If you know anything about food, you know about the Culinary Olympics and the fact that a group of South African chefs take part in this incredible event every four years. It's been a long preparation for the 10 members of Team SA who are to food what the Springboks are to rugby.
The food Olympics consists of two components, the Restaurant of Nations, a five-hour cook-off to prepare a three-course lunch menu for 110 people, and the Cold Table, a spectacular display of culinary art.
Currently there's a road show around the country to test and perfect their different menus. Last Saturday night, the team came to the Sheraton (with two of their own chefs participating) and cooked a spectacular meal for the Pretoria branch of that marvellous food institution the Chaine de Rotisseurs.
It's the first time that Team SA is recognised officially to represent South Africa internationally against the top culinary nations from around the world. So it's green and gold all the way as they jet off on October 14 to compete with the rest of the world from October 19 to 21 in Germany.
"It will make a difference in the future when looking for sponsorship and support," says the executive chef of the Sheraton who is doing his second Culinary Olympics and hopes to go for a third before he steps down. "We need to pass on the baton for future chefs," he says.
As a youngster, he was hoping to be part of the international soccer team but it was at a time when dreams like those were unthinkable. When he had the chance to represent his country as a chef, it was an easy decision.
The menu for the Restaurant of Nations which was served as another practice run last Saturday night pays tribute to the finest flavours from our land and sea. The starter is crayfish and tomato terrine, curried crayfish flan, butter poached crayfish, mustard dill cured salmon trout, corn salad and a cucumber raita. "We did the corn salad last year in Singapore and it was a huge success,"says Trevor, and in the search for local ingredients, salmon trout was a shoo-in.
The main course is beetroot and thyme-marinated springbok loin, creamed barley with juniper braised springbok shoulder and smoked porcini mushrooms, truffled celeriac purée, with a beetroot and pomegranate jus. Again, it was the novelty of the springbok that determined this choice and Trevor explains that the slightly sweet taste of the meat determined the beetroot and pomegranate jus, both which improved the colour and presentation of the dish.
The dessert is a uniquely South African naartjie and chocolate malva pudding, naartjie sorbet and a mascarpone and Van Der Hum macerated fruit slice.
The springbok was to die for. One couldn't believe that the creative presentation complemented both the tenderness and taste of the meat. With that they opted for barley to make a risotto rather than the more obvious starch of either potatoes or rice. It was a huge success and when Trevor talks about the preparation and cooking methods, small wonder. These are some of our best chefs hoping to produce a meal of a lifetime.
The pretty starter showcases our rich fish harvest and the dessert with the naartjie flavouring is a clever concept but, for my taste, the malva pudding's texture was too light. I would have preferred a denser almost stickier concoction but that might be a personal thing.
This competition involves the six chefs thrown into a competition kitchen for five long hours. In here, they prepare the three-course lunch menu for 110 people, including the jury of top international chefs from all over the world. They're judged on taste, presentation, composition of the plates, hygiene, and whether the dishes reflect the cuisine of their country of origin. Our hot kitchen chefs are Rudi Liebenberg (previously from the Sheraton) and Vicky Gurovich from the Saxon Hotel on starter; Trevor from the Sheraton and Marli Roberts from Unilever Foodsolutions on main course; Dilene Cranna from Sheraton Pretoria on dessert; and overseeing it all, Garth Shnier from Sandton Sun, the team manager and SA Chefs Association's international competitions director.
Conditions compared with the rest of the world are not favourable because many of the bigger countries push professional teams while ours is amateur mainly because they have to basically steal time from their lives to participate. Where we are 12 chefs that make up the team, the Americans are 52 members strong. "It doesn't mean we can't do it on the day," says Trevor, "it simply makes it tougher." But the learning curve is phenomenal as they compete with the rest of the world and see what is happening in kitchens across the globe.
This time, local chefs have secured the support of Prenox, a manufacturer of modular kitchen equipment who replicated the Olympic kitchens as closely as possible, giving them the opportunity to practice under true Olympic conditions.
The pressure is huge, according to the Sheraton's top dog in the kitchen. The judges can walk in at any moment and taste any of the plates.You're serving 110 people and each plate has to be perfect.
Pretorians should be so lucky. Not only can they read about this competition, two of the chefs are at a hotel in town. It gets better. The Sheraton is being renovated and they will soon have revamped their whole dining experience with new options aiming to embrace hotel guests and local diners. This is where we will be able sample the prowess of our competitive chefs.