Contest Winners Announced Here!

We are very proud to announce that the Grand Prize Winner of our second annual Tomato Recipe contest is:

Lakeisha Germany-Ross, an 11th-grader from Connections School in Hilo!

Note that this was not a kids’ or students’ contest. This was a regular old, anybody-can-enter adult contest, and that made it even better when we learned that our winner was a student from our downtown charter school. We were thrilled to realize that.

Our judges prescreened the entries and chose the top five recipes from each of the three categories, and then on Monday morning culinary students from Hawai‘i Community College prepared those 15 recipes. Their task was to follow the recipe exactly, and it’s a credit to their instructors Chef Allan Okuda and Chef Sandy Barr that they did such an absolutely terrific job. What an impressive job the students did. I know that because we got to sample the dishes after it was all over.

Lakeisha’s dish was called “Cherry Tomato Compote & Budino.” “What is Budino?” wrote Chef Alan Wong, our guest judge, on his score sheet. We will inquire and then let you know, because this inquiring mind wants to know too.

Looking at the recipe, Budino is a mix of cream cheese, mascarpone cheese, eggs, sugar, lemon juice and orange and lemon zest. The mixture is baked, then cooled, inverted and topped with the recipe’s Tomato Compote (ingredients: red and yellow cherry tomatoes, large tomatoes, sugar, lemon [sliced thin with peel], sultana raisins and water). The result is delicious.

photo by Macario

Chef Alan Wong donated a special prize for the grand winner, and so Lakeisha and a guest will be dining at Alan Wong’s restaurant in Honolulu, with roundtrip airfare provided by Go! Hawai‘i’s Low Fare Airline.

Each category’s first place winner receives $350 and is invited to a personal tour of Hamakua Springs Country Farms. Go! is also providing airline tickets for winners who live on outer airlines to fly over for the tour. Second place winners each receive $300, and third place winners $250.

Congratulations to all our winners! And thanks for all the terrific entries. We’re going to do it again next year at this time, so start thinking about tomato recipes.

Soups & Bisques

1st – Hamakua Double Tomato Bisque
Candy Barnhart, Makawao

2nd – Tomato Basil “Soup” in Parmesan Cups
Alan Ritari, Honolulu

3rd – Rich Tomato Lobster Bisque
Adina Guest, Honolulu

Entrees

1st – Roasted Tomatoes Piperade with Tomato and Spinach Orzo
Alan E. Fujimoto, Hilo

2nd – Roasted Hamakua Tomato Lasagna
Candy Barnhart, Makawao

3rd – Rustic Hamakua Tomato Tart
Misty Inouye, Hilo

Preserves & Condiments

1st – Cherry Tomato Compote & Budino (Also overall Grand Prize Winner)
Lakeisha Germany-Ross (11th grade, Connections School, Hilo)

2nd – Pacific Rim Hamakua Tomato Jam
Al Barnhart, Makawao

3rd – Slow-Roasted Lomi Lomi Salmon
Alan Ritari, Honolulu

– posted by Leslie Lang