Students head to Toronto for culinary competition

Four Culinary Arts students will make their way to Toronto later this week to compete in the 2016 Taste Canada Cooks the Books.

Angela Chambers, Samara Zatylny, Tiara Ringling and Jackie Butterfield will be representing the college as they go head-to-head against seven other culinary student teams from Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec on November 12 and 13.

Students have been busy inside ACC’s Manitoba Institute of Culinary Arts sharpening their skills leading up to the two-day challenge, working with instructors to perfect their dishes.

Each team is assigned a cookbook and an author as their mentor. Taste Canada committee members select the recipes from the author’s cookbook to be used based on certain criteria. Dishes are prepared in front of a live audience with only 30 minutes on the clock. Teams are given an hour backstage to prepare before hitting the spotlight.

The four ACC students will be split into two teams. Chambers and Zatylny will prepare Duck with Rougemont Cider. Ringling and Butterfield are tasked with Sausage-Stuffed Pork Tenderloin with Creamy Mustard Sauce from Canadian Living magazine.

Instructor chef Bryan Hendricks will accompany the students to Toronto but must watch from the stands as teams battle for the top spot.

Teams are evaluated on a number of fronts including their cooking ability, recipe execution, stage presence and teamwork.

Taste Canada Cooks the Books is an event leading up to Taste Canada—The Food Writing Awards, an event that celebrates and honours exceptional Canadian culinary writing and publishing.

This is the fifth year ACC students have participated in the competition. Two years ago students placed bronze.

[Below, L to R] Second-year Culinary Arts students Jackie Butterfield, Tiara Ringling, Samara Zatylny and Angie Chambers.