Maui Community College culinary arts student Justin Kiersz
arranged his team's hors d'oeuvre platter Thursday afternoon
in the Garde-Manger Skills Challenge held in the instructional
kitchen at the school's Pa'ina Culinary Arts Center.
The Maui News/ MATTHEW THAYER Photo

A tasty test for chefs-to-be
By MATTHEW THAYER, Staff Writer

Maui Community College culinary arts students got a firsthand taste of deadline pressures in a busy kitchen on Thursday afternoon as they whipped up edible masterpieces in the Garde-Manger Skills Challenge.

With their final semester grades at stake, three teams of four students prepared four-course meals for a panel of judges that included some of Maui's top chefs.

Garde-manger refers to a chef responsible for preparing cold dishes, such as appetizers, salads and fish dishes.
Each team in the challenge was given a mystery basket of ingredients at the start of the event, a half-hour to develop a menu and then two hours to prepare the meal.

The mystery basket featured monchong fish, smoked chicken, pancetta, shrimp, Maytag blue cheese, pork tenderloin, sun-dried tomatoes and goat cheese. A communal larder with basic ingredients and supplies was also available to each team.

The students were required to prepare five servings each of an hors d'oeuvre platter, composed salad, hot appetizer and a signature terrine, pate, galantine, mousseline or roulade.

The teams tackled their ingredients in a variety of ways as instructors occasionally called out how much time was left. Action grew intense as each deadline approached. When time was called, volunteer servers whisked platters away immediately and some student chefs had to finish their dishes quickly, sometimes sprinkling finishing touches as the platter was on the way off the counter. One observer said this year's class seemed to be doing well at meeting its time constraints.

" No one's burst out crying yet," he said.

Menus were diverse, and included blue cheese mousse canapes topped with radish; toast point cups with pancetta and goat cheese; grilled salmon and potato terrine with lemon onion relish; crab seafood lumpia; and chicken timbale encrusted with pistachio.

Guest judges included Shaun Waite of Hailiimaile General Store, Jon Benson of the Hyatt Regency Maui Resort, Fabrice Rossman of the Four Seasons Resort Maui at Wailea, Jacques Pauvert of Jacques, Mark Ellman of Maui Tacos and Bart Umidi of The Westin Maui.

Maui Culinary Academy chef/instructor Tom Lelli said the process provided good preparation for the day when the students enter the real world and find themselves slammed with hungry diners. He said teams are ranked by gold, silver and bronze. To his knowledge, no one in the MCC competition has ever earned a gold rating.

" It's an intense thing they do that helps them refine their skills," said Lelli. "You are going against a perfect standard. It's stressful for them right now, but that's how it should be."