When my year started, being a headliner chef(I am not a chef) at a large food festival as the GTB Food and Drink Fair was not even remotely on my list of things to achieve. But you see the way God works, that festival has so far been the highlight of half of this year. I remember getting a call from Chef Tiyan of Culinary Academy to be part of the event but she didn’t even mention the gravity of the event. She just said hey would you like to compete against your mum at this little event we are organizing? Of course I said yes. Next thing we submitted our pictures and a bio, next thing we were at a press conference. It all happened so quickly but it was a good feeling. After years of hustling to take pictures in not so good light or finding the best angle that works or having my brother who is a photographer yell at me to improve my pictures or even my mum critiquing my picture or making some disaster recipes and even some great ones, little ol me got called to headline an event.
Day 1 was so much fun, I got to meet a few of the bloggers that I had been friends with online and we sat for selfies and all the likes. I missed Kitchen Butterfly and Chef Tiyan’s class but I heard they rocked it! Marcus Samuelsson’s class was so interactive. He began by talking about the history of food and things we should look out for in the evolution of our food in the years to come. People asked all kinds of questions ranging from cooking questions to just foodpreneur esque questions and he provided detailed answers to all of them. He even had some Okro soup and Amala during his class. Gbubemi’s class was also a lot of fun as his regular humor got us the audience in stitches while smelling his delicious meal. Chef Michael Elegbede’s class was so insightful, his class seemed poetic because of the way he talked coupled with what he was saying and the dishes he demonstrated. He seems like the perfect chef that would mix poetry and food.
Day 2 was even more fun because it came with butterflies in my stomach. It was D-Day for me to compete with my mum but I was also feeling more relaxed at this point because i felt I knew the terrain a little better as she was not there on Day 1 and it was familiar ground plus winner mentality right? I started off the day with Uzo of CupCake Couture’s class, it was so engaging plus the kids had a great time baking and cooking for the audience. Chef Alex’s class was also interesting as I learned some tricks in pastry making as we all know, I suck at. Next Stop was Chef Raphael Duntoye’s class of La Petite maison, all I have to say is that man can cooooook. I tasted his rack of lamb and rice dish and oh my, I had to compose because I was in public but it was really tasty.
Next stop was the cooking competition. By the way, my mum and I were not told what ingredients we would be cooking with. We were only told about 2 of the ingredients and we found out the rest on stage. The ingredients we knew were cocoyam and smoked mackerel and for me that could have gone either way. I kept telling my mum before the event, if they bring palmoil, we both make efik dishes, if they bring coconut milk, you are on your own lol. We had our questions prepared for the audience just to keep the engagement going. We also had prizes to give away to make it a little more interesting and possibly bribe the audience lol. My mum at some point made someone in the audience dance etighi lol. We got to the stage and the ingredients were cocoyam, smoked mackerel, spaghetti, mango, tomatoes, ginger and a few others I cannot for the life of me remember now.
Everything just seemed so displaced. Luckily we were given kitchen assistants for the day from culinary academy and they were extremely helpful. We also had a surprise ingredient halfway through the cooking process which was beetroot. I felt personally that the spaghetti would have been more of a surprise because beetroot is totally my thing lol. I ended up making a cocoyam green curry with mango and fried spaghetti as a topping. Then my second dish was fish cakes served with a spicy garlic sauce and beetroot and mango mix incase you wanted to dial down the spicy. I also made a little beetroot salad with the mango dressing. My mum took a different approach and made a mashed cocoyam dish with fish sauce and she used cashews to enhance the flavor. By the way, my mum and I had never cooked without seasoning cubes so that was a first for both of us. We chose members of the audience to judge and my mum ended up winning. The first prize was a conventional oven and I had a tabletop burner. It came to the same house so I wasn’t complaining.
Unfortunately we could not stay for the last class that was hosted by Dooneys Kitchen but we heard she rocked it as well. GTB did an awesome job with the venue, the thoughtfulness of providing cold bottled water and hand fans for their guests. There was hardly anyone we spoke to that did not enjoy the event. The headliner chefs also received a gift box from GTB that had so many goodies. I think this is the longest post I have typed on my blog so I am just going to let the rest of the pictures do the talking.
POWER BANK
A video highlight of the happenings at the GTB Food and Drink Fair
Where you at the event? What classes did you attend and which one did you enjoy?
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