Cooking contest

On my Erasmus in France, the International Club organized many events. One of them was a Cooking Contest. It was a long competition because it lasted a whole month. It started in March if I have a good memory. In the beginning, when they released the competition I had no idea that I could participate in it.

The reason is that I am not so good at cooking. When I moved to Prague I thought that I could finally start cooking. I was mistaken. At the first year of my university we went almost every day to the school canteen and I had just some snack for a dinner. Sometimes I cooked pasta with cheese, cream sauce and pineapple. Although most of the time I just cooked scrambled eggs with dumplings or just toasts with ham and cheese. Since I went home at least every two week I also took few meals from my home. Therefore, I did not really cook much. Then, when I started to work in La Casa Blu, it was the end of my cooking. In the beginning we were allowed to have one meal per shift for free. Later they changed us and we had to pay 20% of the price of the food. This fact did not change anything. Every time when I was working there I was eating there and I even stopped buying the ingredients for cooking because I did not need it. Therefore, when I suddenly wanted to cook something I did not have basic stuff like flour, eggs or butter for it. I did not really mind. I enjoyed eating great food at my job.

When I moved to France I had to start cooking. Eating in the restaurants was way more expensive than in the Czech Republic and I did not like much our school canteen. It was beneficial for me to cook something at home than eating outside. I saved a lot of money by cooking at home. In addition, it was not demanding because I just had to cook something for lunch (sometimes I cooked bigger portion so it was for two days) and for the dinner we were cooking with my friends almost every second day. I loved that we met many times before the party and we were having dinner together. It started with sweet and salty pancakes, cheese fondue, raclette dinners but we also prepared empanadas. It was really cheap because we shared the costs and I enjoyed it more than eating alone at my home.

When I was cooking my lunch it was mostly same food every week. I always bought a package of meat (smoked pork or chicken – but it is impossible to find it in the Czech Republic) and I fried it with onion or another vegetable and then I mixed it with pasta or rice. Basically, it was all I cooked. Sometimes I also prepared a salad with chicken, ham or egg for me. As a breakfast I tried to have always white yoghurt with fruit without sugar. It was not easy because I fell in love with all the types of pastry in France. I bought many times a package of pain au chocolat or croissants or baguette. Few days it was crazy because I became obsessed with the pain au chocolat. I bought the whole package of six pieces and I ate it every day, sometimes even twice per day. I could not stop. I always had it and when I finished my lunch or dinner I started to eat it. I did not know what to do because I was already used to doing it. My friend told me about similar obsession of her father with biscuits. Therefore, I decided to end this awful habit and from one day to another one I stopped buying it. Totally. It was the only thing I could do. It helped because whenever I wanted to eat pain au chocolat I could not because I had not bought it before. As you can see I was not a good chef. Therefore, when I saw the competition, I did not think of participating in it.

Subsequently, Katarina (my friend from the Czech Republic who spent one semester in Lille with me) sent me a text we could do the competition together. Since I like contests and I knew she was a good chef I agreed. It did not take long time and the contest started. They sent us all the instructions. I liked the idea much. Firstly, they linked the teams with their “enemies” and there was the first round of the competition. There was supposed to be a final round at the end of March. When I heard it I did not want to compete in the first place because I knew that I was not available that date. Although they told me that the date could easily change.

We started the first round and the instructions were: Cook whatever you want from your country. It did not matter if you chose Czech starter, Czech main dish or Czech dessert. The whole dinner was at my place because it was quite in the city centre and we had a whole room for it. I don’t remember if we made a starter but we decided to bake Czech dessert called Apfelstrudel. Actually, Katarina started to do it without me because I had some classes and then we continued together. As a main dish we made Cordon Bleu with potatoes.

When we were preparing the food I already knew that we could have a problem with my oven because it bakes really fast. Nevertheless, we had to use it. When we took the food out the bottom part of it was burnt. It was literally black. We were unpleasantly shocked but there was nothing to do about it. Luckily, only parts of the food were burnt so we managed to serve it without noticing. We also prepared our table to be nice. We had a lot of fun that evening. Members of jury were French girls and they were surprised that we did home-made Cordon Bleu because they are normally used to buy it already prepared.

We were competing with the boys from India and Australia. Subsequently, they invited us to their place to have a dinner there. It was a coincidence because at that time my Czech friend Lucy came to visit me so she went with me! I remember exactly that evening because it was when I started to be friends with Mexicans. Every time when I see this picture I feel delighted that I had a great opportunity to meet these amazing people.

I remember that the picture was taken on Monday because later we uploaded the picture saying: Mondays in Lille. It was kind of joke because we were complaining a lot that all the bars and restaurants are closed on Mondays. Although we always found a way to party as that evening. The dinner from the boys was delicious. They cooked chicken with rice with tasty sauce. We all loved it. Moreover, they prepared amazing dessert with strawberries. We did not know what to expect but we won and we went to the second round of the competition.

This time, the instructions were: Cook something from the competitor´s country. We were competing with the girl from Australia again and with the girl from Russia. We were again the first ones who prepared the dinner. After long consideration, we decided to cook Russian soup called Boršč. As a main dish we prepared chicken schnitzel with potato salad.

I never cooked it and I had no idea how to do it. We found the recipe and we made the vegetarian one. I was surprised that I liked it. It was made of beetroot and it was delicious. We made a portion at least for 10 people so I had to eat it the whole week. We also put the baguette into the oven with butter and spice to eat it together with the soup. This time we were aware of baking speed of the oven and we did not let it there long time. As a dessert we wanted to make tiramisu but it was just dessert with strawberries made of cream and sponge cakes. We were quite happy about this evening.

It continued that we were invited to the girl´s place to have their dinner. We were impatient about their food because they were supposed to make Czech food. The place we had a dinner was near Euralille and the girl had an amazing room. That evening was important because I went to the Open Bar Party for the first time (I will talk about it later - it deserves its own article). The girls firstly served salad. It was great because they added also orange inside. Then they made goulash!

I was amazed. It is really difficult food and they cooked it perfectly. Normally, we eat it with dumplings but it was delicious with smashed potatoes as well. I had worries that they were going to beat us. When they gave us dessert I was impressed. We had an ice-cream with crashed Oreo biscuits and marshmallow. I could not get enough of it. I was hundred percent sure it was the end of our competition.

Miracles happens and we won the round as well and we were supposed to go to the finals! They were talking about the final round a lot! They said it was the best party because all the members of International club go there and they make cocktails and so on. It was not as huge as they said but it was a great party with French people. Last instructions were: Cook something French. It was a shame that we already did Cordon Bleu. I asked many French people about their opinion. We did not want to cook pancakes because it is quite easy. My landlord gave me a lot of tips but we did not like any of them. Someone also told us to make a duck but I would say that it would have been too difficult. In the end, we decided to make the Tartiflette which is a similar meal to our baked potatoes. It is a mixture of boiled potatoes, vegetable, cream, bacon and on the top of it there is a special type of cheese – Reblochon.

We spent a lot of time cooking it. We already started during the afternoon. We opened the bottle of wine for it and we decided to win the competition. We were supposed to prepare only the main dish. We made it according to the recipe and we were paying attention to the oven a lot. We especially bought the Reblochon for this occasion even though it was super expensive. We also added Camembert. It smelled delicious. We already made similar food for our hosts in Dublin so we knew how to prepare it. After three hours it was done. We had two big bowls of Tartiflette. We were so proud of ourselves because it looked awesome. We took it to the place where we had the main party and we were waiting for what our competitors would prepare.

We were supposed to be three teams but one of them could not participate in this date. Therefore, we were only two teams. When the other team came and they said they did not prepare anything in advance we were surprised. Although they left to the kitchen and they started to prepare something. We had a blast that evening!

A lot of amazing food was there – starters (small tortillas), melon with prosciutto, Sangria, Tequilla Sunrise, main dishes and cookies. It was amazing.

During the party the girls (our competitors) came with their main dish and they prepared a cheese fondue for everybody. I like cheese fondue a lot but we were surprised that they did not prepare anything else. Making cheese fondue is not a hard task and almost everybody could do it. You just buy the cheese and you melt it with the wine and that´s it. They did not even buy baguette. We just had some pastry packed in plastic bags. When other people tried our food they looked happy except for one girl who did not like Camembert. When I tried our dish I was nicely surprised. It was delicious.

When I spoke to Katarina we both agreed that we had to win the competition and it was clear to us. We were enjoying the party, but lots of people there were speaking only French. Then, the main evaluation came. We were just waiting for Juliette´s decision and she said we were on the second place! We could not believe it. We said thank you to everybody but I was shocked. How come? When I spoke to Katarina later she had the same feeling as I did. It seemed to us totally unfair. Although we could not anything and it was not important actually. At least we took the rest of the Tartiflette home and we ate it following days. It was the end of the competition. I have to say that it was such a nice experience. The whole competition lasted one month and I enjoyed every single night a lot and I improved my cooking skills. Thanks, International Club!

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