Community Corner
Seabrook Super Chef Competition a Little Cheesy
The second annual cook off on June 10 challenged three teams to create a dish inspired by the secret ingredient: cheese.
Luckily, on Friday morning I resisted the call from a cereal box in my pantry and showed up hungry for my stint as a judge in the Super Chef competition at Seabrook Village in Tinton Falls.
In its second year, the timed cook off was an Iron Chef-type competition, replete with a secret ingredient, that paired three Seabrook residents with chefs from the retirement community’s eateries.
I was joined in my judging duties by Seabrook resident Betty Hill, Asbury Park Press reporter Michelle Gladden and Paul Booth of The Coaster weekly newspaper.
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The teams chopped, stirred and sautéed ingredients, filling the auditorium with savory aromas and making me rethink my decision to bypass breakfast while they created signature dishes that best showed off the secret ingredient unveiled at the start of the event: cheese.
In little under an hour from the 10:30 a.m. start, my fellow three judges and I were sampling an abundant assortment of cheesy selections and diligently comparing observations.
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While I initially wasn’t concerned about the degree of difficulty involved in scoring the three entries on presentation, taste and originality, as each pasta, soup and Panini was placed before me it became clear that choosing a winner was akin to picking a favorite pair of shoes at Nordstrom. I wanted to eat them all.
One bowl of spaghetti was filled with chunks of chicken and tomatoes and topped with a creamy béchamel sauce. Another pasta dish mixed pancetta and olives and boasted a light, cheesy sauce throughout the dish. It was accompanied on the side by a cheese soup with pieces of thin asparagus spears with some bites of shallots and mushrooms. A tomato soup sprinkled liberally with cheddar cheese was paired with a grilled cheese Panini with a thin layer of salty prosciutto on thick slices of white bread.
In the end, I was wooed by the classic grilled cheese and tomato soup combo and nibbled away at my sandwich in deep gratitude for such a treat.
By noon, the winner had been crowned and I headed back to work, belly full and with a renewed appreciation of the magic of cheese and the culinary skills of Seabrook's super chefs.
