The 18-year-old New Zealand Certificate of Cookery student travels to Ara Timaru to study four days a week and was nominated by her tutors to take part in the Waitaha Young Trainee Chef of the Year event held in Christchurch earlier this month.
"I did the competition with my classmate Phoebe [Wickham]. We looked at a range of events we could try for and chose the young chef competition because it looked like a challenge, but it seemed really well run," Miss Bell said in a statement.
She spent a few weeks doing extra training — working on her technical skills against the clock to be ready to compete against more than 20 others in the challenge sponsored by Akaroa Salmon.
She had 45 minutes to display six key skills under the watchful of industry-based judges — many of them top chefs with decades of experience both in the kitchen and in competitions.
To the outsider the tasks sounded like something out of a French cooking textbook: prepare a tomato into concasse, prepare and cut 20g of brunoise shallot and chiffonade 30g of spinach.
Miss Bell rose to the occasion finely chopping, peeling, zesting and cubing into top contention in the competition.
She went on to use the ingredients she had prepared to create two main course plates.
She presented pan-seared Akaroa salmon glazed with Barker’s red pepper and chilli jelly served with parmentier potatoes, sauteed spinach, beurre noisette with capers, raisins, pinenuts and salmon roe.
The trainee chef was able to present the dish as she wished and was marked by Worldchef guidelines scoring above 90 to be one of six gold medallists in the competition.
"Before I went in, I was most nervous about boiling my potatoes perfectly to get the final result I wanted. I really wanted to get that right," Miss Bell said.
He said the event attracted strong interest this year and was held over three heats.
"All competitors needed to follow a standardised recipe to produce their dishes and were marked on kitchen skills, hygiene and cleanliness as well as the taste of the dish and their presentation skills."
After travelling up to Christchurch from Geraldine on the morning of the event, it’s now back to her course at Ara Timaru for Miss Bell — who also works at Barker’s cafe in Geraldine one day a week.
"This is just the start," she said.
"My end goal is to be a pastry chef and for that I’ll have to head to Christchurch next year to do my level 5 diploma specialising in patisserie."
Ara Timaru tutor Wally Katene said he was delighted for Miss Bell and said the result reflected the practice she had put in to refine her skills.
"Taking part in this event will really open doors for the students involved."
Miss Bell said the Trainee Chef of the Year has added to her enjoyment of cooking.
"I’ve worked in lots of different places and both the Ara course and working at Barker’s have opened my eyes to the right practice in industry."
She said she was excited to see what would happen next. — Allied Media
