By Jackie Liu
Photographed by Tue Duong & Tyler Ratzlaff
On Thursday and Friday Mrs. Gordon’s Foods class participated in the FVHS annual Chili Cook-off in which students concocted chili recipes for teachers to judge.
Before the teachers arrived to test the chili, students bustled around the room preparing their recipes and tables. Each team was instructed to carry out a theme for their chili and table setting. “Ali Baba and the 40 Chilies” went with an Arabic theme, decorating their table with jewelry and gold-accented tableware.
Alicia Hong’s (’14) group went with a firefighter theme because “our chili is spicy and hot…we have poblano peppers and Tabasco.”
Lucas Gomez’s (’15) team had a cowboy theme, “because our chili makes you go wild,” he explained.
Judges were Ms. Troyer, Mr. Papendick, Mr. Young, Mrs. Brooks and Mr. Ziebarth. They visited each table with a tray and a score sheet and were given small samples of chili.
Ms. Troyer’s idea of perfect chili had to have “the right balance of flavors… where it’s not burning your mouth or making you choke.”
Mr. Young wanted to find a good texture. “I’m looking for the feel of it, the texture of it,” he stated. “Is it too thick, is it too watery? A chili kind of needs to be in between. You don’t want dog food; you don’t want soup.”
“The best part of the Chili Cook-off is that everybody discovers that they have creative skills in cooking,” said Ms. Gordon. “They’re tying together everything they’ve learned first semester from researching recipes and finding something that sounds like it tastes good on paper.”
“To actually make it and taste it and have other people say it’s good – that’s really exciting.”
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