GILROY
– Victory never felt so good for returning Great Garlic Cook-off
finalist Ginger Moreno – made sweeter because of last year’s
disappointing finish when her sauce turned into pudding.
”
Last year was a disaster, and this year I can’t believe it,
”
said Moreno, beaming at TV cameras while crying tears of joy
after she was proclaimed the cook-off’s winner Saturday for her
recipe, garlic seafood soup.
GILROY – Victory never felt so good for returning Great Garlic Cook-off finalist Ginger Moreno – made sweeter because of last year’s disappointing finish when her sauce turned into pudding.
“Last year was a disaster, and this year I can’t believe it,” said Moreno, beaming at TV cameras while crying tears of joy after she was proclaimed the cook-off’s winner Saturday for her recipe, garlic seafood soup.
Moreno went the extra mile while en route to Gilroy from her home in Rancho Palos Verdes, stopping in Monterey to buy fresh seafood and San Jose to purchase authentic Asian ingredients. Her extra effort apparently paid off.
“(It is) creative and a little bit bold in the same way because the amount of flavors that she had put in there,” said judge Kate Washington, of Sunset magazine, describing Moreno’s dish. “It’s so different. She executed it very well. The creativity was there.”
Moreno drew from Italian, Thai and Japanese influences, and among the ingredients is, surprisingly, a banana which gives the dish a creamy texture and imparts a sweet and sour taste, she said.
Moreno was one of eight finalists from across the country who competed in the cook-off Saturday morning preparing their garlicky dishes on-stage for five expert judges and the spectators. The judges evaluated each dish on preparation, flavor, texture, creativity, appearance and use of garlic. Moreno passed the garlic test – using two heads of minced garlic although the contest requires only six cloves.
Margee Berry, of White Salmon, Wash., placed second after finishing in second-place only a few years ago (the top three winners are required to wait three years before re-entering) with her recipe for stuffed cha-cha crab chilies made with chili peppers stuffed with goat cheese, Monterey jack and cooked crab meat and served with a tomatillo sauce.
Berry said she devised the recipe out of necessity.
“Being from the Northwest, we eat a lot of crab meat,” she said. “I was just trying to come up with something new to do with crab meat.”
The recipe also works well with grilled chicken and grilled shrimp, she said.
Unlike the other two top finishers, Renee Pokorny, of Ventura, was competing in the cook-off for the first time. But her third-place finish likely had nothing to do with beginner’s luck. Pokorny has created 150 recipes that she eventually hopes to publish in her own cookbook.
For the Garlic Fest, she submitted her recipe for grilled chicken lettuce wraps with lemon-green olive tapenade. The dish was inspired by the lettuce wraps served at the restaurant chain P.F. Chang’s. Her husband, Herb, said she prepared the dish at home often to get ready for the fest.
“It’s good,” he said. “It gets tweaked a little each time.”
For their efforts, Moreno will take home $1,000 for first-place, while Berry gets $750 and Pokorny gets $500. Each of the five remaining finalists receives $100.
The judges said they were impressed by the diversity of the dishes, which ranged from seafood to chicken to beef, and all of the hard work the contestants put into the food’s preparation.
“Out of all eight of them, there’s really no losers in the bunch,” said judge Evelyn Miliate, head chef of the Bel Air market in Gold River.
Judge Andrea Froncillo, of the Stinking Rose restaurant, agreed, saying the judging was difficult this year.
“They were all excellent,” he said.
The finalists went through a detailed screening process to make it to the festival. About 300 entries were submitted, which were then narrowed down to 50. A nutritionist prepared the 50 recipes in her home, narrowing the field to the final eight. The expert judges sampled the final dishes one at a time while drinking the official wine of the cook-off from Pietra Santa Winery in Hollister – including a merlot and the Sassalino, a blend of sangiovese and merlot.
The cook-off stage was festively decorated with a farmer’s market theme and the event was generating more media buzz this year with at least three TV camera crews filming the finalists, event Co-chair Karen LaCorte said.
Remarkably, one finalist was returning for the ninth time to the cook-off stage. Roxanne Chan, of Albany, first participated in the cook-off in 1984.
“Over the years, step by step they’ve added things and made it a lot nicer for the contestants,” she said. “The people make it, the volunteers, the Gilroy community is so wonderful. It’s just a fun event.”
Chan’s best finish was second place in 1986, and this year she was hoping to break the top three with her savory pasta squares. While the veteran calmly prepared her dish, two other contestants were experiencing cook-off excitement for the first time.
“I’ve been telling people I’m more nervous than when I got married,” Andy Goldsmith, of Alameda, said. “I’m a CPA and not a chef.”
He was off to a rough start with his calamari andres, initially experiencing problems setting his oven temperature to the 400-degrees called for in his recipe. In the end, Goldsmith received rave reviews from judge Jay Minzer, chef and owner of Al & Jay’s Pasta Kitchen.
“The calamari is fabulous,” Minzer said.
And who knows, Lesley Pew who prepared salmon cakes with orange sauce, may be back for another try. Although the Massachusetts resident and her husband plan to take a break from eating salmon cakes, more cook-offs may be on the menu.
“I think I’m addicted,” Pew said, smiling mischievously.
