By Christie Vanover | Published May 20, 2013 | Last Updated August 17, 2013
I’ve officially thrown my apron into the ring.
-
My goal – to become the next World Food Champion.
-
My weapon – the Zestuous courage to try any combination of food.
Join me on my journey as I experience trials, failures and hopefully ultimately successful recipes that land me at the 2013 World Food Championships in Las Vegas Nov. 7-9.
Becoming the world champion won’t be easy.
First, I have to pick a category:
Barbecue
Open Chili
Burger
Dessert
Sandwich
Bacon
World Recipe
Next, I have to win a qualifying contest, and these qualifiers are no joke. They are a combination of the best cooking contests in the country.
If I’m successful enough to win a qualifier, I will get to compete in Las Vegas against a combination of the best professional chefs, foodies, bloggers and home cooks from around the world.
Last year, I had the honor of helping my friend Ally Phillips prepare her dish on the Vegas strip. It was my first tournament-style competition.
The fear of running with a hot pan and tripping crossed my mind numerous times. (I’m kind of a klutz).
I don’t know if it was the fear, the excitement of Vegas city lights, the energy of fantastic foodies or the after parties, but I have been looking forward to WFC 2013 ever since. It’s November 7-9. Book your tickets now!
I’m fortunate enough to live in Vegas, so whether I compete or not, I will be there cheering on the competitors and hitting up the swanky parties. But I really want to go through that adrenaline rush again.
So let the competition begin!!!
I entered my first qualifying contest in early May – The Saint Francis Winery “Say Cheese” Gourmet Grilled Cheese Contest. My sandwich is “The Sunny Fontina.” It’s sunny because it has a poached egg yolk sandwiched between the layers of Fontina cheese. It goes so great with their Claret wine.
I made the top ten (which was based on votes). Now, I’m waiting patiently…okay, not so patiently…to see if I’ve won.
In the meantime, I’ve also decided to enter the WFC #FoodChamp Challenge. Their first contest is dessert. Driving to work I started throwing around ideas in my mind.
Gourmet macaroni and cheese is all the rage right now, but I’ve never had it as a dessert. That’s where that Zestuous courage is going to come into play. I can’t reveal too many of the ingredients or the steps because if I reveal too much, I could get disqualified. But I’ll definitely share my trials and basic failures and successes with you through these blog posts.
In my first attempt, I cooked the noodles in a unique sweet way. They were full of apple flavor…but the cheese sauce was a little trickier. In the first test, it just wasn’t cheesy enough.
In the second attempt, I made a powdered sugar roux and added Brie, cream and white wine. It was a little too liquidy and sweet.
I tried baking it, but that didn’t help either.
Even with an almond praline topping, I ultimately decided this one was a fail.
A few days later, I tried a different base while cooking the noodles. The consistency was perfectly creamy. Exactly how you would want your traditional macaroni and cheese to be. In fact, it was so good, I forgot to take a picture before I ate it all.
Next thing I knew it was dark. I have no luck taking pictures indoors (as you can tell by the previous food pictures in this post), so I wanted to wait until daylight to recreate the dish.
It took me three attempts because I needed to double the recipe from my test version. At one point, I had a pot of scrambled eggs. I was close to giving up, but I had just enough pasta and mascarpone to try again.
I’m so glad I did. The final version turned out stunning (if I do say so myself), and compared to the first apple brie disaster, my husband devoured the entire parfait before eating dinner.
I took plenty of pictures and uploaded the recipe to the #FoodChamp Challenge. Now, I wait…or if I’m feeling crazy (which I usually am), I can create another dessert. With this competition, there is no limit to how many times you can enter.
Oh the possibilities!
Foodsnearme says
The post is too nice and fantastic post. 🙂