Kapiolani Community College continues to produce highly competitive student culinary teams, with its five-member Team Hawaii 2014 taking third place at the American Culinary Federation Western Regional Championships March 2-5 in Oakland, Calif.
Seven teams each produced cold platters and a four-course meal for four and demonstrated skills in butchery, pastry and knives.
The KCC students — Vaneza Lyn Agustin, Kenneth Lee, Vince Hong, Alvis Ferrer and Jethro Tapulgo — were led by instructor-coaches Grant Sato and Jason Peel.
"They performed better at the regionals than at all their practices," said Sato. "The judges complimented them on their teamwork."
Team Hawaii earned a score of 35.98. California was first with 37.04 points; Utah took second place with 36.08 points.
For the cold platter, the team created deconstructed banh mi and deconstructed laulau. The four-course menu included an appetizer of pochouse, or fish stew, which each team was required to produce. KCC’s salad course was a green salad with beet puree, honey-and-lime-marinated carrots and tomato, li hing apple tournee, yukari cheese-filled furikake macaroon and greens tossed in honey mustard miso dressing.
Sauteed chicken breast was the team’s entree. It comprised a Korean chicken roulade stuffed with julienne red bell pepper, ginseng, jujube, daikon and garlic, with kim chee black forbidden rice and Korean miso-braised vegetables.
Dessert was a macadamia nut crunch bar with mixed berry coulis, bourbon-spiced orange segments and an orange-zest almond cake topped with guava yuzu sorbet.
For the skills competition, teams tackled butchery of a whole fish and a whole chicken, vegetable cutting skills, zesting and segmenting an orange, and making a sugar dough and rolling it into a tart shell.
Washington trailed Hawaii with a score of 33.45. Colorado (31.5 points), Oregon (31.3) and Arizona (23.45) followed.
