To put on every chef demonstration over the weekend, an army of cooks in the kitchen works tirelessly to measure, chop, grate, julienne, dice and peel ingredients for the top-tier chefs who come to the Roaring Fork Valley to showcase what they do best.
Watching the chef’s demonstrate their cooking prowess is a relaxing and hunger-inducing experience. It is like watching a cooking television show. And that is because you are part of the studio audience.
Bridget Carter is in charge of all of the food preparation for the demonstrations and loves watching the interactions the chefs have with each other, as well as the fun she gets to have.
“So it’s this game, you know,” Carter says. “The chefs are always one-upping each other. How good can their demo be? They’re very competitive. So we want to make sure that we’re doing right by them and doing a good job, so it’s fun. It’s fun for me as a chef, because it’s this Mt. Olympus for the weekend. It’s like running a marathon.”
Carter says some chefs are picky – opting only to be address in a militaristic manner: Yes, chef. No, Chef.
“He had this sous chef of his in here. His name was Cyrus. CYRUS! And he was beating him like a red-headed stepchild. It was intense. The poor guy – I thought he was gonna cry.”
Others, she says, just prefer to have things done the easy way – doing the work themselves.
“Some chefs, you know, in the past, people like, even Jacque Pepin. It’s amazing. They just want the ingredients.”
For the needier chefs, or the recipes that would take too long to put together during the forty minute demonstration, there is much cooking to be done by Bridget and her crew. This can take anywhere from fifteen minutes, to three hours. In this case, some pork needs to be cooked a bit before hand.
“So he’s asked that we brown this,” says Carter. “And then – searing process. Two-step braising. Brown it and then render the fat. Then that fat is what these veggies cook in. What’s interesting with these chefs is that they can tell if it’s been cooked right or wrong, and it throws them off if it’s wrong. They like – it really throws them into a funk, and their demos are affected if it’s not correct.”
After the preparations are done, it’s time to get all of the ingredients to the stage. Every chef is assigned a rolling rack with trays that carry the ingredients that they want. Each item is plated in such a way so that everything looks perfect. Many discussions are had in the kitchen about selecting the perfect looking foods for presentation.
Then, the chefs take the stage and the process begins again.
