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1. Ayushi Gupta boils her team’s noodles for the ‘Mystery Ingre-
dient Challenge.’ Her team members were Ivy Kim, Navodit Ma-
heshwari, and Johannes Ha. 2. Sarah Baek smooths icing on her
chocolate cake. There was a lot of leftover cake, so the staff ate
it the following day. 3. Trisha Palli and her teammate Daniel Jung
make chicken tacos. They had their own special way of cooking
the tortilla by dipping it in egg batter. 4. Mr. Francois helps Ikoi
Okagaki cut garlic for her team during the ‘Mystery Ingredient
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Challenge.’ Afterwards, Ikoi joined her friends to make musubi as
their Master Chef dish. 5. Jason Baek and Bowen Song put icing
in a piping bag to decorate their cake. Jason slowly poured in the
icing while Bowen precisely measured the amount of icing.
6. Ananya Santhosh constantly stirs vegetables in a pan as she
adjusts the heat. 7. Sarah Kim pours powder in a measuring cup.
She wanted to be very precise with the amount she needed.
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A group of eager students ready
themselves in Dr. Dellos’ classroom to create award winning
dishes at GSIS Master Chef Jr., but they were taken by surprise
when boiling pots of water and mystery ingredients awaited
them in the back of the room.
In previous years, the event consisted of students only
cooking their masterful dishes of either main entree or dessert
for judges. These dishes were judged by taste, creativity, and
presentation.
However, this year’s event began with a mystery ingredient
Master Chef game. Students got into eleven teams and played
a round of Kahoot to determine which teams could pick their
five mystery ingredients first. The Kahoot consisted of food relat-
ed questions such as “In which city did Gordon Ramsay open
his first restaurant?”.
Once the game was over, the winning team was allowed to
choose their ingredients first. The only requirement was it had
to be a noodle dish. The groups had 30 seconds to run to the
back of the room and gather five ingredients. There was a wide
range of ingredients, one of the strangest being snails.
Mrs. Lozano, a judge, said it was “fun” to hear the students
banter back and forth. “I heard Ivy Kim say something about
‘if only we had this ingredient, then we could do this and that’,
and Hanjoo Bae and his partner Aarushi Agiwal struggled
through which ingredients should go into their dish and how
they should be prepared.”
“It made me feel like I was Gordon Ramsay”, said Hanjoo.
The winners of the mystery ingredient competition were Jinu
Baek, Yuito Kimura, Trisha Palli, Youna Keum, and Matthew Lee.
Students were given the restrictions of using only five mystery
ingredients to create a dish. They pushed their own limits and
creativity beyond what they thought they were capable of doing.
As a chef, they had no limits as they prepared these dishes.
After the mystery ingredients game finished, the students got
into their Master Chef groups and began cooking the dishes
they had planned. There were four cooked dish teams and two
dessert teams. They had an hour to complete their dishes and
present them to the judges. Before presenting, they wrote a
description of their dish, their team name, and the ingredients
included.
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