Fearless Cooking Festival: Maryland Day 2013

By:     Surbhi Sardana

          Freshman Community Health Major

          SPH Student Ambassador

When the word paella comes to mind, Spanish and complicated typically follow thereafter. Not to mention what a mouthful buttermilk lemon soufflé pancake is to say, and never mind attempting to bake this breakfast treat. But never fear, the Terps are here!

On April 27, 2013, the University of Maryland held their much-awaited annual event of Maryland Day, where hundreds of people flocked to the campus to see and partake in all the activities and delicious food offered by various schools and organizations. One extremely popular event held at the Hornbake Plaza was the Fearless Cooking Festival, where the University’s own top chefs came together to teach Kitchenware-fearing people how easy it truly is to cook dishes that have a reputation of seeming complicated just like paella and buttermilk lemon soufflé pancake.

Traditionally, paella is a Spanish dish of rice with seafood, chicken and sausage that is artfully combined with the rich flavor of saffron. Typically, the dish takes an hour to prepare and while the task may seem daunting, Chef Ivory Kornegay from Adele’s Restaurant simplified the process and in no time, whipped up a beautiful plate of steaming rice and seafood colored a deep red from the saffron. Lucky for the audience, small samples of the rice bedded in a muscle shell were handed out to those eager to taste the dish.

Sometimes the best breakfast consists of simple buttermilk pancakes, but buttermilk lemon soufflé pancakes? The audience waiting for Catering Chef Thomas Schraa from Good Tidings seemed to have the same question: how to prevent the soufflé from drooping like a sad flower. Chef Thomas Schraa very clearly and simply demonstrated that baking soufflé pancakes does not need to be intimidating and showed everyone an easy way to prevent the soufflé from flattening – by baking it on a pan instead of the oven of course! With the audience’s mind whirling with this new discovery, samples of the mini pancakes drizzled with maple syrup and powdered sugar were distributed. As people from the audience stood up to leave for their next destination, they could be seen licking the corners of their mouths to pick up any last taste of the pancakes they could find.

With these simple, 30-minute demonstrations by professionals from the University of Maryland, the fear factor from cooking was unquestionably eliminated. The audience learned not only simpler ways of cooking these ostensibly daunting dishes, but perhaps was even inspired to take the recipes further and make them their own. That way, others would learn that Terps do not fear anything, but that others should fear the turtle.