Grand Final of Australia's largest apprentice chef culinary competition

Grand Final of Australia's largest apprentice chef culinary competition rewards tomorrow's chefs with $17,000 worth of prizes.

Yesterday (28th August 2012) saw the culmination of several months worth of regional heats in NSW, ACT and VIC with the Grand Final of the 2012 HTN Apprentice Chef Culinary Competition.

The Grand Final was hosted by TAFE NSW Northern Sydney Institute, Ryde College who supplied three kitchens for the 27 competitors to compete against each other.

Each of the Grand Finalists had already won their regional heat in their year and pocketed industry prizes including vouchers from long time supporter Fraser and Hughes.  The prizes at the Grand Final were on display for added incentive to succeed and included hampers from Krio Krush, books from Meat & Livestock Australia and Futura Training and a Scooter. 

Each kitchen hosted an apprentice year and was overseen by a total of 10 highly experienced judges hand selected from HTN and industry and included HTN's Official Patron Peter Howard.

Each competitor was required to present a three course menu suitable for service of a fine dining standard.  All 1st and 2nd Year Apprentices were given a list of ingredients and a menu one month in advance while the 3rd Year Apprentices had a mystery box and were required to select their ingredients and create a menu on the day. 

HTN also used this event to thank the corporate sponsors for their ongoing support throughout 2012. 

The results of the Grand Final were:

1st Year Apprentices

1st Place: James Milazzo - Tetsuya

2nd Place: Felicity Dunstan - The Bathers Pavilion (HTN Apprentice)

3rd Place: Ling Ying Huang - Diplomat Canberra's Boutique Hotel

Merit: Peter Tavernese - Ripples at Chowder Bay (HTN Apprentice)

2nd Year Apprentices

1st Place: Rosie Firth - Royal Canberra Golf Club

2nd Place: Rod Parbery - The Sebel Parramatta

3rd Place: Cecilia Tibbertsma - Gastronomy

Merit: George Mirosevich - Silo Restaurant and Lounge (HTN Apprentice)

3rd Year Apprentices

1st Place: Emma Chedzey - The Crystal Room Restaurant

2nd Place: Thomas Boyd - Restaurant Mason

3rd Place: Lily Dowden - Grazing Restaurant

Merit: Fuji Taukatelata - Campbelltown Golf Club (HTN Apprentice)

Winner of the Encouragement Award: Kirra Parsons - Vicolo

Felicity Dunstan of Bathers Pavilion was the HTN Apprentice with the highest points on the day and therefore won a Motor Scooter and Helmet valued at $3,000.  

Congratulations to all 27 competitors and the above winners.

HTN is a not for profit, group training organisation established by industry, for industry to employ hospitality apprentices and trainees and thus return to industry highly qualified skilled technicians for tomorrow.  HTN now employs hundreds of apprentice chefs and hospitality trainees throughout NSW, VIC and the ACT and is the leading hospitality specific group employer in Australia.

Visiting chefs prepare farewell dinner in vineyard

 

Junior chef Melanie Robinson of Muskoka, Ontario adds a platter of local trout to the banquet table of a farewell dinner prepared by she and her three colleagues, as they wrap up a two-week exchange visit with chefs in the Okanagan in a local vineyard.

Judie Steeves/Capital News

By Judie Steeves - Kelowna Capital News
Published: August 27, 2012 8:00 AM 

As the sun slipped down below the western hills across Okanagan Lake, wisps of smoke rose from the barbecue amongst the grapevines, eggplants and fruit trees at the Djordjevich family’s Stoney Paradise organic farm in East Kelowna.

Seated around a linen-draped table, silhouettes of a couple of dozen guests could be seen enjoying a meal made almost entirely from locally-sourced products, most of which were picked that day from the vines, plants and trees that surrounded the clearing where dinner was served.

Organized by the Okanagan Chefs Association, it was a farewell dinner for the four junior chefs from all across Canada, prepared by those young people in thanks for the hospitality shown during their two-week exchange visit.

Each also contributed a unique item brought from their home culinary region to the dishes they prepared, including red lentils, maple syrup, mustards and sunflower seeds.

Melanie Robinson of Muskoka, Candice Edonomakos of Toronto, Kimberley Knourek of Regina and Ryan Baker from Lethbridge agreed the most remarkable concept they would take home with them was one thing they found is done quite differently in the Okanagan.

“Everything here comes straight from the fields to the restaurants,” explained Baker, who said he was heading home to create a garden outside the kitchen of the restaurant where he works.

Armed with their broader knowledge of Okanagan cuisine after a week touring game ranches, organic gardens and orchards, cheesemakers, wineries such as Mission Hill and Quails’ Gate and working in restaurant kitchens such as RauDZ Regional Table, the Grapevine at Gray Monk Estate Winery, the Bistro at Summerhill and the Wild Apple at Manteo—all agreed that fresh is best.

This was the first of what will become an annual exchange for junior chefs from across Canada, organized by the Canadian Culinary Federation and sponsored by Saputo, to provide an opportunity for them to explore a new culinary region. Next year it will be hosted by Prince Edward Island chefs.

Dinner guests included local chefs Willi Franz, Rod Butters, Geoffrey Couper, Jesse Croy, Roger Sleiman and Jon Garratt as well as special guest and president of the CCFCC, Donald Gyurkovits from Vancouver.

Formation of The Young Chefs Club in South Africa

Welcome aboard our new Young Chefs Club from South Africa! :)

Go on... click on the picture link and LIKE their Facebook page to get updates.

Parent’s Day Gala Dinner 2012

  

Parent’s Day Gala Dinner 2012

“Una Noche Fantastico Latino Americano”

“Welcome to the Parent’s Day!” that words were mostly heard for 5 days, from 13-17 July 2012. We, the students of Trisakti Institute of Tourism just held an event for our parents as a small token of all they have given to us, their unconditional love, their encouragement, their knowledge and their financial assistance in allowing us to pursue a rewarding career in the hospitality industry in the near future. 

The main point of this event is to reconcile the broken relationship and to strengthen the bond between parents and children. 180 guests a day, 4 course menu at IDR250,000 per guest. Our the team planned all from scratch until we could serve the best of us at this event. And I had the good fortune of playing a part in the kitchen team of this event.

Our General Manager, Bryan Octavianus, took Latin America as our event’s theme. For us the kitchen team, that theme is kind of interesting yet challenging. 7 months is the time limit for us to look for the best suppliers, sponsorships, and creating the menu! While we also still need to do our daily routine classes.

Our team comprises of 15 staff: Executive Chef, Sous Chef, CDP appetizer, CDP soup, CDP Main Course, Demi Chef for each section, and Commi for each section. We face many problems on our way to success. We didn’t trust each other as a team, we didn’t support each other, and that problems drove us down. Thanks God, we had advisors that could help us solve our internal problems. Mr.Bondan Pambudi, Rendy Kongs, Johardi, our lecturers, our seniors that had been chosen as our advisors. Since we are still unprofessional Chef nor Cook, literally, we need a lot of advice from them to help us. Through the course, we learned to support and to trust each other, and collectively worked as a team.

A month to “D” day, we had finally fixed our menu! We had Tropicana Empanadas for our appetizer Green Peas Soup; Stuffed Tex-mex Chicken for our Main Course; and Poppy Seed Cake Mango Mousse as the dessert. However, we were short on funds to sustain the event, and that was a big headache for us. We were responsible for this event, and we had to persevere to make it work.

By faith, we continued to hold our event to fulfill our passion of giving our parents something, that they will keep in memory forever. Day 1 went quite well but still not good enough, our food tasted good, but we didn’t get the speed. Day 2 was much better, food tasted good, speed was good but, we had to loose our Sous Chef, Miki who had to fly to Bali the next morning for an internship. We lost one of our valuable staff, we’re lost some of our power.

Day 3 was like a “hell” day, everything looked good until the event started. We forgot to recheck the food, so we found the mashed potato spoilt, and that was frustrating, our service began to slow down, and was even worse than our first day. We felt we let down the parents who came at that day (my parents came that day too). We were visibly upset, we cried because we failed to run this job smoothly. But, our teammates from other department cheered us on and encouraged us to move forward, and that lifted up our spirits to fight for the rest of the event.

Day 4, we were doing the best service, our food tasted very good (the guest said), we caught up the speed, and we finished very good! Amazingly good, in fact. Yay! We continued preparing some stuff till late night that day, and we enjoyed working together as a team, we sang, we dance, we shared jokes while prepping for tomorrow’s service.

Day 5, the last day of our events, 3 VVIP tables, from representatives of Education Ministries, representatives of the institute, sponsors, lecturers, and 15 others VIP tables of our parents! Heartbeats were pumping at exponential rate, we needed to make sure everything would go as smooth as silk. And guess what? We had done it perfectly! We were super happy! All our guests were impressed with the services! From the front office staff, cake shop products, the shows, the menu, the food, the waiters, everything was just perfect. And there’s another surprise, we had more than enough money to pay our bills! What a relieving day it was!

That’s our 7-month long story of struggles and challenges, condensed into an article. 5 days fighting in our own warzone, and a moment of victory defeating and even defying our very own limits. We took great pride in our success, and our parents were proud of our achievements. We will keep making them proud. For me, it’s been a learning curve journey with the kitchen team, a concoction of happiness, sadness, anger, everything I felt with this team just brought me closer to them,  I knew I had a new family, a family that supports each other no matter what mistakes we made, but will fight together to reach the light at the end of the tunnel. I felt blessed being a part of them, and I love my Kitchen team!

Patrese Vito

Student @ Trisakti Institute of Tourism

Jakarta, Indonesia

Fund raising event for the Australian National Junior Culinary Team

Chef Kurt von Buren, Head Chef of Twin Creeks Golf & Country Club hosted the above 3 course dinner including beer, wine and soft drinks, on 2 July 2012. 

All funds raised that evening will be used to get the team to the competition.

The team will represent Australia in upcoming culinary events as they work towards the Culinary Olympics in Erfurt, Germany 2012.

The team members are selected from all over Australia. Guests had the chance of meeting the team members as they prepared competition dishes for the Australian Team Dinner.

Global Development of Young Chefs Committee

One of the main tasks of the Young Chefs  Development team is to grow the Young Chefs Clubs globally and we hope with the support of all continental directors and Presidents we shall see this happen.

Global Development of Young Chefs

Designation			Name	Country
Chairman			Andy Cuthbert	United Arab Emirates
Vice-Chariman			Alan Orreal	Singapore
Member			Dale Lyman	Australia
Member			Jodi-Anne Pearton	South Africa
Member			Clinton Zhu	China
Member			Miroslav Kubec	Czech Republic
Ambassador			David Kral	Czech Republic
Ambassador			Rasmus Munk	Denmark
Ambassador			Mojmir Marko Siftar	Slovenia
Ambassador			Jonathan Garrett	Canada
Ambassador			Jesper Jek	Singapore
Ambassador			Sergey Sinitsyn	Russia

Congress Diary of a Young Chef, by Belinda Ng

WACS – Congress 2012
Congress Diary of a Young Chef (Page 23 of WorldChefs - July 2012 issue)

Belinda Ng from the Singapore Junior Chefs Club Learns a Thing or Two


Today was another interesting day at the Bill Gallagher Junior Chefs Forum. Chef Rick Moonen shared about Sustainable Seafood, and how it is important to source ingredients from the right suppliers, to ensure that suppliers are doing their part to keep the eco-environment sustainable. Some examples are such as not over-fishing/over trawling, and also reduce by-catch by fishing with sustainable methods instead of trawling. A given example was Shrimp trawling, where there was a 20:1 discard ratio.

Possible good solutions would be marine aquaculture. But it is important that they maintain the aquaculture in a closed contained system, and not in the ocean, as this will cause other possible risk to the environment, such as overcrowding that could lead to illnesses of the fishes, effluence, etc. Which then leads to the introduction of antibiotics, pesticides/germicides, to the environment, affecting ocean ecosystem as a whole.

As chefs, it is possible that we make a difference! Chef Rick shared his definition of sustainability, which is “not taking an active role in the extinction of a species”, which can help prevent the extinction of certain species. An example would be the “Give Swordfish a Break” campaign.

What really set me thinking was Eric Nilsson’s speech, titled “Home-made from the factory”, where he encouraged people to look at labels. When a packaging say “home-made” is it really home made? Look at the labels carefully and see what is in there. What are you eating? Are there any  chemicals? He showed pictures from Peter Menzel’s book, “What I eat?”, highlighting what different households/families around the world eat in a week, and how many eat natural food, and also, how many actually consume processed foods.

It was an awakening moment. I’m starting to think, “Am I eating what I really am eating?” If you realised the types of additives that are in the market, it is even possible to create the “flavour” of strawberry, without
even using a single strawberry.
Honestly, how many people really look at the label when buying food these days? With so many  convenience  food available in the market today, and with the busy lifestyle, most of us would just buy frozen convenience food off the shelf, as our hungry late night snack. But it is time, that we start looking
at what we are eating! I would like to urge all young culinarians, to look at the label, the next time they go shopping at the supermarket or when they pass a convenience store!

Welcome aboard to our 4 New Young Ambassadors:

David Kral - Czech Republic

Rasmus Munk - Denmark

Mojmir Siftar - Slovenia

Sergey Sinitsyn - Russia

Women in WACS Questionnaire - Shonita Kayla Raui

Women in WACS Questionnaire

Name: 

Shonita Kayla Raui

Age: 

20 years

Home Town/Country: 

Rarotonga Cook Islands

1. What kind of formal education do you have (include apprenticeships)?

City & Guilds Culinary Arts Diploma

2. What made you decide to enter the culinary profession?

To become a pastry chef

3. Culinary childhood memories (e.g. Who did the cooking at home? Did you watch or participate? Favorite dishes that you still occasionally prepare?)

My parents did the cooking at home, I did participate at times

4. At what age did you first enter the food service industry? What was your first job?

At 19 years of age

5. Did you or do you have a mentor? (Who is that person? How has s/he helped you?)

Yes, Sam Timoko, he is my cookery tutor training and teaching me all the core skills that are involved in the hospitality industry as far as culinary Arts

6. What is the male/female ratio in your current job? 

1 female to 8 males

7. Describe your current work conditions (including average hours per day spent on the job; do you work weekends/holidays? do you have changing shifts?)

Working at Tumunu restaurant about 4 to 5 hours per day, working 4 to 5 nights per week and 1 day at the weekend 

8. Are you single, married or in a partnership?

Single

9. Do you have children? What age are they?

No

10. What is your advice to young women entering your specific field?

Prepare yourself as much as you can by gaining as much knowledge and experience. In the kitchen, be respectful, confident, strong and take no prisoners, you can do a better job than the person next to you! 

11. What are your interests outside the culinary field?

Shopping, swimming and reading Cook books

12. Do you manage to integrate those interests in your life?

I try to as much as I can, it’s good to have a balanced work/ life!

13. What are personal and professional interests that you would like to pursue within the next 5 years?

Further education in patiserie, open my own cake/patisiere shop or business

14. Would you be willing to be a mentor to other women in WACS? (If yes, indicate by what means: via email/SKYPE/a stage at your business if the woman seeking help provides for her own travel expenses, board)

Yes, I’d like to promote younger woman in our industry. I believe that it is important to have a balance of female/male Chefs in the Kitchen, I know there are more now than in previous decades however, this will increase in years to come. 

Email: shaunee_kayla@live.com 

Guidelines for Setting Up a WACS Young Chefs Club

The Young chefs development team is pleased to announce that the below guidelines are now ready to be used for associations wishing to formulate a Young Chef Club under their guidance. 

One of the main tasks of the Young Chefs  Development team is to grow the Young Chefs Clubs globally and we hope with the support of all continental directors and Presidents we shall see this happen.

You can download the PDF file of the YCC guidelines from the link below:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/qn7ueqlrq1dwtmo/YCC%20guidlines%2008062012.pdf

British Culinary Federation Young Chefs Club

                                   

The British Culinary Federation Young Chefs Club believes that its primary objective is the education of chefs and is dedicated to maintaining and improving the culinary standards of global cuisine. The government is now focusing on teaching all young people to cook in schools and our young chefs club supports that initiative.

BCF Young Chef Club aims to encourage young people to:
 

- Develop cookery technique & skills
 - Develop food knowledge & presentation skills
 - Consider career options
 - Prove their skill through being mentored and competing in culinary competitions
 - Prove their ability to cope in a demanding industry while upholding BCF values

BCF Young Chef Club provides opportunities:

Junior Chefs Team/Salon

Junior Master Class/Events

BCF/WACS Junior News

Junior Competition

Europe West

ENGLAND

British Culinary Federation Young Chefs Club

Website: http://www.britishculinaryfederation.co.uk

Welcome Onboard: Chef Clinton Zhu to the Young Chefs Development Team

The young chefs development team are very pleased to announce the appointment to the Young chefs development team of chef Clinton Zhu.

The young chefs development team are very pleased to announce the appointment to the Young chefs development team of chef Clinton Zhu. Chef Clinton is a very active member of the Shanghai Young chefs club and Chinese cuisines Association and is a welcome addition to our growing team. Chef Clinton will work on a number of activities with the main one being the development of young chefs clubs throughout china with the help of young ambassador Jasper Jek of Singapore
We are very proud to announce Clinton onto our team and look forward to seeing the growth of the young chef movement in china.

Clinton Zhu graduated with distinctions from Shanghai Tourism School Culinary Specialist and began his career at the Okura Hotel French find dinning restaurant in Shanghai with Master Chef Araki at 1996, who was the head chef at the time. After completed his apprenticeship in Okura Hotel, he was working his skills in different international hotel group and restaurants like ING, Accor, BLN group & Max und Moritz restaurant. He has won awards at culinary competitions in China & Hong Kong and judged different competition in Thailand, Taipei, Shanghai and Beijing. Clinton has traveled worldwide including countries like Australian, USA, France, Swiss, Austria, and German where he learned a lot about the different cuisine cultures. In 2007, Clinton has represented China in WACS Pacific Forum in Kuala Lumpur. Currently he is the visiting professor of Shanghai Institute of Tourism, member of China Cuisine Association and founder of Shanghai Junior Chefs Club to train the younger generation and improve the junior chef professional. As a chef, Clinton would like contribute his whole life and doing the best for junior chefs. 

WACS World Congress 2012, Daejeon, South Korea

WACCS World Congress 2012, Daejeon, South Korea from Christopher Shepherd Films on Vimeo.

See you in Stavanger Norway 2014

19 May 2012 - Food Revolution Day

Let this date: 19 May 2012 be the Food Revolution Day. 

Check out Jamie Oliver's videos

http://foodrevolutionday.com/