Grand Valley's Fresh Food Co. in The Commons has never seen such nervous anticipation as it did during Wednesday's Chef Challenge. The competition pitted Grand Valley chefs against culinary teams from Central Michigan and Saginaw Valley State universities in an 'Iron Chef'-style contest of cooking skills and food savvy.
The three teams, working side by side, had exactly one hour to prepare five servings of four dishes -- an appetizer, soup, salad, and entr¿e -- in front of an audience of several hundred onlookers. They had chosen their main ingredients beforehand, but the competition's secret weapon -- the 'mystery ingredient' required to be incorporated into all dishes -- was revealed to them only seconds before the clock started ticking.
It was portobello mushrooms.
'We weren't planning on getting a vegetable for the mystery ingredient,' said Grand Valley Executive Chef Ryan Jones. Grand Valley's culinary team had hoped that the mystery item would be a meat, so hadn't included any in its selection of ingredients. Needless to say, the home chefs' dishes were vegetarian.
And apparently, they were delicious, well prepared, and beautifully presented. Four judges, including two professional chefs and Grand Valley administrators Pat Waring and Mick Doxey, tasted and scored all teams' meals. The verdict?
Grand Valley was rated No. 1!
Ryan's team scored 272 points out of a possible 320, Saginaw Valley came in second at 237, and Central (whose chefs won the first Chef's Challenge last fall and cooked at GVSU last week wearing CMU football jersies) came in third.
'We killed them with the salad,' reported Deb Rambadt, marketing manager for campus dining at GVSU, referring to Grand Valley's torn spinach salad arranged with grilled pineapple, salsa and toasted bread. And portobello mushrooms.
'Each one of the courses had a good flavor and they were highly creative in working with the mushroom,' said Waring, who was particularly impressed by Grand Valley's soup -- a connsume (broth) -- which used just the juice of the mushrooms. She also had high praise for the team's entr¿e, 'by far the best,' presentation, and 'fabulous' teamwork.
The competition was extremely labor intensive, but fun, said Ryan. Will there be a rematch? You bet -- probably in the fall semester.
