Student chefs from New City College were crowned kings of the barbecue when they won a national competition beating 23 other teams.
Level 3 chefs Sam Paoli and Paulo De La Cruz along with their tutor Jeff Mason, from our Hackney campus, joined up with professionals John Jackaman and Barney O’Connell from the Suffolk-based Infusions Group, and together won the Dirty Dozen Championship Team 2021 accolade.
Calling themselves the Mighty Morphin Pork Arrangers, the chefs were challenged with making two dishes for the Dingley Dell Dirty Dozen competition, which was held at Signature Brewery in Walthamstow and raised around £6,000 for the Over The Rainbow Children’s Charity.
Their dishes of North Carolina smoked pork shoulder in a potato bun with North Carolina coleslaw and vinegar sauce, and homemade black pudding with Suffolk apple crumble, treacle smoked bacon, liquid nitrogen and vanilla ice cream won the most points from the judges.
Sam can be seen in the photo above making liquid nitrogen ice cream!
Jeff said: “Both dishes were sublime, genius, complex and real crowd pleasers. John and Barney spent quality time mentoring Sam and Paulo through all of the various techniques and processes involved in producing and presenting these two dishes. Their passion for food and the amount of research that had been undertaken in the dish development certainly resonated with our student chefs.”