Chef Jaco Lokker

The University of Toronto Iron Chef team faced its stiffest test yet on Wednesday, days before competing against students from three other universities.

Using a box of surprise ingredients, the team had 2 1/2 hours to produce an appetizer and main dish that would wow the guest judges, ��˾��ֱ�� executive chefs Jaco Lokker and Suman Roy.

Catch up on ��˾��ֱ�� Iron Chef news, video and updates

The chefs surprised students Felipe Branco, Brettany Colette, Jordan Su and backup team member Ailin Xi with the ingredients: ginger beer, beluga lentils, beets, tandoori sauce and puff pastry.

This was the team's final practice before the cook-off against the University of Massachusetts Amherst, University of Ottawa and McGill University on Saturday. In the Iron Chef competition, the team will also be given a black box of ingredients and be asked to prepare an appetizer and main course to impress the judges.

Watch the cook-off live on Saturday

“Why do you look so serious?” Chef Jaco Lokker (centre) says, as he strides past students (from left to right) Ailin Xi, Brettany Colette, Felipe Branco and Jordan Su (photo by Geoffrey Vendeville)

The students met in the office of their coach, Chef James Piggott, to brainstorm a menu, deciding on a quick cured salmon with ginger-beer pickled beets and a lentil salad. The main course would be a tandoori braised chicken on biryani-style rice with roasted cauliflower, samosa and lime cilantro yogurt.

The team quickly got to work and assumed familiar roles in a kitchen station at the New College residence. Xi kept time to make sure everyone was on schedule. Branco butchered the chickens and salmon.

The guest judges Lokker and Roy questioned whether the students could pull off such an “ambitious” menu in time.

“A cured gravlax in two-and-a-half hours? Normally you’d do that overnight,” Lokker said.

The students got off to a slow start but picked up the pace to get their appetizer out on time.

A multiple exposure of Felipe Branco, an M.B.A. student at Rotman, butchering chicken (photo by Geoffrey Vendeville)

The judges’ initial skepticism seemed to melt away after they saw the finely sliced gravlax salmon arrive.

“That’s a gold medal plate to me,” said Lokker, after a few bites.

His fellow judge agreed. “If I go to a good restaurant in Toronto, and I got this, I’d be happy,” Suman said.

Their only criticisms were that the dish needed a touch more salt and that ginger beer gastrique lacked a little punch.

They were harsher on the main course since it arrived a few minutes late – the students took too long garnishing the plates. The chefs said the chicken was cooked properly, but that the rice should have been drier to be a true biryani. Overall, though, they were delighted.

“Every time you put something on a plate, it gets better and better,” Lokker said. The students have come a long way since their first day in the kitchen Jan. 24.

“This shows they’re becoming little culinarians,” Lokker told ��˾��ֱ�� News.

Read about Chef Lokker and ��˾��ֱ�� food services in Maclean's

Despite the glowing reviews, the students appeared downcast when they listened to the chefs’ criticisms. Their grade for the appetizer was an 83.

“I think of my grades and 83? Is that the best we can do?” Xi said later.

“With that mark, you go to the prof and say, ‘Where did I go wrong,’” Colette added.

Asked why the students looked glum, Lokker said it’s probably because they are high achievers.

“At the end of the day, they’re ��˾��ֱ�� students.”

Student chefs face off to secure spot on ��˾��ֱ��'s Iron Chef team

geoff.vendeville — Wed, 25 Jan 2017 21:30:32 +0000

Student chefs face off to secure spot on ��˾��ֱ��'s Iron Chef team

geoff.vendeville Wed, 01/25/2017 - 16:30

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Felipe Branco (left) and Jordan Su were among the four students chosen to represent ��˾��ֱ�� at the Iron Chef competition in February (photo by Geoffrey Vendeville)

Geoffrey Vendeville

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Geoffrey Vendeville

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They will face McGill, OttawaU, Yale and the University of Massachusetts-Amherst in an inter-university culinary showdown hosted by ��˾��ֱ�� in February

Four student chefs have been chosen to bring the University of Toronto glory next month when the university hosts the annual Iron Chef challenge.

Brettany Colette, Felipe Branco, Jordan Su and Ailin Xi made the cut after a culinary duel in the New College cafeteria kitchen on Tuesday evening.

After receiving dozens of applications to represent ��˾��ֱ�� at the competition, ��˾��ֱ�� chefs Jaco Lokker and James Piggott invited 12 students to demonstrate their skills in a faceoff. The students were split into teams of three and given two hours, a whole chicken and the run of the New College kitchen to prepare a dish that would leave the judges licking their lips.

Here’s how the night went down:

5:30 p.m.

Piggott, the executive chef residential dining at New College, greeted the students in the cafeteria and made it clear that as hosts of this year’s contest, the stakes are especially high.

“We are hopefully going to have eight or nine competitors,” he said, “and we’re going to crush them. This is our home. This is our turf. We don’t lose at home."

6:00 p.m.

The students were separated into teams and took their places at counters in the kitchen.

Lokker, ��˾��ֱ��'s director of culinary operations and executive chef, introduced himself to the finalists.

He has coached the ��˾��ֱ�� team in each of the last three years at Iron Chef but stepped aside this time to host the event.

Piggott takes over as head coach although Lokker will help prepare the student chefs for the big event.

Read about Chef Jaco Lokker in Maclean's

Chef Jaco Lokker meets the students gunning for a place in the ��˾��ֱ�� Iron Chef squad (photo by Geoffrey Vendeville)

Before the students at the trial could make a dash for ingredients, Piggott went over the ground rules:

“No swearing. This is not Hell’s Kitchen,” he said.

The contenders were allowed one f-bomb if they cut themselves – and even then, “It better be worth stitches,” he said.

At just after six, it was go time.

6:30 p.m.

The teams wasted no time planning their dishes: a classic coconut curry with blend of fresh herbs and fresh chicken stock; roasted chicken with butter and thyme accompanied by green pea puree with thyme, garlic herb oil and lemon juice; fried chicken on french toast with applesauce and whipped cream; and chicken stuffed with cheese and pine nuts on handmade fettuccine.

Branco, a first-year M.B.A. student at ��˾��ֱ��’s Rotman School of Management, was in charge of carving the chicken for the curry.

He said he had some experience in that area after interning at a restaurant in Panzano, near Florence, Italy, where he learned how to make “old school” Italian dishes like bistecca fiorentina and Francesina stew (beef shank cooked in red wine, onions and tomato sauce).

Felipe Branco, an M.B.A. student at Rotman, prepares a chicken for a curry while his team partner Brettany Colette looks on (photo by Geoffrey Vendeville)

7:00 p.m.

“55 minutes teams, 55 minutes! Feel the pressure, feel the burn,” Piggott said.

As students picked up the pace to finish in time, the chefs strolled up and down the aisles appraising their skills.

They were evaluating whether students could hold a knife properly, cooking terminology the students were using and whether they stuck to simple ingredients or took risks.

Ailin Xi, a biochemistry and nutrional sciences student, is splattered with green pea and pepper puree during the Iron Chef competition trial (photo by Geoffrey Vendeville)

The judges also considered how well the students gelled together.

“You’re always going to have people who stand out more as leaders,” Lokker told ��˾��ֱ�� News. “And you don’t need three of those on the same team. That’s a huge problem.”

7:30 p.m.

By this point, some teams were getting ready to plate their dishes while others had yet to put their food in the oven.

With 15 minutes to go, the chefs left the kitchen to give the teams some breathing room.

Branco, Su and their teammate Colette prepared to lay out the chicken curry, thinking carefully about the position of each element of their plate and what one student called the “sauce-to-rice ratio.”

They chose only the prettiest pieces of chicken for the dish and garnished them with tweezers.

Another team raised fried chicken on french toast to a new level of elegance.

��˾��ֱ�� students vying for spots on the university's Iron Chef team put the finishing touches on fried chicken, french toast, applesauce and whipped cream (photo by Geoffrey Vendeville)

8:00 p.m.

One by one, the teams brought their creations out to the cafeteria where chefs Lokker and Piggott were waiting.

“Honestly this is really good gnocchi, and I’m not a fan of gnocchi,” said Piggott, tasting the roast chicken, green pea puree, gnocchi combo.

Lokker seemed impressed with another team's fettucini made from scratch.

“This is exactly the way fresh pasta should taste,” he told them.

The chefs conferred while the students cleaned up their stations. “It’s getting harder now,” Lokker said to his colleague as they deliberated.

Stuffed chicken with fettuccine. The chefs behind this dish didn't make the cut for the ��˾��ֱ�� Iron Chef team this year (photo by Geoffrey Vendeville)

Just after 8 p.m.

A few minutes after sampling the last dish, the chefs called the students back out to the New College cafeteria dining room.

When Piggott announced the winners – the makers of the coconut curry – Colette sprung up from her chair and high-fived her teammates.

The students who were chosen to be part of ��˾��ֱ��'s Iron Chef team celebrated after the announcement was made (photo by Geoffrey Vendeville)

With the air of an athlete who had just progressed to the playoffs, Su, the human geography student, said he was happy to have made it this far but refrained from gloating.

“My main purpose here was just to have fun,” he said.

The students who hadn’t made the roster smiled and applauded.

“It was so much fun. They provided us the whole kitchen, which was amazing,” said Burce Isik, who studies genetics, biotechnology, and molecular biology. “I’m in fourth year. If I’d known about this before, I would’ve applied in my second year, third year.”

Three of the four winning students will compete at the Iron Chef cook-off the weekend of Feb. 25th. The fourth student is an understudy but guaranteed a spot on next year’s team. The backup will be decided at the team’s first practice session with their coach, Piggott.

Burce Isik who studies genetics, biotechnology, and molecular biology, makes gnocchi (photo by Geoffrey Vendeville)

Fresh and local: Maclean’s shows foodies what’s new at ��˾��ֱ��

vzaretski — Fri, 28 Oct 2016 18:43:18 +0000

Fresh and local: Maclean’s shows foodies what’s new at ��˾��ֱ��

vzaretski Fri, 10/28/2016 - 14:43

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��˾��ֱ��'s much-loved chef, Jaco Lokker, serves up food on campus (photo by Carlos Osorio/Toronto Star via Getty Images)

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Lamb sausage from a butcher at the St. Lawrence market. Organic milk and cream from a dairy in Kincardine. Custom-made rye bread from Tre Mari bakery.

Those are just a few examples of what Maclean’s magazine found when it decided to go behind the scenes of what the magazine is calling “the largest independent food service operation at any university in Canada.”

Two in-depth features in the current edition of Maclean’s take a look at what happened after the University of Toronto took over food operations across much of its downtown Toronto campus this year.

Read about how Chef Jaco Lokker spent the summer developing recipes and menus made from local, fresh ingredients – and the partnerships he developed with local food producers.

“I’m very much a believer in wholesome and whole foods,” Lokker tells Maclean’s, emphasizing that there is a unique opportunity in a university to affect the habits people form in adulthood. “Here’s the moment when people are making choices in their life,” he says. “We have the social responsibility.”

Read the article

So how does it taste? Maclean’s puts the healthy menus to the ultimate test – sending food critic Corey Mintz to a tasting spree of everything from tortillas to burgers, tabbouleh salad and more.

Chef Jaco Lokker

Final Iron Chef practice: 'This is a gold medal plate'

Catch up on ��˾��ֱ�� Iron Chef news, video and updates

Watch the cook-off live on Saturday

Read about Chef Lokker and ��˾��ֱ�� food services in Maclean's

Student chefs face off to secure spot on ��˾��ֱ��'s Iron Chef team

5:30 p.m.

Read more about Chef James Piggott

6:00 p.m.

Read about Chef Jaco Lokker in Maclean's

6:30 p.m.

7:00 p.m.

7:30 p.m.

8:00 p.m.

Just after 8 p.m.

Read more about the competition

Fresh and local: Maclean’s shows foodies what’s new at ��˾��ֱ��

Read the article

Read the review