Monday, June 20, 2016

mystery basket illustration

Warning: If you鈥檙e hungry, you might want to have a snack before reading this.听听

91制片厂 Dining brought home a silver medal from the food competition portion of UMass Amherst鈥檚 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 鈥渨ild card鈥 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 鈥 two appetizers and an entr茅e or one appetizer, one entr茅e and a dessert 鈥 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鈥檚 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.听

Jacques described the team鈥檚 success as 鈥渟atisfying.鈥

Illustrator: 
Loren Marple 鈥13 | Communications and Public Affairs | Loren.Marple@unh.edu | 603-862-0600