H&C

29
Apr
2010

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Alaska Sea Food works with young chefs

Wild Alaska salmon with a parmesan crust

“On the 10th November last year, I wrote article on Alaska’s wild food (see November’s blogs in my archive). In it, I told you all about the sustainability of Alaskan sea foods.

Since then, the guys at Alaska Seafoods have been working with us to educate the chefs of tomorrow. They have sponsored a fundraising dinner where Alaskan wild salmon was used to produce a fantastic fish course and helped raise funds for our Culinary Arts Competition Team, allowing us to take students competing all over the UK and aboard as well as supplying us with booklets and Alaska Sea Food products for the students to use. They also worked with me and fellow lecturer Norman Fu by putting together a competition to see how much students had learnt about Alaskan sea foods.

For this we developed a competition where students had to use Alaska Wild Salmon or Alaska Wild Pacific Cod in recipes that would show off these products. All 90 second year students where asked to submit recipes; these were then judged and 15 were chosen to go through to the cook off final, but all these 15 students had already won a great prize as their recipes and photos of their dishes where to be included in a book showing Alaska Seafood’s work with Westminster Kingsway College, its students and promoting some of Alaska’s fantastic products.

The students produced an incredible array of variety and ingenuity in their dishes - really showing off just how good Alaska Wild Salmon and Alaska Wild Pacific Cod can be. Nine salmon, five cod and one combined salmon and cod recipe where produced by the students and it was up to the team from Alaska Seafoods, chef/lecturer Norman Fu, food photographer Steve Lee and myself to judge the competitors.

After 1.5 hours of cooking, each student produced two portions of their dishes - one for photography, the other for the judges. The judging was hard, but in the end three dishes were chosen.

Third was Ana Flavia Leite e Aguiar with her coconut, chili and lime crusted wild Pacific cod Served with wild rice, okra and red peppers.

Second was Kimberley Schmassmann with her pan fried wild Pacific cod on a puy lentils and chorizo cassole with sundried tomato butter and crispy leeks.

First place was Daniel Smith, with his sous vide wild Alaskan salmon with soft boiled quails’ eggs, dill mayonnaise, pea mousse and baby leek. Each student won £25, £50 and £200.

The judges liked all of the finalists for different reasons; the coconut, lime and chili crust added a new refreshing flavor that worked well with the fish, the lentils and chorizo visually looked stunning and ate even better and finally the sous vide salmon showed a new fashionable way of cooking that kept the fish moist and succulent. All the dishes worked well and the students did a fantastic job of matching the garnishes, sauces and dressings to enhance the flavor, colour and cut of each fish.

But Alaska Wild Salmon and Alaska Wild Cod are fantastic products in their own right. The story of their providence and sustainability is inspiring and chefs need to know about it; this is why all 15 of the entries that made it to the final plus five other dishes from myself and fellow lecturer Norman Fu are being put into a book. After the competition, I took all of the recipes and spent three days recreating the dishes at Steve Lee’s photography studio. Steve is a well known and acclaimed food photographer that over the years has worked with many celebrity chefs and supermarkets. Once recreated, the final shots could be taken for each dish and these would grace each recipe in the book. All the shots had to be a perfect representation of the dishes produced in the competition but styled for the camera.

Norman and I both learnt a lot about the world of food photography over these few days. The way the food is plated and its position on the plate is very different from what we are both used to. The reason being that when you take a photo you are looking at a 2D perspective of the item and therefore it must be positioned a certain way to play to the light and the camera but when we plate food normally we are looking at a 3D perspective in which we see much more of the plate and the items on it. The photography done, everyone was happy and the book is in the process of being put together and developed so watch this space for more details.”