May was a long time ago, but it has been a productive year and season. Last year in May I competed in what the American Culinary Federation (ACF) calls a K-comp. Below is the plate that I practiced and the guidelines I followed to do so. I find it funny that the higher up the culinary ladder you climb the less time you spend in the kitchen, competition helps fill that creative void and I hope sets a path for newer culinarians with talent to showcase themselves and develop the skills and techniques necessary foe success.
Category K —
Practical and Contemporary Hot-Food Cooking, Professional, Individual
• Competitors will fabricate and prepare four portions of a finished product based on the following main
course categories.
• Competitors have 15 minutes for set-up, 60 minutes to fabricate and cook, 10 additional minutes for
plating and 15 minutes for clean-up.
• Of the four portions prepared, three are for judges’ tasting and one is for display/critique.
K-8—Live Lobster
• Using 1-2 lb lobsters, fabricate and cook to recipe specifications. Other crustaceans/mollusks
may be incorporated with this, or other categories, also.
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| This is where the idea started, lobster with curry scented jus |
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| Plate 2.0, I saved a good number of the in-between photos. |
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| This was the design that I finally decided on, this was one of the final practice runs |
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| After fine tuning the plate, it was necessary to fine tune the equipment setup. |
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| MEP |
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| All the ducks in a row |
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| Competition plate, finished with two minutes to spare. |
Nice looking plate, chef. How did you make the roulade? And what are the other components on the plate? How did the comp go for you? Medal?
ReplyDeleteThank you, please excuse the delayed response....
ReplyDeleteThe roulade is made by creative cutting of the lobster tail, I will post something soon with pictures to better explain, I need visual aide to absorb information.... then I applied a layer of scallop mousseline and then the "loins" from the lobster tails, coated in piment Espelette, lemon zest and activa. Rolled the lot together, made a tight "sausage" in saran wrap and poached at 145 to an internal of 142. I will elaborate on the other components as well, but quickly, they are a roesti potato, orange glazed fennel and a zucchini and lobster cannelloni. The Sauce is a curried lobster jus with macerated raisins. In the competition I did well, scored a high silver and got to teach my cooks a few things in the process.