Iron Chef Challenge

By far the coolest thing we have been able to do in this program! I brought my Dad along as my guest and we both had a great time with this challenge. In particular, I wanted my Dad to get a better understanding of the activities that we were doing in this program. I think that he was mostly impressed with such bright students being able to wake up early on a Saturday haha.

Luckily for us two, we were paired with Alexia, Kali, Jenny, and Paul. It just so happened to work in my Dad and I's favor that both Jenny and Paul have previous Chef experiences so we delegated the Vietnamese recipe ideas to them. The key attribute to our success was not only having prior knowledge of how to cool from those two, but the way we communicated as a team given a time constraint. My Dad and I focused on getting the supplies and chopping the vegetables while Jenny and Paul planned out the recipe. Alexia and Kali created the idea for the appetizer and solely focused on that aspect. With division of labor and delegation, we were able to have an efficient process and created a delicious dish to serve to our judges.

The most interesting aspects was watching the judges faces while they ate each one of our dishes. It was neat to see how descriptive they were when describing the tastes and recommendations that they could detect. I remember the one chef knew when the secret ingredient was used in our dish and I could not imagine how she was able to pick that out of all the other spices and flavorings.

As I already mentioned, best event I have been apart of while in BLF. I am looking forward to similar challenges. I know my Dad had a great experience while cooking and meeting some of the fellows. In his words "The future looks bright".