From warm weather watermelon crab meat soup to roasted garlic
blueberry and pear cobbler, the delicacies on display at this
year’s Great Gilroy Garlic Cook-Off showcase unique ways of
infusing some of summer’s favorites with Gilroy’s famed herb.
From warm weather watermelon crab meat soup to roasted garlic blueberry and pear cobbler, the delicacies on display at this year’s Great Gilroy Garlic Cook-Off showcase unique ways of infusing some of summer’s favorites with Gilroy’s famed herb.
Armed with their best original garlicky recipes, eight amateur chefs from across the nation will descend upon Gilroy to compete in the Cook-Off, a centerpiece of the annual Gilroy Garlic Festival, now in its 32nd year. The winner goes home with $1,000 and the traditional crown of garlic cloves. Second place takes $750, and third $500.
Gilroyan Adam Sanchez, a seasoned Cook-Off competitor and the contest’s 2001 winner, said the exposure he received from the Garlic Festival sparked a career as a restaurateur after almost 30 years in the car dealership business. As owner of the former Al Sanchez Volkswagen Mazda dealership, Sanchez, 48, and his chief financial officer, Ann Zyburra, maintained a healthy rivalry when it came to one of their favorite hobbies: cooking. For years, “we always tried to show each other up” and squared off several times with their co-workers acting as judges, Sanchez said.
“They could never decide,” he said.
So Zyburra presented a challenge: if Sanchez entered and won the Cook-Off contest, she promised to concede that he was the better chef. As it turned out, his Grand Marnier duck marinated pot stickers took the top prize and Sanchez became the only local to win the contest in recent years.
Judge Jay Minzer, a personal chef in Florida, tasted Sanchez’s duck nearly 10 years ago but still remembers that first bite like it was yesterday.
“It was unanimous,” said Minzer from his home, where several Garlic Festival Herbie bobblehead dolls gazed back at him. “Adam’s was so good I don’t even remember any of the other entries.”
From there, Sanchez’s culinary career took off. Though Zyburra never publicly acknowledged Sanchez as the winner, he remembered with a laugh, the two paired up to open Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme, a catering company in San Jose. He was back on the Cook-Off stage in 2005 with a garlic and pear gnocchi and plans to open a steak and chop house in the old Harvest Time restaurant at the corner of Monterey and Sixth streets, hopefully within the next few months.
“A lot of it’s a spin-off from the Garlic Festival,” Sanchez said. “And now I’m going to be a restaurateur.”
This year, Sanchez was invited back to the Cook-Off stage where he and Zyburra will square off against “the Vickroy Boys” – pyro chefs Jon and Pat Vickroy – in a master chef challenge on the Friday of the festival.
Every December, the Garlic Festival puts out a call across the United States and Canada for the best garlic recipes. The year, festival volunteers whittled 800 submissions down to a list of about 50 of the most delicious, which were then forwarded on to a professional food consultant to prepare and narrow down to eight. The finalists’ recipes are those considered the most interesting and exciting, according to the festival’s website.
“I’m always looking for something that’s creative and different and tastes good and is cooked well,” Minzer said. “I’m looking for an interesting use of garlic.”
Minzer remembered being surprised in previous years by dishes with unsavory sounding titles – spicy garlic butter cookies or roasted garlic blueberry and pear cobbler, anyone? – “that turned out to be amazing when I though they were going to be disgusting,” he said.
“Basically, I’m looking to be wowed,” he said. “I’m looking for a dish that will either inspire me to recreate it at home or do my own version.”
Dennis Harrigan, the Garlic Festival’s 2010 recipe chairman, said he was most pleased with the variety of this year’s cooking shows. From the challenges that pit local personalities against each other to the Garlic Showdown, in which four professional chefs square off in an iron chef style competition, “we’ve got a great lineup,” Harrigan said.
To qualify, recipes had to be original creations that serve six and include at least six cloves of fresh garlic – or three teaspoons minced or chopped garlic. Contestants have two hours to prepare, plate and serve their recipes to a panel of five judges. This year’s judges include restaurateurs, a food consultant, a personal chef, a local radio personality and a representative from a grocery store chain.
Past winning recipes include walnut-garlic tart with a garlic-infused cream and chili syrup, and chai-steeped chicken breasts with oriental aioli.
The Cook-Off takes place from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. Saturday, July 24, at the Great Garlic Cook-Off Stage. The winners will be announced at 12:15 p.m.
This year’s Great Gilroy Garlic Cook-Off contestants
– Warm weather watermelon crab meat-kissed south seas soup
Margi Berry – Trout Lake, Wash.
– Sauteed butterfly prawns with spicy garlic cranberry bread pudding and garlic studded pinot noir sauce
Renata Stanko – Lebanon, Ore.
– Garlic and crawfish gravy over grits with roasted garlic waffles
Derick Thurman – Charlotte, N.C.
– Garlic paella with garlic aioli
Michael Labrador – Newhall
– Potentially pretentious pork tenderloin with garlic five ways
Leslie Shearer – Mooresville, N.C.
– Emerald City pelau
Susan Miller – Milton, Wash.
– Deconstructed beef Wellington with garlic-tarragon aioli
Jamie Miller – Napa
– Roasted garlic blueberry and pear cobbler with garlic pecan brickle cream
Penny Malcolm – Americus, Ga.
