The home team of Kate Durrant & Dylan Jenkins from Echuca College were winners in a tight field. The coveted Murray River Culinary Challenge trophy, a piece of highly polished red gum sourced from the Koondrook forest, is now residing with the reigning champions at Echuca College.
The Challenge is an industry standard cooking competition for secondary school students enrolled in a Vocational Education and Training (VET) Hospitality Training Package.
The Murray River Culinary Challenge is a three tiered competition. At the school level, students compete individually to vie for a spot in the Regional Final. The two top scoring students from each school are paired and compete as a team in the Regional Final, the top scoring team then progressing to the Grand Final. Menus in each level of the competition become progressively more difficult and are designed for students to be able to demonstrate their skills learnt during their hospitality training.
The Challenge spans four regions and has involved students attending schools from Campaspe, Shepparton, Swan Hill and Wangaratta.
The Regional Cook off between teams from Echuca College, St Joseph’s College and a hybrid Rochester/St. Joseph’s College, resulted in the Echuca College duo of Kate Durrant & Dylan Jenkins becoming the Grand Final team for Campaspe region on Monday 12 September.
It was the first time in the 18 year history of the competition that Echuca College had a team in the Grand Final. Echuca was joined by teams from Swan Hill College, Nathalia Secondary College and Galen Catholic College who enjoyed a viewing of the kitchens at Echuca College and a dinner at the American Hotel with trainers and judges the night before the competition.
Each student had just 2.5 hours to present 3 dishes designed to display knife skills and basic methods of cookery. The industry judges were looking for consistency, flavour and were certainly impressed with the creative presentation from the students.
A big thank you to our Industry judges; George Santos - Moama Bowling Club, Rebecca Hart - Boo’s Place Café & Provedore, Megan Knapp - The Kitchen Door, Kristofer Bech Howley – Milestone Café & Bistro for their passion and commitment to the hospitality industry and our young people.
Moama Bowling Club has been a long term sponsor of the Murray River Culinary Challenge in the Campaspe region and we thank them for their continued generosity and support.
September 2022
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