Behind kitchen doors, many fine restaurants are competitive
places where cooks will spar with recipes. On July 29 at high noon
on the last day of the 2007 Gilroy Garlic Festival, four local
chefs will battle for a cash prize using a secret ingredient and,
of course, garlic.
By Perry Shirley Staff Writer
Gilroy – Behind kitchen doors, many fine restaurants are competitive places where cooks will spar with recipes. On July 29 at high noon on the last day of the 2007 Gilroy Garlic Festival, four local chefs will battle for a cash prize using a secret ingredient and, of course, garlic.
The first annual Garlic Showdown is scripted after “Iron Chef,” a Food Network program in which contestants dive into a frenetic culinary battle after each learning the closely-guarded secret main ingredient at the beginning of each show – an aspect cookoff organizers have not ignored.
Devon Boisen, the Executive Chef at Spenger’s Fresh Fish Grotto in Berkeley, who was one of those chosen to compete, is taking the cookoff seriously.
In an effort to get a leg up on the competition he said he tried to pull the secret ingredient – which could be anything from beef to apricots – out of organizer Barbara DeLorenzo but failed to do so.
“It’s hardcore,” Boisen said. “Ever since Iron Chef came out, kitchen cooks will have fun doing little cook-offs, have some competition.”
Adding to the difficulty is that contestants are not allowed to bring any of their own ingredients, save for a few spices.
If one thing is sure, it’s that the jewel of any dish should be garlic, an ingredient that that cooks say is essential to cooking.
“It’s a key ingredient in many ethnic foods,” Boisen said. “There are no boundaries with it. The sky’s the limit on what you can do with it.”
Unlike the Garlic Cook-off, an event that features eight amateurs cooking with garlic in front of panel of chefs and professional food critics, a twist of the Showdown is that it will be entirely judged by amateurs who are, after all, “the people that are eating in restaurants,” DeLorenzo said. They will get to be as harsh – or pleased – as they want while trying out servings of two entrees from each of the four chefs.
The choice of cooks was left up to local radio stations. While the news talk radio KGO chose Boisen, soft rock station KWAV picked chef Tony Baker of Montrio Bristro in Monterey, country station KRTY in San Jose chose Justin Perez, chef and owner of Campbell’s Restaurant O. The South Bay’s KBAY station is still in the process of choosing its representative and will announce their choice Thursday.
The winner will take home $5,000 in prize money and 1,000 pounds of garlic courtesy of Christopher Ranch, the region’s largest garlic grower and a local mainstay.
