How Dare you judge ME?!

ParamedicCooks.com is proud to conclude our FIRST Recipe Contest, complete with recipes collected, judging executed, and prizes awarded! I’m glad to see this first contest reach its final destination, and I learned much in the process. For me, the best part was accumulating a phenomenal collection of recipes! The hardest part was judging. I knew I didn’t want to judge recipes myself, for several reasons: 1. Too Personal: I predicted my first contest would yield alot of recipes from friends, (yes, I haunted them. No shame :) and I didn’t want to be put in the position of choosing favorites. 2. Little Resources: I felt strongly about judging recipes on taste. That would mean cooking all recipes, which is impossible in a residential kitchen with one (amateur) cook. 3. Criterion: Besides taste, I wracked my brain on other criteria to judge recipes. The best things I initially came up with were: Taste, Name, Appearance. These proved to be the most unreliable criteria possible, as you will see. 

Collecting recipes was the easiest part, and fun! For my colleagues, I goaded and harassed them until they proffered their best recipes. I conducted mini-contests on the website and gave away ParamedicCooks.com pens, planners, t-shirts and other prizes as rewards for submitting recipes. I emailed the Human Resource departments at major EMS departments and procured local supporters and recipes in other states. I advertised in JEMS and established a presence in Canada. I cooked boatloads of the recipes being submitted, and learned a whole slew of stuff about cooking techniques and different ingredients. Submissions came in waves, and I more than welcomed the high waves. One of my favorite recipes that I had a chance to cook was Mulligan Stew. Not only did I get schooled in roux creation, that stew has one of the best, most unique flavors I have ever tasted! There are so many more I want to cook. One of the most interesting recipes I received was a steamed pudding. I haven’t cooked it yet, but I did a bit of research on steamed pudding. There’s an amazing lot of history behind this dish! Unfortunately, the young cook who submitted this recipe was neither 18 years of age, nor EMT certified which were both part of the guidelines for submitting a recipe for this contest. However, I hope cooks near and far, young and old, use that young persons’ passion and boldness as an inspiration for getting in the kitchen and getting to work! 

After wracking my brain for weeks, and the contest deadline drawing near I had an epiphany: Who better to judge a recipe contest than REAL Chefs? Sure, it may sound obvious but for me, it was genius. I set my mind to the task of gathering up all the chefs I knew personally and I came up with a total of: ZERO. That’s when I remembered a wonderful resource nearby, who’s facilities I had in fact (unsuccessfully) attended during  my high school years: Greater New Bedford Regional Vocational Technical High School!   I whirled off an email to Voc, which was answered within 1 day directing me to the chefs of the culinary department. In the span of another 24 hours, a real Chef Instructor had read and answered my email, by the name of Henry Bousquet. Henry and I agreed to meet 2 days henceforth, at GNB Voc-Tech, and I arrived with laptop, flyers, pens, and planners on the ready. Chef Henry, like a true Chef, zeroed in on the main elements of my visit: how to judge a recipe contest?! I felt inadequate about my own ideas for judging because I knew I couldn’t cook and taste every recipe, many of them had been renamed by me to incorporate some quirky medical terminology (eg. “Sebaceous Sausage Bread and Tachycardic Enchiladas), and only some entrants included pictures. Henry and I developed judging rubrics and a plan. The rubrics consisted of specific criteria to judge all submissions. The plan included two phases of judgement. During the second phase, Chef Henry proposed to cook the final 8 recipes, and invited me to come TASTE them all! I felt like an Iron Chef America judge! And then, with an open heart and empty stomach, I said unto Chef Henry in the words of the Chairman’s uncle: “ALLEZ CUISINE!” :)

Unfortunately, judgement tasting never came, overshadowed by other priorities and resources for a school that serves 1800+ students. Luckily, the two judging rubrics the chefs and I had originally created served well, and actual judging was completed in two rounds: The first round used specific criteria to judge down to the final 8, and the second round used different criteria to judge down to the final 4 winners! The final judging round incorporated the freshmen class of 2014 to assign a points score to the final 8 recipes. Congratulations Falgoust, Brody, Guidry, Richard, Shelton, Norcross, Bourg! Special Thanks to Ms. Andrews for her time and dedication to the field of culinary arts! Keep Cooking!

I’m very proud to still retain those judging rubrics and the criteria I learned to judge with from Chef Henry Bousquet! There aren’t enough words in the dictionary to express my profound thanks to Chef Henry and the Chef Instructors of the culinary arts department at GNB Voc-Tech, and to the awesome up and coming Chefs of the Freshmen class of 2014. THANK YOU SO MUCH! I can’t wait to welcome more, and more winners of ParamedicCooks.com recipe contests! Good Luck Everyone!