La Prova del Cuoco – Year 9 Italian Incursion
As part of the students’ learning, Ms Sfameni’s Year 9 Italian class participated in a cooking competition, “La Prova del Cuoco alla Hume”. The following recount written by Year 9 Italian student, Loredana Rivaloro, sums up the student’s experiences.
On Tuesday, 23 August, our Year 9 Italian class held a cooking competition based on the popular Italian cooking show ‘La Prova del Cuoco’ (The Test of the Cooks). The two teams were each set the challenge of recreating a recipe in one hour, which would then be served to a panel of judges who completed a score card based on the criteria of dish presentation, taste, and public speaking.
Prior to the competition, each team received a recipe, ingredients and utensils list written in Italian, which we had to read and understand. Team ‘Pomodoro Rosso’ (Red Tomato) had the challenge of making and filling ‘i Cannoli di Ricotta’ (ricotta filled cannoli), whilst team ‘Pepperone Verde’ (Green Capsicum) were set to make a traditional biscuit called Pizzelle from the region of Abruzzo, in Italy.
Once the timer began, the teams rushed to start cooking. The pressure was on as we only had an hour to create great-tasting desserts and an aesthetically pleasing display. For team Pomodoro Rosso, time was against them with only half an hour to spare, they had to fill many cannoli shells with no prior skill. By the end, they managed to become very efficient at it too! Team Pepperone Verde also managed to work very well together in using the electric Pizzelle iron, avoiding burning themselves or the biscuits.
With eight minutes left on the clock, teams started throwing shaved chocolate and icing sugar together to produce a masterpiece for presentation of their dish. At that point, the dishes were finally ready to present to the panel of judges. We gave the judges Signora Natarelli, Signore Martin and Signora Scrofani an introduction to the desserts in Italian with English translations for those who did not understand. The judges proceeded to taste our desserts and give us a mark.
Overall, the competition was a lot of fun and a huge success. We loved cooking up the desserts for the judges to taste and it really did feel like a cooking show experience. After the judges had left, we all tried each other’s desserts and enjoyed eating them (some of us may have had one too many pizzelle). The final score came down to a win by 1 point. Team ‘Pomodoro Rosso’ crowned winners with their Ricotta Cannoli.
