By Solen Aref
Reporter
Food at the commons has just stepped up it’s game as Pacific Lutheran University’s Lead Cook, Katherina Forsyth won the National Association of College and University Food Services (NACUFS) competition. This is the first year PLU has won the honor.
“We have some very exciting news here in campus restaurants,” said PLU Hospitality and Campus Restaurants Marketing Manager, Jennifer Stolz wrote.
This competition required all competitors to utilize a mandatory ingredient in their dish, and this year that ingredient was a venison saddle. The live regional competition, “recognizes outstanding organization, cooking skills, culinary technique, taste and style,” according to the NACUFS website.
For Forsyth, the forest comes to mind when she thought of Venison so the forest became the inspiration behind her dish. Her dish was named, “Forest Floor Fermented.”
“The venison everybody’s using, but all the plates are very different,” Forsyth said.
Her dish included mushrooms and smoked beets, but also required her to push the boundaries of her comfort zone. She learned new techniques that included fermenting black garlic, making her own kombucha and making koji from scratch.
“If I want to do something, then I’ll figure it out. I’ll put my mind to it, and I’ll do it. So it’s not even that I was scared to do anything, but I went way out of my comfort zone,” she said.
Forsyth, who enjoys mountain climbing and has scaled Mt. Rainer twice, was also inspired by the similar nature of climbing for her dish.
“I pretty much approached this the same way that you do the mountain. If you think about like the main goal, and just try and think about that and everything that encompasses it, it’s too much,” she said.
She broke it down into smaller steps, and “…logged in a hundred hours on this, at least.”
Her practice on the dish paid off when she went to the Regionals competition in Spokane. She went up against seven other chefs from nearby states.
With only an hour to create a spectacular plate, Forsyth wowed the judges with her ten component dish, all while keeping her cool as she was being filmed by a camera crew.
Her dish was judged on all aspects of it, from presentation, to creativity, and even sanitation.
While her dish may have taken home the first place prize, it didn’t happen without bumps in the road.
Forsyth explains that “When you work in the kitchen, if things go a hundred percent, that’s unusual.”
While she was cutting her Venison, Forsyth sliced her finger, but kept on going. Along with that, her chafing dish, which is used to keep plated food hot, was missing a pan. Forsyth quickly found one and replaced it, rolling with the punches.
In addition to that, the power in her kitchen went out as she was five minutes away from plating her dish. She had to move to the other end of the room and use the power there, finishing up her plate with just three seconds left on the clock.
She was asked if she’d like a time extension because of the power issue but turned it down because for Forsyth, her dignity in rising to the challenge mattered more.
She is now getting ready for the National competition in Denver, Colorado, which takes place in June.
For the nationals competition, Forsyth faced a different kind of dilemma: she couldn’t find a chef’s coat that would fit her 7 month pregnant body. The lack of maternity chef coats was extremely hard for her, she said. She wanted to look professional at the national competition, and didn’t want to wear something that wasn’t her exact size.
“It’s sad, I mean kitchen work is a huge field. And like there’s a lot of women in the kitchen, and everybody came from you know, their mom, so it’s not like maternity is this weird thing. It’s kind of shameful that we don’t have a better selection,” Forsyth said.
So Forsyth did what she does best: she didn’t let anything stop her and found a solution.
After contacting about ten different chef uniform companies, she paired up with Chef Works, who doesn’t have a maternity line, but is going to custom make her jackets for nationals.
While Forsyth is excited to nationals, she said, “I can only control what I can control. My job is to train above what I’m going to compete in.”
She said she is thankful for the help and constructive criticism she was given by others as she was perfecting her dish for regionals. She received a lot of support from the other kitchen staff at PLU and also one of the teachers from a local community college who would critique her dish since he had done competitions before himself.
Forsyth said she is ready to fully support the next person from PLU who competes in the same competition next year.
“I would let somebody else have the turn next year, and also it is a lot of work. I love doing it, like I’m a goal orientated kind of person,” Forsyth said. “But I would like to let somebody else have the opportunity if they want it.”
