Iron Chef Competition Heats Up
January 15th, 2009 Posted in Online Exclusive, Undergraduate Experience | Tags: House Life, Quincy House, Winter 2009
Team Pickeled Penguins, captained by Erin Chenyan Yu ‘10 (right), took the prize.
(Photo by Gus Freedman)
The setting: Quincy House dining hall. The competitors: Thirty students divided into six teams hungering to display their consummate culinary skills. The challenge: Incorporate three locally harvested Georges Bank sea scallops into each delectable, beautifully presented plate. And so, with the clock running, Quincy’s fourth annual Iron Chef competition, modeled after the popular Food Network television show, began.
The event is the brainchild of Quincy Co-Master Deb Gehrke, Quincy Chef Production Manager Dianna MacPhee, and Quincy Dining Manager Mark Hayes. Each team receives a small budget to purchase groceries, which supplement items from the dining hall kitchen. Celebrating the chef is nothing new for Harvard University Dining Services head Ted Mayer, who has spearheaded a movement to shift the University’s food culture from institutional dining to chef-based, sustainable cooking.
Mayer served as one of the judges who, like their TV counterparts, did not sugarcoat their criticism. Verdicts included “perfect, except that it was served stone-cold” and “who lost the salt shaker?” The biggest demerits went to teams whose ingredients ignored the seasons, including asparagus shipped up from the Southern Hemisphere.
Ultimately, Team Pickled Penguins, captained by Erin Chenyan Yu ’10, prevailed with a seasonal plate of scallops wrapped in bacon with caramelized pear. Yu attributed their success to the talents of teammate Marcelo Cerullo ’10, who said, “I’ve learned to cook from trial and error, plus watching my mom.” Judge Paul O’Connell of Chez Henri restaurant pronounced their dish “perfectly seasoned—creativity does not mean throwing in every available ingredient.”
Overall, the judges stressed that “simple is always better,” in Mayer’s words, as he praised the Golden Skillet–winning side dish of butternut squash risotto with saffron. Nearby, spectators tasted the leftovers and copied the recipes, perhaps already planning their own future delicious meals.
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