Flavours of Herefordshire
Les Brown, Catering and Hospitality Lecturer, offers an insight in to last month’s Flavours of Herefordshire event which involved our young chefs testing out their skills in the ‘Young Chef in Education’ category.
“These awards give our students at Herefordshire College of Technology the opportunity to work with young chefs from industry, exceptional local produce and high-profile celebrity chefs such as this year’s judges, Jean-Christophe Novelli and Felice Tocchini.
The cook-off between the ‘Young Chef in Education’, Katherine Edwards and ‘Young Chef in Industry’, Lydia Taylor was a real highlight this year. Both competitors performed brilliantly on the day and Katherine also participated in Jean-Christophe’s cooking demonstration in front of an audience of 400 spectators.
To work with chefs of this calibre at such a young age is a fantastic opportunity for our students; I wish I’d had the chance when I was training! The celebrity chefs have given real inspiration to our students over the last seven years of the awards and we always look forward to hosting the first round of the competition at the Cider Orchard Restaurant where our young chefs train.”
The HCT tutor went on to say how very pleased he was with Dale Williams’ performance. Dale came first in the ‘Young Chef in Education’ overall with his dishes of breaded escalope of chicken with wild mushroom sauce and batons of carrot and swede followed by lemon pannacotta with blueberry compote and shortbread biscuit. Dale collected his winnings of knives and chef whites and was thrilled with his success. “I’m speechless, I didn’t expect to win but I was really pleased with my dishes. In the future I’d like to carry on training and hope to become a head chef eventually. The course is really good and the tutors really are very knowledgeable.”
