CATERING students are preparing to do battle in the kitchens in a test of their culinary skills.
Darlington College catering students will cook for an army of guests as part of a Hell’s Kitchen competition.
Two teams of Level 1 VRQ catering students will use the college kitchens and a special field facility set up by Army chefs from Catterick Garrison.
On the menu is restaurant-standard food that will be served to around 60 guests at the college’s Glasshouse Restaurant on Thursday evening.
For the 19 students it will be the first opportunity to experience the real heat of the kitchen, where they will be judged on the quality of their food by the public and also how they work under pressure by professional chefs.
Special guests will include Danny Parker, head chef at House of Tides in Newcastle, a former catering student at the college who appeared on the BBC programme MasterChef the Professionals', reaching the semi-finals.
He will be accompanied by head chef Paul Rowntree, from The Keys Restaurant, Darlington.
Team B will be under the watchful eye of Darlington College tutor Lee Coutts while Team A will be under the command of Army masterchef Sgt Pete Kell, who is also an Army Reserves liaison officer.
Mr Coutts, a former Army chef, said: “Because the students are new to catering they haven’t had a chance yet to gain any real work experience. This competition will recreate the pressures of a working kitchen and it will be both challenging and rewarding for them.”
Sgt Kell will help his team prepare a five-course meal in a field kitchen attached to the restaurant.
“We can produce exactly the same standard of restaurant food in the field as in the college’s kitchens,’ he said.
Students will be producing a range of dishes including Mongolian salmon, slow roasted belly pork, pan-fried scallops with butternut squash, oven baked asparagus and tomato risotto, beef wellington with venison sausages, crème brulee and pot au chocolate with lavender and honey ice cream.
The event, at 6.30pm on Thursday, will be the culmination of weeks of planning in which the students have had to select and price ingredients.
