*Editor’s note: this event took place before the firing of school superintendent John Berenato
MANCHESTER – The smell of delicious, warm autumn flavors like pumpkin, cinnamon, caramel plus marshmallows and chocolate chips enveloped the Family & Consumer Science Class at the township Middle School recently.
Four judges (of which this reporter was one), faced the challenge and a lot of sweet calories at teacher Bella Toto’s 2023-2024 Chopped cooking competition recently. Now-fired Superintendent John Berenato, Board of Education President Gayle Mount, and teacher Sandy Maloney also had the task of enjoying and then determining who would win – and who would be chopped.
Toto is a fan of the Food Network show Chopped hosted by Ted Allen that has chefs compete and turn baskets of mystery ingredients into a three-course meal. This year’s event featured an autumn/Halloween theme with some familiar Halloween tunes playing as the cooking commenced.
Interested 6th, 7th and 8th grade students set out to make culinary creations using a mystery basket full of fun and sweet flavors that included pumpkin, cinnamon, caramel, and chocolate chips as the four main ingredients that students were required to use to create their desserts.
“They could use anything else from the unlimited pantry to make a dish and I tried to find some things to guide them and to give them ideas,” Toto said.
Students were then provided with a table of additional ingredients that they could use to develop and enhance their desserts and were paired with several teachers and administrators who volunteered their time to break off with the students into teams for the competition.
“They come up with an idea and it comes from how they use the ingredients creatively. This started in 2016. That first year I did it in the spring and I did it every year except the Covid year,” Toto added.
The kitchen was buzzing as staff supported students in this fall-focused and friendly culinary competition. Several teams, appropriately named in connection to the Halloween season and the decorations in the classroom, took part in the contest.
“Your dishes will be based on taste, presentation and creativity of the ingredients. You are going to have 40 minutes to plan, cook and place the dish,” Toto told the contestants. “You must make four plates (for the judges) the rest of it you can eat when you are done.”
Team Ghostly Gang created a dessert inspired by the ghost from the Ghostbusters movies featuring pumpkin moose; Team Pumpkin Spiders creatively presented chocolate and caramel spiders in a cinnamon crust; Team Pumpkin Picker Squad presented pancakes featuring cinnamon, pudding and crushed Oreos. Team Cinnamon Twists offered up a muffin with an added chocolate dip while Team Purple Monsters featured pumpkin pies.
Toto said it didn’t matter “how many things they used from the pantry table. If they wanted to be creative and think outside the box using the ingredients creatively.”
She reminded the teams that “you have to prepare a little speech when you make your presentation to the judges which you have to do during your cooking time.”
The judges had a difficult time as they deliberated over their score sheets but they were generally in sync with what worked best as far as the use of ingredients, taste, texture, appearance, temperature and the items’ descriptions.
The judges had a tough decision to make. Some feedback the chefs were given included the lack of chocolate chip taste in the dish or that the crust of an item was a bit hard or that the temperature of an item enhanced its taste. The judges noted features like “the little caramel spider that you made – they felt that was a really creative way to use that ingredient.”
When all was said and done, the team with the highest score was Team Pumpkin Picker Squad who had served up the delicious pumpkin pancakes. It was explained that the other teams had only been edged out or chopped for minor reasons but one team had to be chosen as the winner.
“They all did a really good job and were very creative,” Toto added.
