A Bust at Nationals

A Bust at Nationals

By: Amy Green

Three months of competition preparation lead to many, many, many problems that were not expected at all. With all the timed practices, knife skills practicing done, and a menu set in place we were ready to go to Charlotte, North Carolina and show everyone what a little school from Illinois could do.

With a complicated menu, no ovens and only two portable burners, not to mention everyone staring at you while you cook, this was going to be our biggest challenge yet.  We stood outside the room for about an hour, all of us going over our tasks for that one hour period while I was trying to stay confident and gave everyone else something to look forward to.

Our team was called into the room and we were escorted to our station, with 10 other teams already cooking and the timer counting time down, we could feel the tension in the room and we started to get excited and nervous at the same time. We had just enough time for one more pep talk given by me and to organize ourselves. We set up our cutting boards, knives and grabed all of the products we each needed for that time period. As we were setting up we hear a second timer counts down, “10…9…8... 7…”  to the start of our one hour. We looked at each other, and we knew we had each other’s back if anything happened. He continued, “3…2...1.” All of us started on our assigned tasks, one team mate started both poaching liquids on the burns, while the other two cleaned, seasoned and prepped the pears for the dessert and the scallop seafood sausage for the appetizer. Mean while I started prepping the asparagus, pealing the outer skin and cutting off the ends.  My second task was to start cleaning the other components for the entrée.  The timer yelled out, “15 minutes gone”.

As the timer yelled the time out, a judge came by our station and started asking us questions, this threw us off and out of the loop. The seafood sausage went in the water and took longer than expected; we had to cook off the sausage as fast as possible with only 30 minutes left.  The poached pear for dessert was done along with the cayenne ganache that would be put where the core use to be. It was my turn for the burner and this is where everything went downhill. I knew we only had 20 minutes left and we were behind. I got my pan hot and started sautéing the white asparagus, I tried to rush the asparagus, then I added the red wine, but that just slowed down the cooking time. My heart started pounding and the adrenaline kicked in, there was no way to break my deep concentration. The voices in my head were silenced along with all the noise going on around me. The timer yelled out, “15 minutes left, good luck!” You could hear the room go silent while everyone watches us scramble to reduce our sauce, and get one more pan hot enough to cook the ostrich.

Time seemed to stop as I was replaying all of our timed practices in my head. I started to think to myself how could we have gotten this far behind. The pan was ready for the ostrich, the loud sizzle got everyone excited, and this was the sign that we were going to be able to get food on the plate. The dessert and appetizer were already being plated. While the ostrich was cooking, the timer called out, “10 minutes left!” I flip the ostrich over to cook the second side the pounding of my heart and stares from the audience, inspired us to work harder and faster. The ostrich was not cooking fast enough, the sauce still as much of a liquid as they come and everything was unraveling and falling apart.

“5 minutes  left!” screamed the timer, I pull off the ostrich and hope that it was cooked enough, while the sauce was boiling away all we could do was to plate the asparagus, and hope the sauce would come together in time. “2 minutes left!” we all looked at each other, I started to slice the ostrich and it was still raw, with no time left we had no choice but to put it on the plate. Our hearts dropped in disappointment knowing with a seared piece of meat we would have a very little chance at placing in the top 5.  The timer counted down, “10… 9…8...” we look at and sauce, and still not reduced, we tasted it and still not much black berry flavor showing through.  “5… 4… 3...” I had to make a decision and with seconds left we had to put the liquid on the plate if we wanted any chance at all. “2... 1... Utensils down, walk away from your plates and start cleaning up.”

While we went home empty handed, we all walked away with many lessons learned. Organization, double checking your work, sanitation, timing and not everything will turn out perfect. This experience has brought me to where I am now.