NFYFC Cookery Final

At this year’s Lincolnshire YFC County Rally, myself, Rosie and Flo made up the team for Louth’s entry in the Cookery competition. The theme for this year’s Cookery was “Around the World”, and we were given a list of various countries visited under the National YFC Travel program which we could choose to interpret.  For anyone who doesn’t know, you are asked to prepare a 3 course meal in one hour, using only two gas camping stoves. No cooker, no fridge and no power supply. This makes choosing a menu extremely difficult!

A group decision led to us choosing “Africa”; as we felt this was a more challenging country to try and represent and would hopefully make us stand out to the judges.  Having done the cookery competition several times, I had a good understanding of the rules and what was expected of us. However, Rosie and Flo took charge and planned the entire menu, equipment and display; only coming to me for reassurance and to check they had done it right. I felt a bit of a spare part, but proud that my experience had been passed onto the younger members meaning that it no longer all fell on me to plan and organise.

On the day we all worked as a team to help chop, cook and display our menu – and to our delight we were crowned the winners giving us automatic entry to the National Finals. We decided there and then we were going to go on to represent Louth and Lincolnshire at a national level, as we may never get the opportunity to do so again. Our menu was Mfino Fritters, South African curry and Labneh (yoghurt and berries).  The judges had advised the berries were not quite right for Africa and we should try citrus fruits, so we took their criticism on board and changed the dessert to a South African Marshmallow Dessert which included citrus fruits.

The competition finals took place at the Malvern Autumn Show in Worcestershire on Saturday 23^rd September. We travelled separately; mainly because we had to take so much stuff it wouldn’t fit in one car! We set off at 7.00am at it was a 3.5 hr drive and we wanted to get there in good time so we knew where we had to be. Well… it was a good job we left in good time.  The traffic on the outskirts of Worcester was backed up and slow moving; causing Flo’s car to overheat and it had to be left on a roundabout to be rescued post-competition!

After shifting all of the bags into my car we set off again, arriving with only 10 minutes to spare before we had to book in.  We were laden down with pots, pans, chopping boards, display boards and ingredients, pushing our way through the crowds trying to find the “Severn Hall”.  The other counties who had clearly been there before wheeled in their trollies looking very calm, whilst we were there sweating and panting, having a pit-stop every ten metres! Eventually we made it, set up our display and unpacked all of the equipment.

We were the second group to cook and looking around; the standard was incredibly high. We told ourselves we wouldn’t let it phase us, and we didn’t. The judges were professional chefs who constantly walked round the room, watching us cook. The pressure was intense, particularly as the public surrounded us too. But we stuck to our plan, we knew what we needed to do as we had done it before. We worked together, helping each other out when something threatened to burn or fall apart. The hour zoomed by and time was up; we had to stop cooking and pack everything away for judging. We were happy with the overall display and it was now a case of waiting.

Later on in the day, we returned for the presentations. The judges praised everyone for travelling there from all over the country to compete and for the skills that are shown despite having such basic cooking equipment. They began to read out the results, we realised we perhaps weren’t going to be winners this time. Overall, we came 33^rd place out of 37 teams, which naturally we were disappointed with but we feel we did our very best and are all proud to say we went and represented our county at a national competition.

We would recommend all clubs who qualify for area or national rounds to pluck up the courage and have a go – the standard will be high but you are the best of the best! You will learn tips on how to improve for next time, have a good time and have a good story to tell at the end of it all.  Once we arrived home after a very tiring day, we can now say it was worth the stress and maybe we can have another go next year! If we do, we are definitely taking a trolley, that’s for sure.

By Holly Howell, Chairman of Louth YFC