Woof Woof!

As I said in my previous post, the Carver Culinary program competed in the New England Food Festival this past weekend at the Plymouth waterfront. Not knowing what to expect of this festival, we were all a little anxious to see the competition. After setting up, we all had one gear, and it was go. From filling up our displays with chocolate cups, to handing them out in front of our booth, as well as making our rounds throughout the tent to the folks walking around and other competitors, (as well as to the line waiting to get into the tent!) we were all over the place! We started to get the feeling that we may actually be doing all right when people were kindly denying our offers, saying "I've already had several, they were delicious, you guys have my vote." It wasn't until I myself heard that a dozen times that I too started to have good feelings about how we'd do. When 4 PM rolled around, we were all on edge waiting to hear the winners. After a few Judges’ choice awards, including judge's choice for best dessert (which did not go to us) I could see in all of us that we were starting to doubt ourselves. But not seconds after we all filled with doubt, we were awarded Judge's choice award for best booth design. We were just happy to have been acknowledged for something. But after a few People's choice awards, we heard our name again for People's Choice best booth design. Being acknowledged for more than one award was already above and beyond our expectations of the outcome of this event. The last of the People's choice awards was our category, desserts. When the judge presenting the awards said People's choice award for best dessert goes to Carver Middle High School, you could see in all of our eyes that we knew why we were there. But that wasn't even the tip of the iceberg. The last award given out, Best Overall, was awarded to... Carver Middle High School! I thought that we were all going to see our instructor with a bad back Chef Portelance do back flips! To know that a class full of high school kids, from a school that is NOT A VOCATIONAL school, not only won four awards, but took home Best Overall in a competition against several more-than capable, renowned professional restaurants made us all the more proud. We would like to acknowledge that we truly do appreciate the competition the other restaurants presented us with, as well as the support they all gave us. We would also like to thank everyone who came, folks from the community and beyond, for your support, as well as the voters and judges who allowed us to proudly bring home four awards. Also, I’d like to make a personal thank you from me as well as the rest of the culinary class to our instructor, Chef Daniel Portelance, for (though we had little decision over whether or not we’d compete) entering us into the festival that turned out to be a blast, and giving us the professional guidance that got us as far as it did. We had a great time competing, and we look forward to competing next year.


P.S. Our award-winning recipe will be posted tomorrow!!!

Underdogs can bark too!

Creating chocolate cups, though simple in concept, took a lot of work from us here at Carver Middle High School who are enrolled in the Culinary program. Melting down chocolate and pouring it into cup molds may seem easy enough. Creating a cranberry-white chocolate mousse, on paper, may not seem like an astonishing Culinary accomplishment. But when you must create enough to serve a bare minimum of 2,400 people for the New England Food Festival, held on the waterfront in Plymouth, Massachusetts, it can get a little hectic in the production process. When you have 15 kids working in one kitchen with a daily goal of 200+ chocolate cups, tension tends to skyrocket. But once we worked out the kinks, and began to cooperate as much as a classroom full of teenagers can, the ball started rolling. Here we are two days before the festival, a class full of students, (under the mentorship of a more-than-capable culinary teacher; a culinary consultant as well as former Executive Chef) ready to face head on professional restaurants from across Massachusetts. We are going into this with no regard for whether or not we come out on top, or on the absolute bottom. We are doing this for ourselves, to prove that we as well, high school students, can compete with the big boys, and are NOT afraid to do so.