A halibut and prawn chowder took first place at the school district’s secondary school annual Chowder Competition.
Garibaldi Secondary School students Megan Tan, Grade 12, and Mason Timmins, Grade 12, were the creators of the winning chowder
What they did, explained Megan, was look through other chowder recipes, took the ideas that they liked, changed the ratios, and added different ingredients.
“We just added our own spices and everything go it but we took a lot of inspiration from different recipes,” added Mason.
This was the first competition held in two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic and around 30 students took part on 13 teams representing four high schools in the community, and coming from outside the district as well, including Langley and Abbotsford.
The competition was hosted by Garibaldi Secondary School and has been taking place for more than a decade.
Megan and Mason believe it was their roux made from flour and butter that pushed them into top spot.
They both enjoyed the competition.
“It was a lot of fun,” said Mason. “We got to meet new people and cook food that we weren’t, like, familiar with.”
This was only the second chowder the first-time entrants to the competition ever made. The first one was a practise run a couple of weeks beforehand.
Second place winners were Grade 12 Thomas Haney student Kaela Brandson, and Erin Fukuda. They created a miso tuna chowder.
“The inspiration is from my country,” said Erin, who is an international student from Japan. “The the inspiration is from sushi.”
For the chowder the pair used miso, soy sauce, a little bit of rice vinegar, and a secret spicy sauce. The garnish was made of cream cheese, tuna, with soy sauce and sesame oil.
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In preparation, Erin said, she cooked chowder every day in the week leading up to the event.
Kaela enjoyed cooking as part of a team.
“It was quite interesting. We’ve never worked together cooking before, so we thought it was going to be a bit chaotic, but it surprisingly went very well,” Kaela elaborated, adding that she also enjoyed seeing all the talent in the competition. How every chowder was so different and how teams incorporated their culture into their versions of chowder.
Declan Lee-Chin, a Grade 12 student at Thomas Haney took third place with a seafood chowder mixed with mussels, shrimp, bacon, and chorizo. He named his chowder Chow Down On This.
He noted his inspiration came from home and learning to cook as a child.
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“I wanted to stay true to my roots using ingredients only known to my fridge at home,” explained Declan, who is a grill cook at the KEG Steakhouse and Bar for the past three years.
Declan believes it was his use of chorizo or dill that got his chowder into winning contention. However, he added, chowder is not his specialty – he enjoys cooking French cuisine or Italian.
Brent McGimpsey, culinary arts instructor at Garibaldi secondary, said there were more than $2,000 worth of prizes donated by food suppliers including: headphones, backpacks, knives, kitchen equipment, strainers, knife roll bags, aprons and books.
“We were really supported by our local community and all our suppliers,” said McGimpsey.
McGimpsey is hoping in the future they can grow the competition. He would like to see more schools from other districts take part as well.
“But, for coming out of COVID, for the first time and we could have an event like this, it was a really good showing,” he said.
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