From the Brook: Adventures in Cooking
This week was chicken slaughter week so I spent more time than I’m used to with chicken guts - but I’d prefer not to talk about that. Instead, I’ll describe the wonderful experience that was Gapped. If you’ve ever watched Chopped or Master Chef, it was modeled off of that.
There were two teams competing against each other. The mystery ingredient was dates - something that could be used in both sweet and savory dishes. We had an hour and 40 minutes to collect all of our ingredients, decide what dishes to make, cook them, and make them presentable for the judges. My team decided to make bacon wrapped dates stuffed with almonds and a brown rice bowl with a smattering of fresh vegetables from the farm, arranged in a cute rainbow for aesthetic purposes. The opposing team made a kale salad with honey dressing, peaches, dates, and apples as well as a crisp oat crumble with peach and date compote on top.
The whole process was chaotic because we were sharing a tiny kitchen in The Nest (the Gapper outdoor kitchen common space), and there were so many dishes everywhere that you had to fight for a suitable cutting board spot. Even though there wasn’t enough space, the ridiculousness of it all had us giggling often. Also, both teams completely underestimated how fast time would move during this whole process, so we ended up wasting an hour collecting ingredients and deciding on recipes. It worked out in the end because we were frantically rushing around with the finishing touches and making sure everything was cooked through (the bacon-wrapped dates were such a pain), but then the true competition began.
We brought our dishes out to the judges, which consisted of four humans and one extraordinarily adorable dog. The Gappers’ hearts were thumping quickly against their chests. We held hands and walked out, sitting on the bench in front the judges, fully at their mercy.
First up were the bacon-wrapped dates. The judges passed around the carefully arranged platter of the appetizer, making a whole host of odd faces. Some people looked impressed, others solemn or contemplative. The sound of their chewing filled our ears. It was slightly gross. But then, one judge spoke - saying that they thoroughly enjoyed the dish! Chef Robyn, our one actual professional chef judge, interrupted, describing his disappointment at the unoriginality of the date recipe and adding that some sort of heat would better balance out the sweetness of the dates. The last two human judges expressed their critiques and comments, and Pangur the dog continued to sit like a good boy. The contest continued like this until all of the dishes had been judged and both teams were nervous about who would win. The judges went to the field to confer while the contestants cleared the food away. When we were done, we sat down on the bench again, awaiting our fates.
The judges ran down the list of categories: taste, presentation, originality, use of farm ingredients, and “je ne sais quoi” or “star factor.” The last category ended up being a silly drawing that we looked at after, but that’s beside the point. It was an extremely tense two minutes, and the suspense kept building up. The gappers leaned forward, eager to hear which team won, itching to rip the whiteboard out of the judges hands and just look at the final scores ourselves. We refrained from doing so. Finally, the moment arrived - OUR TEAM WON! Our prize was using the dishwasher in the big commercial kitchen to do all of our dishes. Best prize ever. We had so many dishes you could barely see the counter or table. One of the judges drove the truck filled with dishes that we loaded up down to the main house, and the wondrous machine named Hobart washed all of our dishes for us in ten minutes flat. It was a really nice end to a chaotic but exciting day. I think Gapped is becoming a seasonal thing, so each group that comes in will get to do it. If you end up joining, I wish you luck!
P.S. Go stargazing after - there are always shooting stars - and we’re far enough away from lights that they’re easy to see!
-Savannah