- Three, two, one, hands up!
(bell dinging)
Contestants, please bring your
dishes to the judging table.
(upbeat music)
Do you think you have what it takes
to go head-to-head with
a professional chef?
Welcome to Terps Vs Pros,
a cooking competition
that pits UMD students
against culinary pros in
sustainable food battles.
Patrick here, and we're on the Terp Farm
in Upper Marlboro, Maryland.
And we're ready for our
farm to table face-off
between our chef and
student competing today.
- Hi, my name is Kai Wong.
I'm a junior in the agriculture
resource economics program,
and I work on the Terp Farm.
- I'm George Gomez, executive chef
of 251 North Denton Dining Services.
- In this battle, you each
have to create two dishes
featuring produce from
the field behind me.
You have to harvest your vegetables
and take 'em back to our kitchen
at 251 North Dining Hall.
So without further ado, you got two hours.
Here are your baskets.
Your time starts now.
(ticking)
Located fifteen miles off
of the college park campus,
the Terp Farm is a project
by Dining Services,
the College of Agriculture
and Natural Resources,
and the Office of Sustainability.
Across the two acre farm,
students get their hands dirty
growing sustainable produce
that'll end up back on our campus.
(soft music)
- I remember planting
these a few months ago.
Glad to see our hard work's paid off.
- I know the University of
Maryland uses Terp Farm's produce
but it's really nice to see
it up close and personal.
- [Patrick] Farmers at the Terp Farm
and other sustainable farms
have used years of research
to make their farms run efficiently.
Sending the crops to local
kitchens and farmer's markets
makes sure that minimal energy
is spent in transportation.
Eating locally and in
season helps your neighbors,
and makes a difference globally.
Kai and Chef George have full baskets,
and now they're going to head back
to the 251 North Dining Hall
and start preparing their dishes.
(utensils clang)
All right Chef, what are you making today?
- Today I'm gonna go ahead
and do a little twist on some classics.
I'm gonna take the hash brown
but I'm gonna make them with some turnips,
and some radishes.
I also have some candy-striped beets
that I'm gonna input into a brownie
and give a little twist to
also another classic, brownie.
- Sounds great, can't wait to try that.
(upbeat rock music)
Hey Kai, what are you cooking?
- Well, this is a great harvest.
I'm gonna be making some
Asian style cuisine,
something I make at home for my family.
Gonna be using the napa and
some of the root vegetables
to make a vegetable
gyoza Japanese dumpling.
Then for the side dish,
I'm gonna be making a tofu
stir-fry with fried rice.
- Sounds really impressive,
I'll let you get back to work.
- Thanks.
(upbeat rock music)
- I'm here with our judges
Dr. Margaret Udahogora
from the nutrition and
food science department,
and Rob Fahey, executive
chef of Dining Services.
The competition is heating up,
and I'm gonna go check on our competitors.
(upbeat rock music)
Kai, those gyoza look like
they're coming along nicely.
- Thank you.
Traditionally, gyoza are filled
with cabbage and pork filling,
but I wanted to show off
the Terp Farm veggies.
I chopped the ingredients
and cabbage, onion,
carrots, radish, and turnips.
I fried them in a pan to
concentrate the flavors,
and evaporate some of the water.
Gyoza are a great dish; you
can prepare them ahead of time
and throw them in the freezer.
When you fry them, they just
take a few minutes longer.
- I think the judges are
going to be very impressed
with this dish.
- Thank you.
- Chef George, I smell chocolate.
Making those brownies?
- Yes, my batter is ready.
I chopped and steamed
the beets in a microwave.
I also used the microwave
to melt the chocolate
and the butter.
After they're melted,
I mixed them and set 'em aside in a bowl.
After that, I mixed the
beets, chocolate, flour,
and other ingredients in the blender
to make the brownie batter.
Now I just have to pour my
batter into the grease pan.
- Well you got plenty of time.
Looking forward to trying one of these.
(intense music)
Three, two, one, hands up!
(bell rings)
Contestants, please bring your
dishes to the judging table.
First up, we have Kai's
tofu veggie fried rice.
- This is creative.
It's a great way to add tofu into a dish.
We don't have to eat meat all the time.
- This is a great way
to use leftover rice,
and vegetables, if you have any left over.
It's a quick stir-fry, great
presentation, and delicious.
On the downside I would put
a little less soy sauce,
and a little less oil in it.
- [Patrick] Next up is
Kai's vegetable gyoza.
- This is awesome.
George better bring his A-game.
- The dumplings taste great.
They are filled with healthy vegetables
our student grew on Terp Farm.
What a great way to make
a fit meal for students.
- [Patrick] For Chef George's first dish,
he has a southern root vegetable hash.
- You can't tell it's not potatoes.
It's just turnips and radishes.
They're also from our Terp
Farm, and they are great.
- This is delicious.
It shows his creativity
by adding the Cajun spice to
the turnips and the radishes.
- [Patrick] Finally, we have
Chef George's beet brownie.
- This is perfection.
Patrick, this really is delicious.
- I'm glad to see many ways
to have added vegetables
into different dishes, including brownies.
However could have decreased
a little bit on the sugar,
otherwise it tastes great.
- So judges, four phenomenal dishes today.
What do you think?
- Well, I think Kai did a
really great job on his rice.
Downside is, I would've had less soy sauce
and a little less oil.
- I do agree.
The soy sauce was a little bit too much.
He used non-salt soy sauce.
He could have needed
more salt though, yeah.
- I thought Kai's dumplings were the bomb.
They were delicious, the
presentation was spot-on,
and I thought he did a great job.
What did you think, Dr. U.?
- [Margaret] That's a great
way to add vegetables to meal.
The dumpling was great.
However the gyoza was hard to cut through,
otherwise all the vegetables tasted good.
You know they are from Terp Farm.
- [Patrick] Yeah.
- George's hash was also delicious.
I thought it showed his creativity side
using Cajun spice with
turnips and radishes,
and the fried egg was delicious.
- [Margaret] I have
never thought of making
the type of dish Chef George did.
They were crunchy, with
that great level of spice,
and that was a great idea.
- And I thought George's
last dish, the beet brownie,
was perfection.
What a way to end this competition.
- Those brownies were great.
For those without a sweet tooth,
less sugar could have helped.
- All right, well I'll
give you a few minutes
to make your decision.
And the winner of today's Terps Vs Pros
Sustainable Food Challenge is
Chef George.
Congratulations to Chef George
on winning today's competition.
We hope that you've enjoyed this series,
Terps Vs Pros Sustainable Food Challenge.
We'd like to extend a special thank you
to the University of Maryland
Office of Sustainability
for their support in the
creation of these videos.
And thank you, to our viewers at home,
for joining us in this journey,
in finding sustainable solutions
to increase food security
in the University of Maryland
college park community.
I'm Patrick Keenan, thanks for watching.
(hip-hop music)
