Dylan Jenkins and Kate Durrant cook up a storm

By Riverine Herald

Sep 22, 2022

Cooking extraordinaires: Winners of the Murray River Culinary Challenge, Dylan Jenkins and Kate Durrant, from Echuca College, with their trainer. Photo by Contributed

Echuca College’s Kate Durrant and Dylan Jenkins have walked away with a win after they participated in the Murray River Culinary Challenge.

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The challenge is an industry standard cooking competition for secondary school students enrolled in a Vocational Education and Training (VET) Hospitality Training Package.

It was the first time in the 18-year history of the competition that Echuca College had a team in the grand final.

Echuca College competed against teams from Swan Hill College, Nathalia Secondary College and Galen Catholic College.

It is a three-tiered competition. At the school level, students compete individually to vie for a spot in the regional final.

The two top-scoring students from each school are then paired and compete as a team in the regional final and the top-scoring team then progresses to the grand final.

Grand final: Jess Sargeant, principal of Echuca College, with winners Dylan Jenkins and Kate Durrant at Murray River Culinary Challenge grand final 2022. Photo by Contributed

Each student had 2.5 hours to present three dishes designed to display knife skills and basic methods of cookery.

Menus in each level of the competition become progressively more difficult and are designed for students to be able to demonstrate their skills learnt during their hospitality training.

The industry judges were looking for consistency, flavour and were certainly impressed with the creative presentation from the students.

Mouth-watering: Vanilla panna cotta with crushed berries and praline at the Murray River Culinary Challenge 2022. Photo by Contributed

A spokesperson for the challenge thanked the industry judges, George Santos from Moama Bowling Club, Rebecca Hart from Boo’s Place Café and Provedore, Megan Knapp from The Kitchen Door, Kristofer Bech Howley from Milestone Café and Bistro.

“We’d like to thank all the judges for their passion and commitment to the hospitality industry and our young people,” she said.

“Moama Bowling Club has been a long-term sponsor of the Murray River Culinary Challenge in the Campaspe region and we thank them for their continued generosity and support.”

Kate Durrant and Dylan Jenkins won a trophy made out of a piece of highly polished red gum, which was sourced from the Koondrook forest.

The trophy is now with the reigning champions at Echuca College.