COOKING WINNERS

I just remembered when I was in the culinary school, there was this cooking contest that the culinary school organized to be participated by the students. The cooking contest was also a ticket for the student winners ti be famous since there will be several guests invited, local and abroad. Our class was the graduating class that time and we were equally divided into four groups. The groups formed were the ones going to compete in the cooking competition organized by the school.

In our group, we were just 5 of us and very eager to win the prize that was at stake. The was no theme and only the rule was to cook the best dishes that we know. It must be unique and delicious. I was the one assigned to cook the chicken dish. Three days before the cooking contest, I was already going through the cookbooks and recipe books that I have so that I won't get lost on what I was cooking. I was thinking about the simplicity of cooking the chicken dish. In my mind, I was thinking chicken steamed with soy sauce. It was a Chinese style of cooking that has rooted in ancient China.

During the cooking contest proper, I decided to change the style that I was thinking for the chicken. Instead of steamed, I made it the all time favorite, chicken adobo. Chicken adobo has so many variations depending on the chef cooking it . I want it to be unique, so I made it my own style chicken adobo. No recipe books, only talent in cooking. At the end of the cooking show, we were the second place. It was a good experience for our team. Now that we are all chefs, we always laugh about it when we recall the cooking show. In some way, the cooking contest helped us develop more our culinary creativity and mastery of the dishes that we were cooking.