A silver medal at the nationals was a great result for a lot of hard work for the King’s High School Chef Team last week. Liam Hynd (Year 13) and Nick Bryan (Year 12) competed in the National Secondary Schools' Culinary Challenge in Auckland against seven other regional qualifiers.

Two person teams are given 90 minutes to cook and plate four servings of an entrée and four servings of a main while being scrutinized by four judges. A further four judges then take the plates and judge them on taste and plating. Each team starts with 100 marks and judges are looking for reasons to remove points from competitors.

In the judges’ comments after the competition they told Liam and Nick that they had a near perfect score for their kitchen work, only dropping one point. Their seasoning and chicken preparation was also commended by the judges.

The boys prepared, as entrée, a smoked cheese gratin with roasted cherry tomatoes, a rosemary biscuit and bulls blood micro green salad. Competition rules required the use of New Zealand grown tomatoes in this dish.

For the main, a chicken supreme and four New Zealand grown vegetables had to be included. Liam and Nick made a hay smoked pan fried chicken supreme with parsnip puree, potato croquettes, sautéed broccolini, pistachio crumb and pickled candy stripe beetroot.

Recent King’s High School graduate and chef Tom White coached the team and was pivotal in their success. Mrs Cromarty ensured the team was on point with both presentation and preparation.

The boys put-in at least 70 hours practice for the competition including going to Christchurch earlier in the year to qualify for the national event. Plans are already underway for next year’s event.