Pestmaster wrote on Jul 27th, 2009 at 7:23pm:| How you could decide the winning entries is beyond me. |
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For everyone's info, the day was designed around a damper cooking competition. In the competition were three categories of plain damper, sweet damper and savoury damper. I was to be the sole judge of the competition.
The day started with me doing a quick demo of how to cook an ordinary and a savoury damper using heat beads. This I did and then everyone was sent on their way to cook their own dampers.
Competitors had to be couples and apart from some great prizes the three winning couples got to sit down to dinner with me at the
"Captains Table" to a three course meal that I cooked as part of my demonstration throughout the afternoon.
We ended up with 33 dampers entered. I had to taste everyone of them and decide on the best plain, sweet and savoury. How did I do that??
In some ways it was made easy as many of the "dampers" were not exactly dampers but cakes and I also believe that some were made with bread mix. I went on presentation first, followed by how well they were cooked and then taste. Presentation is always easy I guess and if we can get some photos you will see what I mean. Of all of the dampers only 2 were doughy and not cooked properly while many more were overdone. Taste is hard because at the end of the day what tasted good to me may not taste good to others but a decision had to be made.
Winning plain damper was superb and in talking to the winners over dinner the recipe seemed to be very similar to the one PD often uses. It looked great, was nicely cooked and melted in your mouth.
Winning sweet damper was a rum and raisin one. Cooked on Saturday and the cooks had the raisins marinating since Wednesday. It was a lovely light brown in colour and looked just great. The flavour was sweet with the rum and raisins not overpowering it and the texture was superb.
Winning savoury damper was a large soft damper with Italian style herbs including olives and sun-dried tomatoes. The texture was very light and the inclusion of herbs was not overpowering.
There was one other damper that rated a mention and I did manage to arrange a prize for it. Two young ladies presented one of the most unique looking things I had ever seen. It was a plain damper that was bright blue, had pink and white marshmallows on it and was sprinkled with chocolate powder. I just had to recognize it. ;D ;D ;D ;D
The three course dinner that the three winning teams and myself sat down to eat started with pumpkin soup then roast shoulder of lamb with vegetables followed by self saucing chocolate pudding. The cooking went well and the meal was just great.
Many thanks to the local winery Winya for providing bottles of 2006 Chardonnay and Merlot to go with the meal.
I didn't get around to cooking as much as I would have liked to as time just got away and the damper competition took over an hour to judge.
Plans are already underway for a return around this time next year so keep an eye on the Neurum Creek website for details.
Derek
