This little piggy made confit: cooking competition puts pork in upscale entrees

Nation's Restaurant News, May 24, 2004 by Bret Thorn

Nearly every time I tell someone that I'm going to a pork event called Taste of Elegance, I get a laugh.

People snigger at the notion that "pork" and "elegance" could be part of the same sentence.

But if those two words seem like a mismatch, I think "elegance" is the less attractive, because people love pork.

I've heard more than one story of vegetarians who make exceptions in their dietary restrictions for the sake of bacon, and of otherwise-kosher homes that have a burner in the garage to make bacon--presumably to be eaten outside, probably while standing up, so as not to de-kosher the rest of the house.

In fact, although I'm Jewish, one of my earliest memories is watching my dad, who was born and raised in North Carolina, frying bacon. I've found that among many Southern Jews the Southern trumps the Jew, and pork is a household staple.

I've attended the National Pork Board's annual Taste of Elegance five times in the past six years. It's the final leg of a pork-cooking competition among chefs who must prepare a dish to wow regional judges and then present that same dish to a national panel. The "chef par excellence," as they call the winner, takes home a cool $5,000.

This year the grand prize went to Joseph Royer, who works as a consultant and assists with catering operations at The Coach House in Oklahoma City. He made a confit of smoked pork belly accompanied by seared pork tenderloin and candied bacon, which he served with an Asian pork consomm6, a cold vegetable bundle and a creamy jasmine-rice-basil cake. He garnished the dish with red curry oil and braised pearl onions.

Whew!

Second place, and $2,000, went to Ryan Schroeder, executive chef at the Heidel House Resort in Green Lake, Wis., for his hickory-scented pork tenderloin wrapped in country-style pork sausage, which he dished up with "sweet and zesty" pomegranate sauce, grilled sweet corn-jalapeno bread pudding, apple-vanilla pork jowl confit, broccoli raab and crispy sweet-potato noodles.

So it's a bit more work than Mom's pork roast and a lot fancier.

Is it elegant? Well, the word "elegance" implies a certain refined simplicity that might mean leaving off the vegetable bundles and perhaps letting the sausage-wrapped tenderloin stand alone, without the jowl confit, but perhaps I'm splitting hairs. Obviously, it's all worthy of fine dining, whatever you want to call it.

And the judges were delighted with this year's dishes. In the past some entries, even those that made it to the national level, were poorly executed or even ill conceived. But this year the judges struggled to whittle down the 14 national competitors to six finalists, who then had to prepare their dishes again for another judgment later in the day. During the first round the judges joked after the sixth dish that they could just pass all of the dishes they'd tried onto the next level and send the eight remaining chefs home. Instead, they ended up getting really fussy--eliminating contenders for breaking their asparagus stalks instead of peeling them and for presenting garnishes with inedible bits, such as apple slices with the stems attached.

This year, like last year, most of the competitors used loin or tenderloin in the center of the plate. Many of them claimed that those mainstream cuts fared better in regional competitions than did shanks, cheeks, jowls, bellies and the like.

In previous years, however, those less-utilized cuts often dominated the national competitions, and you'll notice that this year's winner was a belly. This year's two other non-loin entries--a pork chop by Andrew Evans of the Inn at Eaton in Eaton, Md., and an olive-oil-braised pork belly with smoked pork cheek hash by Steve Oakley of Oakleys Bistro in Indianapolis--made it to the final round.

Third place and $1,000 went to Shad Kirton, sous chef of Hotel Pattee in Perry, Iowa, who made his version of upscale comfort food: seared pork tenderloin with warm apple and pork confit salad, Maytag blue-cheese ice cream and cinnamon-almond crostini.