Medina and his father, Adam Medina Sr., the owner of Ranchos Plaza Grill, as well as other graduates of the Taos High Culinary Arts program. Different stations in the kitchen pulsated with energy, supervisors calling out commands and the assembly line being tweaked for maximum efficiency.
Although he was hired in 2018, this will be the second team Medina has taken to nationals. However, Taos High has won the ProStart Hospitality Cup for six years in a row, a traveling trophy that is awarded to the program with the highest combined score in both culinary and management skills.
“This is the best team I’ve ever had, so we’re pushing for the gold,” Medina said. “We’re going with the mindset that we’re gonna win. We’ve gone before with the mindset that, ‘hey, this is a good experience,’ and it is, but sometimes we take it more as a vacation. This year, this team is focusing on winning. We want to make Taos and New Mexico proud because we’re representing the whole state.”
In D.C., the team will face a panel of judges much more critical, and it’s not just the food they must worry about perfecting — they also must present themselves professionally and practice sanitation, something that has become especially critical after the pandemic, one judge noted on Tuesday. Other judges that night even made comments regarding their image, including having pressed uniforms and trimming facial hair.
Of the many challenges they face, being from a higher altitude doesn’t help. Going from Taos to D.C. brings them to sea level, meaning water will boil hotter and faster, and cooking times will vary from what they’re used to. On Tuesday, the team told the panel of judges they would be practicing in their hotel room to adjust to the change in elevation. If they don’t tweak the cooking times, they might not finish within an hour, meaning they’ll be penalized, according to Schuch.
“You can’t just cook for yourself and what you like to taste,” Tafoya said about cooking in a competition. “You have to think about what other people expect and what other people want to taste, in terms of spice and sweetness. Personal preference can have an impact on your dish.”
The five teammates have to know how to work together and coordinate. The manager of the team walks around the other four, making sure everything is in order, taste-testing different pieces of the dish. When she calls out the time, every team member yells “heard!”
“When we cook for ourselves, we don’t usually use a recipe,” Espinoza-Sack said. “We just wing it and do it how we like, but when we’re cooking in the ‘L,’ everything is on a strict schedule, and everything has to be of a certain quality.”
The team is set to go to D.C. to compete with their contemporaries from May 1-5 at the Washington Hilton. The competition begins on May 2.