Warning: If you’re hungry, you might want to have a snack before reading this.
UNH Dining brought home a silver medal from the food competition portion of UMass Amherst’s Tastes of the World Culinary Conference recently.
Chef Kevin Jacques and cook Derrick Shaw, along with teammates from Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University, competed against 14 other teams from the U.S. and Canada in the “wild card” competition, which required teams to prepare dishes using ingredients from a mystery basket. Each team had a sneak peek into the basket the day before the event. On competition day, they had one hour to form a menu and gather basket ingredients to make three dishes — two appetizers and an entrée or one appetizer, one entrée and a dessert — as well as a buffet plate to feed 10. Then the teams had three hours to produce everything.
Jacques led the team to silver with this mouth-watering array:
Lemongrass Poached Prawn and Avocado Salad
Pan-Seared Teres Major Medallions with a Pistachio Arugula Pesto and Farro Salad
Flour-Dusted Branzino with Poblano Cilantro Jasmine Rice and Lime Beurre Blanc
Teres Major is a shoulder cut of beef. Branzino is a Mediterranean sea bass.
The team’s buffet platter included pan-seared duck breast and barbacoa duck confit with roasted eggplant and a fresh cherry jalapeno salsa served with homemade flour tortillas.
Jacques described the team’s success as “satisfying.”
