Jeunes Chefs Rotisseurs 2013

Jeunes Chefs Rotisseurs 2013 – An interesting National Young Chef competition which was held for the first time in India!

Jeunes Chefs Rotisseurs 2013 – The National Young Chef competition was held at Taj Vivanta by the Bangalore Bailliage (chapter) of the La Chaîne des Rôtisseurs  the world’s premiere gastronomy society. This is the first time this event was being hosted in India. The broad rules were chefs should be below 27 years old with less than 5 years of professional experience. They had to cook three courses (appetizer, main and dessert) and battle it out for the first prize of representing India at Istanbul, at the International JCR 2013.

For me, the day was a wonder. Aday where I saw some very young chefs use their minds and skills  in an innovative manner, also see them work under pressure and yet trying to behave calm since they were being judged in the kitchen too. We were allowed to go in and out of the cooking area but without disturbing them too much. Let me take you through the photos and you will see for yourself what happened that day.

 

 

After the briefing, they were sent to the stations which had black mystery box with mandatory ingredients and a another box with option ingredients. There was also an open pantry both for dry and fresh items which they had access to through the cooking.

 

 

The cooking area, the whole thing was so well organised.

 

 

The mystery box which contained meat, prawns, fish, avocado and knol knol.

 

 

And while the chefs were sweating it out cooking, there, of course, was good food for all of us to eat. Pity, I couldn’t click all of it because there was a Greek salad in the jar that I really really liked.

Attending the event that day also gave me a chance to meet Chef Jacques Le Divellec, a 80 year old two Michelin-star chef. He is known as the Ambassador of the Sea and has written several books on seafood and its cooking and what amazed me was when Ruth and I asked him about what will he cook for a dinner party at home for people he said everything seafood including dessert, for which he said may be he will serve Salmon Sorbet. God! how I want to eat that now.

 

 

Once the tasting started what a madness it was, madness of taking pictures.! Imagine 17*3 dishes you can take pictures of 🙂 but it also told me that damn that’s a tiring job and also results in a truck load of pictures you don’t how to sort and upload at the blog.

 

 

So what I did was created FB albums for the pictures, so here is where you can see what the young chefs plated up.

Le Concours de L’Inde des Jeunes Chefs Rotisseurs 2013-Appetizers

Le Concours de L’Inde des Jeunes Chefs Rotisseurs 2013-Mains

Le Concours de L’Inde des Jeunes Chefs Rotisseurs 2013-Desserts

The winners of the competition were.

First Place: Chef Hitesh Gautam, Ista, Bengaluru.

Second Place: Chef Pushpender Yadav, Vivanta by Taj, MG Road.

Third Place: Chef P. Senthil Kumar, The Leela Palace, Bangalore.

Special Jury Awards:

Jury Selection for Appetizer course: Chef Siddesh B. Madkalker, Vivanta by Taj, Yeshwantpur.

Jury Selection for Main course: Chef Gaurav Kadam, Vivanta by Taj, Whitefield.

Jury Selection for Dessert course: Chef Bharat Kapoor, Taj Westend Hotel.

The whole thing was so impeccably organized that I just can’t end the post before saying kudos and congratulating Ruma, Aslam, Rishad and others on the hard work they put in!And  good luck Chef Hitesh Gautam. Make us proud in Istanbul.