Competing Chefs

June 1998

Being a chef is about coping with pressure every mealtime, getting quality food to the customers' table within very limited periods of time. Add to this the physical pressures of a busy kitchen, extremes of temperature, lots of sharp implements, large and heavy objects filled with boiling fluids. You have to be fast but you have to be careful, a good team player, know your products well, and, most of all, you have to serve great food.

Just imagine all this and the additional pressure of having 14 master chefs peering over your shoulder at every movement of your knife, whisk, addition of seasoning and visibly marking your performance. All whilst you and your team are trying to prepare from scratch and serve up a three course meal in around 2 hours. Although a diner may get served in this time in a restaurant, the kitchen will have spent many hours beforehand doing all the preparations. But this punishing schedule is what teams of apprentice chefs undergo during the cooking competitions held at the TAFE colleges.

Over the past six weeks I've watched this tortuous procedure twice in the kitchens of the Northern Melbourne Institute of TAFE, at the end of May for the inaugural Vic TAFE Cooking Challenge for Apprentice Cooks and then last week for the Daryl Cox Memorial Trophy.

Last week, Jason Brusolo, George Calombaris, Ineka Lebehen and Lisa Morrison from the Hotel Sofitel won the Daryl Cox Memorial Trophy with an outstanding menu of Trout Terrine, Herb crusted Veal with calves liver tortellini and thyme scented veal jus and a Macadamia mousse with blueberry icecream. A second team from the same hotel won the quality Award for best dessert, a Delice of Chocolate with macadamia icecream and red wine poached pear. At the end of May apprentices studying at the Gordon Institute of TAFE (Sally Salvana of Big Mouth, St Kilda; Thomas Sang of Tousson's, Geelong and Brett van der Vliet of the Lorne Hotel) won the inaugural Vic TAFE Cooking Challenge.

A number of the young cooks competing in both these competitions demonstrated quite high levels of skill, even in their first years of apprenticeship. They also seemed to stay surprisingly calm even with well respected Melbourne chefs standing at their elbow, amongst those judging the two competitions were Gina Dimitrakopoulos, George Hill, Thierry Jacoby, Geoff Lindsay, Greg Malouf, Paul Millist, Laurent Pommey, Loretta Sartori, Jimmy Shu, Michele Usci, all prepared to give up a day from their own kitchens to watch, make notes and to taste all the dishes. I wondered if they were out talent spotting, perhaps with a long term view because no serious chef would poach an indentured apprentice from another employer. They might, however, recall them some years later for qualified positions. It seems that the motivation of the industry leaders in supporting these competitions is to do everything possible to keep encouraging young people not only to enter the profession but to stay in it, to strive to develop and not to take shortcuts. Without young cooks prepared to do dishes properly, we'll have no chefs to teach the next generation and, as the Minister for Tourism and Small Business, Louise Asher, pointed out at the Daryl Cox Award presentation, this is an industry in short supply of practitioners. She estimated that another 16,000 cooks would be needed to service the hospitality industry within two years.

This is the 13th year of that Award and it is distinguished from other cooking competitions by the element of the "mystery box". Each team of four apprentices has to prepare a three course menu without knowing in advance what ingredients they will have to use. So no recipes can be practised and no special preparations smuggled in. They can only cook with what's given to them at the beginning of the competition. Countdown starts from the moment they unveil the box. Forty five minutes to decide what to cook and then 2 1/2 hours to prepare all courses. Some teams lost time agonising about what to do, others decided within minutes of unveiling the Top Cut racks of veal and all the little unlabelled containers of mysterious fluids and dried goods to be identified (such as fish sauce, balsamic, sea salt, tamarind paste. Vince McSweeny, the team leader of the Sheraton (pictured above), had not only written out the menu but had his dishes sketched out in different colours ready for his team to start well within the allotted time. One team were confused about ingredients and set to preparing a menu with lamb (not correctly identifying the veal ) and with 'Jerusalem' rather than the globe artichokes they had been given.

Despite the mistakes and the tension in the kitchen, all the teams produced the dishes within the allotted time. And then they had to watch the judges poking, prodding, sniffing and slurping at the dishes they had assembled with such care. They took it like seasoned troupers, no temperament, no tears. And many of them will go through this rigorous schedule to compete again next year .

Competition organisers would like to get contenders from interstate too. For enquiries about the Vic TAFE Cooking Challenge, call Greg Payne, Northern Melbourne Institute of TAFE 9269 1325 and for the Daryl Cox Memorial Award, call Simone McGregor, AHHA 9822 0900.