Hawaiian Grown Kitchen - American Culinary Federation Student Team National Championships with Kapiolani Community College Culinary Team Hawaii - Segment 4

For the last seven months members of KCC culinary department have been training for the American Culinary Federation Student Team National Championships in Florida next month.

Since enrolling in the new "Competition 1" class at KCC this last fall, they've practiced the menu they'll prepare for the last one-and-a-half months. Over the course of the last seven months the seven team members have prepared fundraising dinners. One of the dinner raised $15,000 at Roy's Restaurant; members cooked alongside top chefs here and won the Western Regional gold medal and championship in Seattle last month, the first Hawaii team to do so.

However, from July 11 to 13 in Orlando the KCC team must compete with three other teams, all from schools that have been to the nationals before. These top four teams were winnowed down from 400 teams at the state levels.

This competition will be different for they won't have a kitchen to prepare the set menu. Instead they'll have a ballroom, a couple of tables, one stove and two electric ovens and water.

They'll have two chef judges watching their every move, interrupting their concentration with questions, evaluating their knife skills and other techniques. The critique will be extremely thorough - judges will empty the garbage can when the competition is over, checking to see if they threw out anything that could have been used.

Teams will be up against a time clock with deduction of points if teams don't make their serving window precise.

Sixty percent of points will be awarded for taste - the food must taste great. But timing is also key, as is working together smoothly.

When it's all over, judges will offer constructive criticism right after the competition. Results aren't announced for a full day.

Between June 3 and 24, the team will be preparing practice lunches at the college that the public can attend, call Linh Hoang 734-9570 for more information.

For more videos like this, visit http://www.hawaiiangrowntv.com

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• Hawaiian
• Grown
• Kitchen
• TV
• Hawaii
• Television
• Food
• Cuisine
• Catering
• Grant
• Kawasaki
• Ikaika
• Kimura
• OC16
• American
• Culinary
• Federation
• Student
• Team
• National
• Championships
• Kapiolani
• Community
• College
• Frank
• Leake
• Alan
• Tsuchiyama