| Young chefs ‘cook off’
Heats have taken place in 15 schools with students from Key Stage 3 (Year 7-9) and Key Stage 4-5 (Year 10-12) being challenged to design and cook an original and imaginative meal incorporating five basic ingredients supplied by 3663. The ingredients were parsnip, potato, cabbage, thyme and vanilla. The final will be held at Thames Valley University, formerly Reading College, Crescent Road campus with a panel of professional judges from diferent areas of the catering industry watching closely. This year's judges are Marco Pierre White, Tom Aikens and Ashley Palmer-Watts, Heston Blumenthal's head chef at The Fat Duck in Bray, David Cavalier, food innovation director of Charlton House and Colin Robson-Wright from The New Mill restaurant. CBEBP are very proud that, not only does this competiton encourage young people to enjoy good food and cooking, but it promotes the area of catering and hospitality as a possible career choice they may never have considered before.
Up the food chain
SUBODH Gupta is the new age dabbawala. His tiffin carriers arrive on a sushi conveyer belt. However dont get caught up in the literal, since Gupta urges you to look for the metaphor in his latest exhibition, Stop Start at the Bodhi Art Gallery that premiered on March 1. In this piece I am talking about globalisation: The migration of culture through the medium of food. The work is titled Fate Matters, says Gupta sipping on a cup of chai, with less sugar of course. .
Obesity epidemic too big to fight alone
Obesity once was a word that conjured up images of fat Americans gorging on burgers in tacky fast-food chains or standing out as tourists because of their massive girths. How the tables have turned. Roly-poly New Zealanders have had the smirks wiped off their chubby faces by fat figures the World Health Organisation issued this week. For a country that prided itself on fitness and an outdoorsy lifestyle, we are looking more than a little porky. New Zealanders have been ranked a troubling 17th as the world's most obese people. We are fatter than Australians, the British, Canadians and Fijians and we are gaining on Americans. Overall, 68 per cent of us are classed as obese by the WHO. Our prevalence of obesity has risen dramatically as New Zealand grows more like the United States each day, with food in Texas-sized portions and car seats attached to our expanding bottoms.
And now, the meat sacrifice
Editor's note: This is Week 3 in our writer's experiment with giving up different foods. Next week: flour products. I loaded up on the bloody stuff the week before I knew I'd exile it from my life. I sampled 10 different chilis in one sitting. Fat wheels of soft salami. A pork burrito the size of a football. A bowl of raw fish at a Japanese restaurant. An entire plate of egg salad, shoveled frantically down my gullet with a spoon one afternoon, alone in the kitchen. Slabs of roasted cod spritzed with lemon. More ... much more. And then I awoke on a Monday to the sad conclusion of the flesh fiesta. I'd turned vegan. No meat, fish or eggs, plus the dairy I'd eliminated from my diet the previous week. And the first week of this journalistic experiment - I was removing categories of foods from my diet a week at a time to see how difficult it would be, and to find out if it affected my body and mood - I'd rejected sugar.
Japanese cuisine with a modern touch
However, a chat and short cooking stint in the kitchen with him would dispel any doubts on his culinary prowess, and justify his position as Hotel Maya's top chef. Teng's approach to cooking is fresh, innovative and in keeping with the city's current gastronomic pulse, which is clearly reflected in how he presents his food. "Young chefs like to cater to the demand of today's crowd, which is food that is straightforward yet different," he said, while whipping up a few ''sosaku'' dishes at the modern, zen-like kitchen of Still Waters, the hotel's flagship restaurant. ''Sosaku'' refers to modern Japanese cuisine with influences from various parts of the world - which is very much up Teng's alley. "I use European ingredients, play around with herbs and apply modern presentations to the food, but the basic Japanese rules still apply at this restaurant," he said.
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