Wairarapa UCOL cooks ready to rumble

YES CHEF: UCOL Cookery tutor Damian Peeti, left, and Jamie Rafferty, 19, of Carterton.

A TEAM of five cookery students from Wairarapa UCOL are fine-tuning their contest skills and dishes in readiness for the 2014 Wellington Culinary Fare next week.

Damian Peeti, UCOL Wairarapa head chef lecturer and past gold medal-winner at the New Zealand Culinary fare, said he and assistant chef lecturer and technician Stacey Puddy were this week working through the holiday break with the team, which was selected from a class of 20 students to compete in the capital on May 9 to 11. It was the second year a Wairarapa UCOL team had tested the mettle of their counterparts from other districts and regions after cookery students from the Masterton campus last year bagged a haul of medals and merit awards at several contests throughout the country, including the prestigious New Zealand Culinary Fare nationals.

Mr Peeti believed an increase this year in the cookery class roll was due to the success in culinary competitions and other new initiatives launched last year.

UCOL Wairarapa medal-winner from last year, Thomas Pepper, was today a Level 4 apprentice at the Hippopotamus Restaurant & Bar in Wellington and his fellow 2013 medal-winner Cheryl-Kay Phillips was studying toward a Bachelor in Culinary Arts at Auckland University of Technology.

Mr Peeti said the five members of the 2014 team who will compete next week includes teenagers Nykyta Kuri and Devon Wilmshurst, who are Youth Guarantee students, Jodi Haustein, Jamie Rafferty and adult student Chris Schofer.

He said the competition bid this year includes two students in the trainee class innovated soup section and two in the trainee class chicken brunch section, and the single adult student will compete in the open beef section. He said team members range in age from 17 to the adult student and each had forsaken some of their holiday break to drill the creation and execution of their contest dishes, which on the day need to be plated and presented for judging within an hour.

He said all the competition students live in Wairarapa, four in Masterton and one in Carterton, and each of the team members also work or are gaining work experience at restaurants throughout the region.

"All our students had the opportunity to compete and while competition isn't for everybody, for me it was a chance to give back to the industry because that's what was done for me.

"I was encouraged to compete when I was a student," Mr Peeti said.

"This kind of initiative really promotes the school as well.

"People can see they will get a qualification and an opportunity at a career, but if you reach out just a little bit more the competition really exposes you to the industry, to your peers, and to current industry trends and networks."

Mr Peeti said regional initiatives also garner similar prestige for Wairarapa UCOL including the involvement of students in the Gate to Plate event at the 2014 Masterton A & P Show and the debut of the Master Class Cookery Series at the Masterton campus this year.

In March a Master Class was held on sausage making, and the second session of the series will focus on dumplings and runs on Saturday under the tutelage of capital city Dumpling Queen, Vicky Ha, from House of Dumplings in Wellington.

For more information about the Master Class Cookery Series call Wairarapa UCOl reception at 06 946 2300.