University College Birmingham wins Young Seafood Chef 2015
University College Birmingham (UCB) has won the Young Seafood Chef of the Year 2015 contest.
The UCB team was formed of professional cookery students Timothy Jones and Bozhidar Ivanov, who have won a trophy, £500 of Russums vouchers, a Thermomix TM31 food processor and an invitation to the gala dinner at the World Seafood Congress in Grimsby in September, where they will help to serve their winning menu to 200 guests.
Second place went to the Grimsby team, which also won the award for best main course of the day. South Essex came in third place and Kendal in fourth.
Students taking part must be enrolled on a full-time catering course, or must be college-based modern apprentices. Teams were asked to produce the same meal entry at each stage of the contest, using ingredients costing £15 per person. No prior preparation was allowed outside the competition time.
Initially submitting paper entries, each team had three hours to present three courses for six people, choosing from a prescribed list of ingredients, designed to encourage creativity and raise awareness of sustainability issues among fish and seafood.
Starters had to include salmon and/or haddock fillets; the intermediate course had to use whole sea bass and/or whole mackerel; with the main course using cod and/or pollock.
Last year's winner was the team from South Essex College.
The competition was founded in 1996 by the hospitality department at the Grimsby Institute of Further & Higher Education, in a bid to create a seafood-focused celebration of young chefs' specialist skills, and is supported by brands including Young's and Thermomix.
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