Kitchen Contestant
PITTSBURGH — Seneca Valley High School graduate Amanda Shoup never thought she'd find herself immersed in a highly competitive cooking competition, let alone taking home a bronze medal.
“I've liked cooking my whole life, but I never thought I'd do it professionally,” Shoup said of her budding career in the kitchen.
The Cranberry Township native returned from Kansas City recently where she took home a bronze medal in the regional cooking competition, Jeunes Chef Rôtisseurs. Shoup competed against six other chefs in training to create an appetizer, entrée and dessert out of a mystery basket of ingredients in a three-hour time period.
“I want to keep competing,” Shoup said. “I didn't think I'd like it as much as I did. It's an adrenaline rush.”
Shoup is a student at the American Academy of Culinary Arts at the Pittsburgh Technical Institute, where she is studying under the tutelage of Chef Director Norman P. Hart. Shoup advanced to the regional competition in Kansas City after placing first in a preliminary round of the competition in Pittsburgh.
“She went into this competition as a complete underdog,” Hart said. “The other six competitors were very skilled. She's only had about one year of studies.”The contest is similar to the popular Food Network show “Chopped.” Contestants are given a basket of mystery ingredients and then allowed a 30-minute window to create a menu. Then, the cooks have three hours to prepare three segments of the meal: an appetizer, an entrée and a dessert.Shoup's basket at the regional event included duckling, Maine lobster, fennel, tofu and bacon.She created an appetizer of poached lobster with fennel lemon beurre blanc; her entrée was seared duck breast, duck sausage, duchess potatoes and asparagus. Dessert was a limoncina pâte sucrée with drunken strawberries and a warm blueberry compote.Shoup said her most difficult ingredient in the basket was tofu, but added she was excited to see blueberries in the basket, which she knew would help her in the dessert round.“The biggest thing I was worried about was time management,” she said. “You can't simulate a competition atmosphere in a class.”“I've never cooked against their level,” Shoup said of her fellow competitors. “It was rough, but I had fun.”
Hart said he and other culinary instructors teach the fundamentals to students — knife work, cooking technique and pairing of flavor profiles — and those skills helped Shoup as she took home a bronze medal.“If you look at it, it's all fundamentals,” Hart said. “During her training, we were throwing mystery basket after mystery basket at her.”Hart was part of the judging team at the Kansas City regional event, which also included other chefs, restaurant owners, culinary professionals and food connoisseurs.“It was a big achievement,” Hart said of Shoup's award.For Shoup, the competition has opened a new door in her career. She said it helped her discover leadership abilities in herself.“From this whole thing, I got a job at the Duquesne Club,” she said. “That's a huge thing.”
