It's been a busy week with private parties at Bear and my first cooking competition this past weekend. The CRFA’s (Canadian Restaurant and Foodservice Association) 2009 ApEx Conference was held at Exhibition Park on April 5th and 6th.
Four restaurants and their Chefs were chosen to compete in a live cooking competition called Halifax Restaurant Chef Wars. They were Hamachi House, The Press Gang , Gio, and Bear. I was partnered with Ian Milner, a very talented Chef and good friend.
We worked hard the night before to get ready for our first battle against Hamachi house, preparing our menu using required ingredients. Our Black Box items were chicken, bacon, oysters, and lobster. MMMM… tasty… I showed up early to meet with Ian and Chef Bear to figure out our game plan. We were busy that night because it was Saturday, but we still managed to get some prep done for the competition the next day.
Sunday morning we met at the restaurant at 9:30, to finish some last minute preparations. We packed up Chefs truck and left for the battle. We arrived and set up quickly. It was all very exciting… it was fun abut also a little nerve racking. We started at noon, and it was one hour long. It flew by. We had to prepare three dishes using those four main ingredients.
Our first course was a seafood appetizer. A medallion of lobster tail rolled in tarragon, lobster and broccoli salad stuffed pickled onion heart, broccoli and cilantro puree and an oyster with gazpacho sauce. We very happy with the way the plate came together; all of the flavors were really fresh and bright. So were the colours . The judges loved the dish. Chef/Judge Peter Dewer, commented that it was "the best appetizer I've had in my life" (Chronicle Herald).
We started working on the main course while the judges tasted our seafood offering. We butter poached the chicken breasts in a vacuumed sealed bag with a thermo-circulator. This is a machine that keeps the water at an exact temperature to allow slow and even cooking to a precise doneness. We wanted to make sure that we used all of the chicken, so we braised the legs in blueberry juice with the bones and some vegetables. We pulled the leg meat to make a ragout and reduced the blueberry chicken braising liquid into a sauce. Alongside the chicken we served a roasted squash puree on the plate as well in a fresh ravioli, asparagus ribbons, Portobello mushroom and crispy bacon. All of the sweet flavors of the cinnamon blueberry braise sauce and roasted squash worked well with the simple and earthy flavors in the vegetable ragout.
We had help with our dessert from our pastry chef from Bear. A strawberry cookie with white chocolate and pistachio dust sat atop a caramel Bavarian. We served it with macerated strawberries and raspberries and red wine syrup.
The whole time, Hamachi House was close on our tails. Every plate we put up, they followed shortly with their offering. All of their plates were well thought out and visually tasty, but when it came down to the judge’s decision, they gave us the nod. They announced that Bear restaurant would return the next day to compete against the winner of the afternoon battle between The Press Gang and Gio.
And with that, I had my first competition under my belt, a win at that, and a big smile on my face. We finished cleaning up our workstation, packed up our equipment, got our black box ingredients for the next day and went back to the restaurant for dinner service and figure out what to do for for the Finals!
+ More Photos on Flickr
+ Chronicle Herald Coverage
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