Turning Up the Heat: My Culinary Competition Journey (CME DAYS PART 2) 👩🏻‍🍳𓇼𓏲*ੈ✩‧₊˚🥣

Sunshine and smiles, Hivers! I'm back again for another new blog for this week. In this blog, I'm going to share with you all my journey in joining a competition in our department days. Let's get started!

Before CME days, I joined a culinary competition which is a Mini Pop Up Restaurant. This event is all about showcasing our skills in culinary and making beautiful dishes that are aligned with the theme of the CME days. Me and Angel are the representatives for the whole 3rd year Hospitality Management department. At first, I was still hesitant to join because I thought I could not excel to the competition since I didn't want people will watch me while I was cooking also, the pressure kept me from the competition, but in the end, I still joined and took a risk.

Before the said event, me and my partner, Angel went to the city to buy all the necessities and ingredients that we needed during the competition. At that time, we were not in a good mood and we were not feeling well. The dish that we will make is a seafood dish since the concept of the mini pop-up restaurant is emerging of sirens which is all the dishes should be seafood. The time that we were choosing our dish, we decided to do the ginataang seafood and the Fried veggie fritters. In buying all the ingredients, it was very exhausting and tiring because we have plenty of ingredients that need to be purchased and also, all the seafood that we buy is very expensive.

When the competition began, we were very anxious and a lot of problems came up during our preparation of the dish. First, the appetizer didn't have a crisp texture even though we put some ice cubes in our butter. My partner also didn't know how to do it because we did not have the same technique for cooking the fried veggie fritters my technique is that the batter should be flowy, not sticky while my partner wanted to put a sticky batter and just put all of the ingredients in a bowl. I just let her decide which technique she wanted to use because I was also busy preparing the main dish. While cooking the appetizer, a lot of errors were made and my partner thought that our appetizer was not good. I'm doing my best to cheer her up since she lost her hope to try again. On the last set of cooking the appetizer, it turned good and she decided to serve 4 pieces of crisp fritters because all the ingredients that she made were wasted because of the errors. The second problem, the pan that I used to cook the main dish was too small and could not accommodate plenty of seafood. What I did is that I cook first the shrimp and the mussels and then I set aside and during cooking the crab, I also cook the soup on it. I make sure in plating, our dish should be appetizing to make our dish more elevated than others.

As you can see, that's the dish that we made with my partner. A Ginataang Seafood with enslaving kangkong as a side dish and fried veggie fritters as our appetizer. In plating, I brainstorm and ask for suggestions from different people on what plating is best for this dish. I was kinda nervous at the same time clueless about how I would design my dish. Luckily, it turns out perfectly. Even the plating of the appetizer that was made by my partner turned out perfectly.

During the competition, the utensils that I borrowed from my friends had still not yet come and I was very nervous that maybe they would not give it on time. Thankfully, the committee permitted us that we can get the utensils even though the competition started. They only give us 2 and a half hours to prepare all the dishes that's why the pressure is on the kitchen. During cooking, the judges also asked us some questions and they also observed how we prepared all the dishes for today's competition.

I was thankful that we finished cooking all the dishes just as early as the time ended. We had a chance to relax and observe other chefs and what they do to their dishes. My partner took a picture of us while we were chilling because, at that time, we were very very exhausted and also, my partner was attacked by her allergies. She was allergic to seafood and her lips were itchy and some parts of her face turned red.

When the time ended, we were the first ones to present our food to the judges. I explained to them about our dish and also what innovation that we made to the dish that we made. We also waited for them to taste our dish some judges asked us some understandable questions and my partner answered them perfectly.

When the competition ended, I called my friends to taste our dishes and some of the chefs went on us to taste our dishes I also their dishes since my partner could not taste it because she was allergic.

On the third day of the CME days, I was awarded as a 1st placer in the competition. I was very shocked and at the same time very happy. I didn't expect that we would get the 1st place because all of our dishes had lots of errors and also our recipe had a lot of revisions. When I got the certificate, my partner was not present on that day that's why I got the certificate with my friend and I just congratulated my partner because we got 1st place.

And that's the end of my blog, Hivers! This is my first time winning in a competition and I cannot believe that we achieved it even though a lot of struggles we encountered on that day. I was very thankful to my partner, because of her, I wouldn't join this competition. I also wanna thank my friends and classmates for supporting me and giving me and cheering me during the competition. This experience of mine will help me overcome my fears at the same time, help me to become what I love to be.

Thank you for reading my blog, Hivers and see you in my next blog post! Ciao!