{"id":24135,"date":"2023-08-09T09:00:57","date_gmt":"2023-08-09T16:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=24135"},"modified":"2023-08-11T09:09:51","modified_gmt":"2023-08-11T16:09:51","slug":"professional-cook-training-student-wins-cooking-competition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2023\/08\/09\/professional-cook-training-student-wins-cooking-competition\/","title":{"rendered":"Professional Cook Training student wins cooking competition"},"content":{"rendered":"

Camosun College Professional Cook Training student Sebastian Edwards won first place in the Victoria chapter of the Regional Jeune Chef Commis, a La Cha\u00eene des Rotisseur cooking competition held in Vancouver on June 11.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Edwards says that his love of cooking stemmed from a love of eating, which led him to the Professional Cook Training program at Camosun. It was there that Culinary Arts chair David Lang approached him and asked if he would be interested in the competition; Edwards happily accepted the challenge.<\/p>\n

While some students may enter something like this with a competitive mindset, Edwards didn\u2019t approach the competition with a win-or-lose mentality. Instead, he viewed it as an opportunity to showcase his skills, network, and have fun doing what he loves.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wasn\u2019t thinking about winning it,\u201d he says. \u201cMy focus was finishing on time, because when you\u2019re at these things the biggest thing is, you just want to get your stuff up on time. For me, personally, my thought wasn\u2019t about winning it; that\u2019s a horrible attitude to go into it with, if you\u2019re worried about losing. You\u2019re just there to learn stuff and have some fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Camosun Professional Cook Training student Sebastian Edwards hard at work (photo provided).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Edwards credits part of his success at the competition to the knowledge and support he obtained from Camosun, as well as his time spent at Langford cafe House of Boateng, where he currently works as an apprentice.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI think, you know, [winning] was a product of Camosun and working at House of Boateng and everyone that\u2019s had an impact on me,\u201d says Edwards. \u201cBut yeah, Camosun definitely played a part in it, they helped me build confidence in myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before the competition, contestants were given different proteins to create two dishes with. For his starter, Edwards made a crab salad and mango ravioli followed by a main course of fir-crusted lamb rack with a lamb shank cabbage roll. To help ease his nerves, he created a plan that kept him on track while he prepared his meals.<\/p>\n

\u201cI practiced this, however many times, like I know exactly what I\u2019m doing,\u201d he says. \u201cBut sometimes the nerves kind of get to my head, so, it\u2019s nice to have like a concrete thing to look at. Just to kind of calm down and ground myself and be like, \u2018Okay, this is what I need to get done next,\u2019 and then just keep moving.\u201d<\/p>\n

The stress of a high-pressure competition might be intimidating but Edwards believes it can be a valuable experience for students. He says that the pressure he felt during the competition is similar to working in a busy restaurant, which can be a necessary skill for culinary students.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know for culinary students, it\u2019s that high kind of rush and moving very quickly that you get, like when you\u2019re working at dinner service at a restaurant, working the line,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s a very high-paced environment and doing a competition is such a good way to kind of experience that and kind of help prepare yourself for that.\u201d<\/p>\n

After securing a victory in Vancouver, Edwards is now preparing for the National Jeune Chef Commis in Toronto in October.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m very excited,\u201d Edwards says. \u201cIt\u2019ll be the farthest I\u2019ve kind of gone away for something culinary. So, it\u2019ll be a lot of fun, I\u2019m looking forward to it. And there are some nerves there too, because it\u2019s the national competition and it\u2019s the highest I\u2019ve ever competed in anything before.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Camosun College Professional Cook Training student Sebastian Edwards won first place in the Victoria chapter of the Regional Jeune Chef Commis, a La Cha\u00eene des Rotisseur cooking competition held in Vancouver on June 11.\u00a0 Edwards says that his love of cooking stemmed from a love of eating, which led him to the Professional Cook Training […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24174,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,293],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-august-9-2023"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24135"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24135\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24137,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24135\/revisions\/24137"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}