Top award, NZ selection to Army chef

Waimarino Bulletin, Volume 4, Issue 11, 12 August 1986, Page 1

Top award, NZ selection to Army chef

An Army chef at Waiouru Camp has won a major catering award and been selected for a New Zealand team to travel to Vancouver and Frankfurt. Sergeant Brice Gordon, a catering instructor at the School of Transport and Catering, ATG, Waiouru, won a gold medal in the decorated butchers' meat class in the national salon culinaire held recently in Auckland. Sergeant Gordon won his prize for a cold display rabbit dish for serving in a restaurant. In a three-hour cook-off at the same event to prepare two representative New Zealand dishes, he was selected in the NZ master chefs team for the culinary Olympics at the Vancouver expo in 1987. and also at Frankfurt in 1988. Sergeant Gordon's three dishes and selection of eight hors d'oevres, took an immense amount of research, practice and preparation before he was ready for the salon culinaire. A description of the dishes, kept a closely guarded secret until after the competition, is sure to tweak the most jaded palate. The meat dish was nut of lamb stuffed with spinach, mushroom and pheasant, wrapped in filo pastry, and served with tamarillo sauce, kumara mousseline and courgettes. If that isn't enough try the fish dish: salmon fillet stuffed with seaweed and sole in layers, served with crayfish sauce, scallop flesh flambed in

Pernod, rice timbal - saffron rice in a mould, and a scallop shell fan made of choux pastry. Finally for his restaurant meal presented cold he did pan-fried chicken breasts stuffed with pate and spinach, garnished with pumpkin mousseline, broccoli sprigs, carrots and parsnips, and glazed with redcurrant sauce. The presentation of the dishes was very important and the judges looked for tasteful arrangement of the food on the plate as well as gastronomic perfection. Sergeant Gordon has already made a name for himself in the culinary world having won two gold and, one silver medal, a certificate of merit and table of honour at London's hotel Olympia in January 1986. Brice Gordon, inevitably known as "Flash", is still an Army chef, despite his international honours. Although now a catering instructor teaching others how to cook, he still gets out in the field during exercises cooking for hundreds of soldiers under field conditions. All Army chefs are trained in the field cooking so that they can produce a nutritious and substantial meal for hungry troops. Part of the problem is to ensure that the meals are hot, and cooking under camouflage and black-out conditions is still a test of ingenuity. Sergeant Gordon joined the Army eight years ago at 17 as a regular force cadet and went into catering area after his basic training.