{"id":9133,"date":"2010-01-19T11:08:18","date_gmt":"2010-01-19T15:08:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=9133"},"modified":"2011-05-31T12:41:45","modified_gmt":"2011-05-31T16:41:45","slug":"uconn-chefs-cook-up-some-winners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2010\/01\/uconn-chefs-cook-up-some-winners\/","title":{"rendered":"UConn Chefs Cook Up Some Winners"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"<p>Chef<\/a>
Chef Charlie String of Northwest Dining Unit prepares Filets of Beef Wellington with Peppercorn Melange Sauce during the Boiling Point competition in Rome Ballroom. Photos by Gail Merrill<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Sterling Townes raced across the floor, his hand cupping a spoon filled with the ingredients of a mango chutney and apple pear napoleon. Bringing the spoon to his girlfriend\u2019s lips, he looked hopeful. Smiling, she nodded. It was good.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe better like it,\u201d Townes said, after returning to his station at the 10th annual Culinary Olympics. \u201cWe\u2019re in too deep to change it now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Townes, a chef at the South Campus dining hall, was one of 16 teams of UConn chefs participating in this year\u2019s extravaganza on Jan. 14. The contest gave each team 90 minutes to prepare and serve three tapas \u2013 small bites, or appetizers \u2013 using a set group of surprise ingredients that had to be featured in their selections. The ingredients included Alaskan King Crab legs, boursin cheese, fennel, mango chutney, horseradish root, blue corn meal, and tomatillos. The teams also had access to dozens of regular ingredients, a bounty of fruits, breads, vegetables, cheeses, spices, and more.<\/p>\n

\"<p>A<\/a>
A well stocked pantry supplies contestants with ingredients. In the foreground is Katie Dumas from Team 2, Union Street Market.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

UConn\u2019s Culinary Olympics, which include a cake decorating contest, a recipe contest, cooking demonstrations, and the Boiling Point competition, were launched by the Department of Dining Services in 2001 to showcase the talents of its staff and give them something to look forward to during the semester break.<\/p>\n

Since then, the event has grown by leaps and bounds. This year\u2019s cadre of 16 teams is almost four times the number of competitors in that first year. The popularity of the occasion forced it out of the kitchen at Putnam Refectory and into the Rome Ballroom, where a sea of cooking stations spread across more than half the room.<\/p>\n

With starting times staggered so the four judges would always receive hot food, the room was a hive of activity for nearly four hours. Chefs pushed through the crowd of onlookers to grab additional ingredients from the pantry, fetch hot water or ice from the ballroom\u2019s kitchen, and exchange scrawled notes with teammates, as they decided what to do with the main ingredients they had been presented with.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going with stuffed tomatillo with crab and boursin cheese, and mango chutney on top,\u201d said Anthony Copeland, a chef with University Catering, as he began to prepare the appetizer.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo go with the tomatillos,\u201d interjected Hector Vega, one of his partners. \u201cThe tomatillos aren\u2019t working.\u201d<\/p>\n

Copeland smiled and shrugged. They\u2019d be stuffing plum tomatoes instead.<\/p>\n

\"<p>Chefs<\/a>
Chefs from Team 6, Union Street Market, discuss their menu during the Boiling Point competition. From left, Richard Granja, Peter Devel, and Bill McKay.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Several tables down, Lisa Charbonneau, working with two colleagues from Northwest Dining Hall, allowed that she had no idea what to do with the horseradish, one of the surprise ingredients. Nearby, Nick Otka, from Gelfenbein Dining Hall in Towers, grimaced as he looked at the King Crab legs. He had seen them before, he said, but never worked with them. As he struggled to shell the bright red delicacy, colleagues watching from the side yelled encouragement \u2013 and tips on the proper way to shell crab legs.<\/p>\n

\u201cHey, no cheating,\u201d a competitor yelled.<\/p>\n

The new location was a boon for the 100 or so guests attending the event. By taking the work out of a crowded kitchen in Putnam Refectory \u2013 too crowded to allow anybody but chefs in the room \u2013 to the wide open expanse of the Rome Ballroom, people were able to walk among the teams, watch what they were cooking, and ask questions.<\/p>\n

\"<p>Wayne<\/a>
Wayne Norman of WILI radio interviews Chef Sammy Nieves during the Boiling Point competition. Nieves represented Team 7 from McMahon Dining Unit.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Throughout the afternoon, host Wayne Norman of WILI radio and Robert Landolphi, the culinary operations manager who has taken the lead in the event, mingled among the chefs with microphones, giving the crowd a heads up about what was being made at each station.<\/p>\n

Dennis Pierce, director of dining services, was pleased with the new location.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had to move it here because of the sheer volume of competitors,\u201d he said \u201cBut now that we\u2019re here, it\u2019s clear this is a much better venue. People can smell it, see it, get an idea how to cook something. I think it also enhances the pressure on the teams, who have a limited amount of time to cook something wonderful, but now also have to deal with the constant scrutiny of the crowd.\u201d<\/p>\n

The new venue did have one drawback \u2013 instead of stoves and ovens, the teams had to prepare their tapas armed only with two hot plates and a chafing dish. In the back room where the standard ingredients were kept, the teams also had access to blenders and food processors. But the lack of serious equipment didn\u2019t seem to bother anybody, least of all the chefs, who leaped into action as soon as they opened their box of surprise ingredients.<\/p>\n

As for Townes, whose girlfriend Lisa sampled his wares? Turns out she wasn\u2019t the only one who enjoyed his napoleon \u2013 he and colleagues Scott Chapman and Charles Griffin took first place in Boiling Point, matching the mango chutney pastry with blue corn crab leg with garlic horseradish aioli, and a shrimp and tomatillo crepe with a mango beurre blanc.<\/p>\n

The team of Jim Buell, Ana Martinez, and Leonel Francisco, from Whitney dining hall, finished second, serving a prosciutto fennel crab roll, shrimp and crab fennel sausage, and a crab cake with tomatillo salsa. A team from the Union Street Market \u2013 Eddie Torres, Amy Hallman, and Patricia Ruffino \u2013 finished third, whipping up a ginger crab salsa verde, mozzarella, prosciutto stuffed cabbage with an apple glaze, and shrimp on toast with horseradish boursin and green onions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chefs from Dining Services face off in UConn’s Culinary Olympics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[37],"class_list":["post-9133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-17 19:55:27","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9133"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37391,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9133\/revisions\/37391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9133"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=9133"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=9133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}