Kids in the Kitchen: Food Challenge Feb 9, 2010

 Yesterday somebody got the idea to have a Food Challenge a la Food Network's Iron Chef America.  Ben threw the gauntlet down before John Michael who accepted and they were off and running.  The challenge:  Choose a team of chefs to create a three course meal with a beverage for the panel of judges. Judging was based on Presentation, Taste and Teamwork.

The teams:  Team John Michael  Sous chefs Betsy, Timothy and Tyrone

                  Team Ben Sous chef Aaron

Team John was up first preparing lunch.  They prepared cheesey pretzels as an appetizer, JT's signature

Ketchup-Infused Hotdogs for a main course, oatmeal raisin cookies for dessert and coffee milkshake for the beverage.

Here John Michael describes his dishes for the judges:

The judges then went to the difficult work of tasting and evaluating.  Each judge could issue up to a total of 80 points:  10 points each for Presentation and Taste for the appetizer, main course and dessert, 10 more points for the beverage and up to 10 points for Teamwork.  I thought Team John worked together remarkably well.  The adults served as judges and we had a blast.  I should have videotaped the final judges' panel as Tad and Carlos really went to town on the formal critique - way fun!

JT served as a judge since Tad wasn't home for the lunch presentation so he filled in for his dad and they worked together on the Team Ben part of the challenge.

  He was the toughest judge of all.

Team Ben included just Ben and Aaron.  They got off to a bit of a slow start on the teamwork but once Ben realized he was selling his partner a bit short he quickly adjusted his attitude.  They chose a very ambitious menu which took them many more hours to prepare than they had anticipated.  It was a verrry late dinner.  For the appetizer they served shrimp cocktail, then for the main course we enjoyed sloppy joe

on homemade bread with steamed veggies.  Dessert was homemade donuts

and hot chocolate with whipped cream (with homemade whipped cream and chocolate syrup).  They served lemonade as their beverage.  Here's Team Ben presenting their dishes to the judges:

And then dessert:

And the judges were back at it, eating, scoring and critiquing.  In the end, Team Ben won by about 25 points out of a total 320 from all of the judges. It was great fun and we were so pleased with all that a group of kids accomplished completely on their own.