“Are you kidding me? This is ingenious!” judge Julie Rae said about the dishes she tasted at last weekend’s Chilkat Chef Competition.
Saturday’s showdown and benefit dinner and auction for cancer patient Song Nash brought around 300 people to Harriett Hall.
Six teams squared off to cook the best dish with a large coho and five required, secret ingredients they learned of at the last minute: salt and vinegar Pringles, a chocolate bar, arugula, blueberries and grapefruit.
Anne Marie Fossman said she and granddaughter Nora Prisciandaro came prepared.
“We did a trial run on it three days before the competition,” Fossman said. Her granddaughters brought over their own mystery ingredients and tried to incorporate them into a pizza and side dish.
By a mere half point in scoring, the Fossmans’ salmon pizza triumphed, edging salmon sliders on Hawaiian rolls with garlic and dark chocolate- infused mole sauce, cabbage hash and vinegar Pringle mash, and a fresh arugula and carrot slaw. That entry was cooked by a team of Lexie DeWitt, Tiffany DeWitt and Tracey Harmon.
Fossman’s pizza incorporated ground coho with grapefruit juice, arugula, crushed Pringles, pizza sauce, chili powder, bacon, mozzarella and parmesan cheese.Their side dish was a dessert of brown sugar blueberry chocolate rolls.
Other dishes included salmon sushi using salmon skin, prepared by the Klondike Steve team of Steve Anderson, Sadie Anderson and Sanona Sundberg; chocolate-covered Pringles and a butterfly filet salmon presented with flowers on the plate by Nelle Jurgeleit-Greene and Mike Denker, and chocolate-covered grapefruit slices by Jack Strong and niece Marsha Warner.
Teams had about an hour to cook and plate their dishes for the judges. Three judges – Rae, Anna Jurgeleit and Tony Habra – adjudicated the entries based on presentation, flavor, texture and creativity. Dishes earned up to 25 points for each judging category. The Fossmans scored a total 95 points, with the DeWitts and Harmon tallying 94.5.
“The pizza and sliders were really a combination of flavors and just stood apart because they were so unusual…they were creative in how they used the mystery products,” Rae said.
As might be expected in a timed competition, some dishes were lost in translation. Onlookers scowled at chocolate sauce on asparagus cooked up by The Uglys, but team member Dean Risley pointed out afterward that the sauce wasn’t meant for the asparagus, and it wasn’t just chocolate, either.
“It was blueberries, chocolate, a little half-and-half, and a squeezed section of grapefruit,” Risley said. “It was supposed to be sort of drizzled around the plate. It was to dress up the plate a little bit.”
Judging was fun, but difficult, Rae said, because elements of each dish were “incredible.”
Youth judges Rio Ross-Hirsch, Selby Long, Emma Dhorn and Leo Wald also tried each dish for a “Would a Kid Eat This?” award. They also voted for the salmon pizza as their favorite.
Event organizer Sue Libenson said almost every team had electricity issues because of faulty power outlets and extension cords, so squads were allowed additional time.
As open flame was prohibited in the hall, teams using grills had to cook outside, requiring them to wear headlamps and negotiate crowds as they hustled between cooking stations. The Fossmans and others brought their own equipment, including fryers, electric skillets, rice cookers, a turntable pizza cooker and a Kitchen Aid grinder.
The Fossman family received $500 in prize money, and donated half back to the Song Nash fundraiser. “We figured that was a good thing to do,” Fossman said.
Haines Presbyterian Church pastor Ron Horn, who managed the fundraiser, said the event raised more than $20,000. “We had people who brought things (for the auction) as they walked in the door,” Horn said. “I thought it was terrific.”
Libenson said she appreciated teams’ creativity, their fearlessness to compete and their comments at the beginning of the competition about why salmon is significant to our lives in Southeast. “It was a fun reminder of how the community revolves around salmon,” she said.
The teams included: The Fossman Family, with Anne Marie Fossman and Nora Prisciandaro; The Uglys, with Chip Strong, Deam Risley, Gary Jacobson and Dave Routh; Klondike Steve, with Steve Anderson, Sadie Anderson and Sanona Sundberg; DeWitt Ladies, with Lexie DeWitt, Tiffany DeWitt and Tracey Harmon; Greene/Denker, with Nelle Jurgeleit-Greene and Mike Denker; and the Strong Family, with Jack Strong, Tony Strong and Marsha Warner.