Horizon High students impress at district culinary competition

Creating the perfect gourmet meal takes trial and error. 

That’s a lesson Horizon High School juniors Isadora Dias and Julia Costa and sophomore Manuela Passini-Menes learned while preparing for the 15th annual Orange County Public Schools Culinary Competition. 

There were dozens of decisions that had to be made — from what they wanted to make to what ingredients would taste best in the dish to how to prepare the food in a timely manner. 

One of the meal ideas was a vinaigrette with filet mignon, but they determined making the vinaigrette would take too long. Then they decided the meat wasn’t the right option. 

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In the end, the meal that made them say, ‘This is what we’re serving the judges,’ was a ham-and-cheese pastel with Molho a brasileira along with steak tips over creamy polenta, buttered carrots and herb sauce.

After the meal was decided, the next step was perfecting the dish. 

One day, the pastel they made didn’t go as planned — they burned it. Another time, they forgot to put salt in the dough. 

But in the end, the girls’ determination to push past every recipe change helped them to find the perfect ingredients to make a gourmet meal to their satisfaction at the competition.

Dias, Costa and Passini-Menes were among several Horizon High School culinary students who saw success at the Thursday, Jan. 30, competition, at which the Hawks battled both high school and post-secondary students. 

Mei Werner placed first in edible centerpiece, and Manuela Ferro and Natalia Fontana placed first in gourmet dessert. 

Tiffany Rogers, a culinary teacher at Horizon High, said she was impressed with her students. Many of them are in Culinary Level I, a beginner class focused on the fundamentals. 

“For them to take it to the next level, they really had to commit the time themselves and really be interested in taking those challenges and failing and then trying it again,” she said.  

As first-time competitors, Costa said her team wasn’t expecting to place. Their goal was to have fun and learn from the chefs at the competition. To their surprise, they placed third for gourmet meal.

Costa said being in the competition felt like she was on “MasterChef” or any cooking competition show. Although the team was nervous, the excitement and adrenaline of the competition kicked in, as well. They looked at the teams around them to see their progress and compare other teams’ meals to their own. 

Passini-Menes said the team’s strategy for staying calm was to pretend they were back in the kitchen at Horizon High School and it was any other day of practicing their meal. 

When the results of the competition were announced, Passini-Menes said the girls cried. 

“We were so happy, because we really thought we were going to lose; we thought the judges wouldn’t like the food,” Passini-Menes said. 

Being able to interact with culinary judges from around the area gave the students an opportunity to potentially find future employment, Rogers said. 

Table service

The culinary competition was not only about food. 

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Seniors Ana Herrera Arellano, Sofia Betulu and sophomore Laura Gonzalez trained for two months to prepare for the Waiters Relay at the competition. 

As a freshman, Herrera Arellano competed in dessert followed by gourmet meal her sophomore year, but this year, she wanted to try something new, which was Waiter Relay.

As a senior who has competed in two other OCPS Culinary Competitions, Herrera Arellano said this year’s competition was bittersweet. She realized on competition day that it was the last time she would be able to compete and represent Horizon High. 

“Every little thing I did was like, ‘Oh my God, it’s my last time doing this,’” she said. 

The relay consisted of the girls professionally setting up a table for an upscale restaurant. 

The competition was a team effort. Betulu said each of them practiced to ensure they wouldn’t let their teammates down. 

Preparing for a competition like this came down to determining their respective strengths and repetitive practice to be able to set the table as quickly as possible. They changed the order of operations just to shave precious seconds off their total time.

They initially had a goal of setting up their table in three minutes, but they realized their goal wasn’t realistic and adjusted it to under four minutes. 

Betulu was responsible for setting up the tablecloth and plates, while Gonzalez was responsible for the cups and silverware. 

Herrera Arellano was responsible for the napkin-folding. She practiced enough to master the pyramid napkin fold, lily napkin fold and envelope napkin fold.

“For me, that meant practicing quite a lot and trying to make sure I was able to, one, master the folding and, two, to do it in a time that wouldn’t bring my whole team down because they also depended on me,” Herrera Arellano said. “It wouldn’t be fair for them to do everything quick and good, and then for me to take forever doing the napkin fold. I really took my role seriously.”

Not only were the shapes of the napkins difficult to learn, but also she had to take into consideration the napkins weren’t symmetrical squares. As a result, there would always be spots in the fold that “wouldn’t look good to the eye,” she said. 

“You have to make it look nice, even though the napkin is not the best quality for it,” Herrera Arellano said. “But that ended up working in our favor, because at the competition, the napkins we got were very similar, so I already knew how to handle a napkin that’s not ideal for folding.”

Although they were nervous at first at the competition, the adrenaline kicked in once they started. 

Herrera Arellano, Betulu and Gonzalez finished setting up their table at the OCPS Culinary Competition in three minutes, 30 seconds. 

“We were very proud of ourselves when they told us our time,” Herrera Arellano said. “When we saw the end result of our table, in our opinion, it looked very good.”

The team placed first overall, which inspired them to put in the effort to progress even more before their next competition in March. They plan to aim for a lower time and improve on the details of their table set-up.