Recipe competition

[GSquared]

How do you feel about doing a competition for the best original recipe? I would be happy to donate a case of S.A. red as a prize.

Suggested rules:
1. Each submitted recipe has to be original - if derived, it should be substantially modified.
2. To enable wide participation in 4 below, regional or hard-to-find ingredients should be avoided.
3. From the submitted recipes, the CC folk vote (one vote each) to get to 3 finalists.
4. The second round of voting is done by those who cook the 3 recipes and then vote.

Suggestions?

[Jim]

1st Annual ChefTalk Cyberecipe Competition...

Sounds great!! Let's set some more ground rules and have at it!
Like, number of ingredients? Time for preparation? Theme? Expense? Eye appeal? Entry deadlines? Etc. This could happen! Should be fun and could even get some publicity if we work the right angles.

[kuan]

Make me wonder why we haven't had a recipe competition before!?! I think it's a great idea.

Kuan

[Anneke]

I like it, except that's a lot of work for the recipe tester...

What... Somebody's got to test them!?!!

[cape chef]

I'll be happy to test them.

[GSquared]

Ok, here's a revised set of proposed rules:

1. Each submitted recipe has to be original - if derived, it should be substantially modified.

2. Each entrant may submit only one recipe.

3. Regional or hard-to-find ingredients should be avoided.

4. The per-serving food cost should not be more than $15 (U.S.)

5. The recipe may be for any part of a meal.

6. The deadline for entries is the 30th Sep.

6. There will be two rounds of voting

The first round - one vote per ChefTalk member of at least Cafe Chef status. This round of voting will be based on the recipe description and will result in 3 finalists. The deadline for votes in round 1 will be 15th Oct.

The second round will require Cheftalk members who wish to participate to cook each of the three menus and then vote - i.e. you can only vote in round 2 if you cook the recipes. We should get a set of guidelines together to ensure some conformity of judging in this round - 10 points for originality, 10 points for flavour, etc (pse help). The deadline for votes in round 2 will be 30th Oct.

This is as far as I can take it for now - if this is to go further, and there is general support for the idea, perhaps we should prevail on Anneke to coordinate?

[Anneke]

I wonder if we shouldn't narrow it down. A strawberry shortcake should probably not compete with a beef daube, don't you think?

Also, if this works out well, it would give us a chance to hold other competitions with different themes. What do you think?

PS: good rules, I like it so far! The kitchen testing will be hard to enforce though...

[cape chef]

Apps

Entree's

Desserts

Keep it simple for the first one, Many of us have played the "Black box" game.

Also, Should the professionals be aloud to compete in the same catagory and non pro's? or should there be two catagories?

[panini]

great idea.
I'm not so sure that even all original recipes are not the result of a modification of something already. I vote CC as authenticity judge.
I would also like to provide a prize for the best dessert.
as long as we be able to use the recipes for ourselves

[Anneke]

I was thinking more along the lines of a theme ingredient: beef, chicken, salmon, tomato, eggplant...

The recipe could be anything from babaganouj to eggplant sobet (!?) that way. The goal of the recipe would be to feature the ingredient, and to find the best way to let it shine. In the end, I think it could be a good education for both chefs and non-chefs that way.

Professionals are notorious for their lack of recipe-writing skills. I think non-professionals will have an advantage here!

[cape chef]

Originally posted by Anneke

Professionals are notorious for their lack of recipe-writing skills. I think non-professionals will have an advantage here!

LOL Anneke!!!!

I'm not a great speller, but I am quite proficent in recipe writting and development But I understand your point.

I do like the idea of choosing a particular ingredient to work with but I would not want to have people who are not familar with said ingredient to not compete.

Also, as Panini said..we have a powerhouse of pastrychefs and excellent home pastry/bakers so we would need to find something that can be crossed into the sweet side of the kitchen as well. maybe Meyer lemons as an example.

[Anneke]

Originally posted by cape chef

I'm not a great speller, but I am quite proficent in recipe writting and development

..I think you've just disqualified yourself!



I think that for fairness and for everyone's comfort, all submissions should be anonymous. Agreed?

[Suzanne]

Weighing in on a few points:

1. there's no problem having pros and non-pros compete HERE, because the general skill and knowledge levels are so high (= what a great bunch we all are! )

2. how would anonymity be handled? Surely we don't want to clutter up the membership list with a lot of new assumed names? Anyway, I can't imagine this turning into a popularity contest -- I think we can trust each other to vote on the merits of the recipes, not on who submits them. (Now, if this were some OTHER boards ... well, you know what I mean. ) Besides, it would be neat to see what people come up with; we might be surprised and have to revise our mental images of each other.

3. INGREDIENT is a great basis. For example, tomatoes. Oops, that won't work for members in the Southern Hemisphere, will it? Maybe something really, REALLY basic, like pasta dough? (Assume using either home-made OR bought.) Or better yet, pasta dough AND lemons! The sweet/savory sides could both come up with something interesting, then! (And if you DO call for a seasonal or "unusual" ingredient as well, it's got to be something universally available -- either in stores or on the web.)

4. In the first round, recipes should NOT be judged on spelling, but on understandability and clarity of instructions. We should all be able to figure out just by reading whether or not a recipe is do-able, no? That is, that everything called for in the instructions is listed with the ingredients, and so on. Anything not really basic should be explained well.

5. Measurements should be given in both metric and US forms.

6. the proposed deadline is less than 1 month away. Can we possibly make submissions due 15 October, round 1 voting close on 31 October, and testing and round 2 voting close 1 December? So many members are so busy, we need a bit more time to do this right.

7. Has anyone had experience publishing a community or organizational cookbook? That would be a great thing to do with ALL the recipes submitted (once we offer advice on how to "fix" those not chosen). I volunteer to be on the editing team.

[panini]

Is anonymity a factor? I would actually like to pair the recipe with the poster.Problem? if CC is judging we all know which pastry chef will win

[Anneke]

Sometimes the more un-biased we try to be, the more biased we become. I know that personally I would probably be a tougher judge of CC's recipes than that of another. I would expect more. Not to penalise him, it's a compliment actually. All of us have that bias, maybe even others. That's perfectly normal and inevitable.

To be fair, I think the authors should be revealed after the competition is closed. In fact, I volunteer to be the non-voting recipient of the recipes and assign numbers to contestents' recipes. I don't know any Cheftalk member personally, nor have I experienced any of their cooking, so I will not be tempted to discuss identity with any voting member.

Are tomatoes really inaccessible in the southern hemisphere?!? Maybe we should have a Spam contest! (kidding, really!)




Oh, and about recipe writing, I think we should leave that aside. As long as they are legible and logical, I don't think that recipe writing skill should be a factor. The coordinator can give them a quick read and discuss editting with the autor before posting the recipe as a submission.