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What is Menu Wars?
Menu wars is a project where the class gets split into two teams and each team creates a menu. Throughout the process, each team works together to create an array of dishes that is presented to a panel of judges and scored based on taste, presentation, and cohesiveness with the rest of the dishes on the menu.
Initial Reaction + Team Creation, How Did it go?
Before the project was announced, I knew what it initially was but I didn’t know how much went into it so when everything was described to us, I was shocked but excited! This being the last project for the seniors made it more special because it was our last time cooking with them so it added to the excitement. I was very hesitant as to who my teammates would be due to not knowing everyone in the class super well but it turned out to be a great selection. When we started discussing the creation of the dishes, it was challenging to incorporate all of our themes into a cohesive menu. We ended up taking an entire period to plan everything out and make changes to certain dishes to incorporate what we wanted our menu to convey.
The Creation of my Dish:
My team chose our theme to be spring meaning we wanted to use a lot of fresh ingredients. Due to this, I knew I wanted to make a salad due to my theme being middle eastern food. Although I decided to make a salad, I made sure it was a more challenging one so I chose tabbouleh. This salad consists of finely chopped parsley, mint, tomato, spring onion, and bulgar. The freshness of the ingredients including the color of them made for a great addition to the theme of spring. This was my first time ever making it which was a bit scary, but I knew my mom would give me a bunch of pointers and having multiple trials to get our dish the way we hoped for it to be executed came in very handy.
Trial One, How Did it go?
The first time I made the tabbouleh, I underestimated how much time it would take to chop everything. The parsley in the dish has to be chopped super finely because it allows it to incorporate well with the other ingredients. If you know anything about parsley, then you know that if you're gonna chop it finely you need A LOT. It almost felt like I was chopping parsley for hours in the kitchen! Chopping all of the other vegetables such as the tomatoes and green onion wasn’t as time consuming and challenging because i didn’t need the same amount as i did for the parsley so throughout the process my time was consumed by chopping parsley. During the first trial Chef asked me to use quinoa instead of bulgar due to a potential gluten allergy. I had never tried tabbouleh without bulgar because the addition of lemon juice in tabbouleh comes from soaking the bulgar in it. In the end I didn't like how it turned out because I felt as if the flavors were all over the place. Other people seemed to enjoy it, but without the bulgar it seemed as if it lost its authenticity. This was only trial one so failure was expected.
Trial Two:
By the second time we made our dishes, I had mostly everything figured out. I asked my mom what she usually adds into the salad and she told me to put some pomegranate molasses so I did exactly that. I had asked the chef if I could use bulgar and she approved of it so I was really happy I could make the tabbouleh in an authentic way. For trial two I struggled a lot with plating. I couldn’t do a lot to make it look “extravagant” because it looked like a pile of greens on a plate. I decided to add pita chips to give it a pop of color but I still didn’t like how it turned out. Overall, the flavors were good but the delivery was off.
By now, we started finalizing the design of our menu.The night before I had decided to incorporate pomegranates into the salad, as I thought it would add a nice pop of flavor and Incorporate well into the theme of spring. When we were designing our menu, I didn't get much say as to how we would design certain things and I was having a lot of trouble finalizing how I would plate my dish. A lot of my ideas kept getting shut down and due to this, I didn't give much feedback on our menu, but regardless I think it turned out really well. We incorporated a lot of elements of spring through colors and the name of our “restaurant” ended up being Petals and Plates.
Outside of the class my teammates and I had planned how we were going to present ourselves to the judges and other aspects that we would incorporate such as decorative flowers on our final plating. This made the day of menu Wars even more exciting because I had ordered all of us matching pink aprons and my other teammate, Luci, had purchased flowers for us to use for plating. We all tried to dress in restaurant attire too which was super fun.
The Final Day:
During prep day, for the final version of our dish, I decided to chop the parsley in a different way. I ended up using the food processor to make the process a bit easier so I was able to help out my teammates but in the end, the parsley didn't come out as well as it had when I hand chopped it. Even though some of it wasn’t up to the standards I hoped for it to be, I decided to hand chop the rest which definitely saved it. By our third time practicing the dish, I figured out all of my proper measurements so all of the ingredients were able to shine simultaneously. I tried to get as much done as possible during prep day because we decided to incorporate another dish to our menu which were deviled eggs so I wanted to make sure my teammates had enough help with everything but in the end the salad consumed most of my time.
After finishing everything up and making the final salad, I was very happy that I made the addition of pomegranate because of how well everything went together. It tasted even more fresh. When it came time to plate my dish, Chef helped me out. The addition of the floral plates we chose to use, and the pita chips mixed with zaatar, the salad didn't look like a green blob on a plate.
Presenting the Dish:
During the process we had to bring each dish to the panel of judges which was really scary because I've never had experience with waitering but it ended up being a really cool thing to learn. However, what really scared me was presenting my dish. I'm not great at presenting in front of crowds so the entire time leading up to presenting my dish I was very nervous. I kept practicing my lines to my teammate as we were waiting for our turn. When I went, I kind of forgot everything I was going to say but as I went through my dish I felt like I started connecting with the judges. Especially when I mentioned a certain middle eastern spice, zaatar, that was mixed into the pita chips. Overall, even though I was initially very nervous I felt like it went well and I was able to properly introduce the dish. When we were collecting the plates, one of the judges told me that my salad was “so fu**ing good” which made me smile from ear to ear because I didn’t think they’d enjoy it that much!
Summary and Lessons Learned:
Overall, I'm so grateful I was able to experience this. A lot of time and effort went into everything which made it all worth it. I was able to learn more about people and make great memories. I know when I look back at this class I’ll be thinking about menu wars. This project has also allowed me to look back on how much I've progressed since the start of the class. Throughout my life I've always been in the kitchen so I had a lot of previous experience but being able to learn to do things differently and learn how to manage my time have become lessons that I will take beyond the class. In the end, all of the time my team spent in the kitchen and outside paid off because Petals and Plates won! As nice as it was to have won, the experience of it all was what really mattered and I wouldn’t have traded it for anything else.
I hope you try the tabbouleh! Here's the recipe :)
(This is a combination of my recipe and my moms)
Ingredients:
4 bunches of parsley
1/2 cup of mint
2 medium tomatoes
1/4 cup of bulgar (add what you prefer!)
1/3 cup of pomegranates
1/4 cup of green onion
1 tbsp of pomegranate molasses
1/4 cup of olive oil
1 squeezed lemon for bulgar
salt and pepper to taste
Instructions:
Juice one lemon and add bulgar then set aside
finely chop parsley, mint, tomatoes, and green onions
combine vegetables in a bowl and then add pomegranate seeds
add bulgar, pomegranate molasses, olive oil, salt, and pepper
combine everything and serve!
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