Community Action Center to host 'Chef's Challenge' at Gladish

Hoping to educate more people about the Community Food Bank in Pullman and its food options, the Pullman Community Action Center will host a “Chef's Challenge” Sunday, March 26, at the Gladish Community Center. The Chef's Challenge will pit three chefs against each other to compete for the “Golden Spatula” in a cooking competition in which they can only use ingredients commonly found at the Community Food Bank.

“We'll have some items you can typically find at the pantry that will be provided,” said Jeff Guyett, executive director at the Community Action Center.

The purpose of the event is twofold.

“This is a fundraiser to raise money for our community kitchen. We're about $21,000 away from our goal,” said Guyett. “But this is also about teaching people how to use the foods they get at the food bank.”

The idea for the Chef's Challenge came from former staff member Jessica Williams. Though she no longer works there, the idea was something that employees still wanted to see happen.

“We decided to carry it out this year,” said Guyett.

The three chefs who will compete are Matthew Lasof, executive chef at Washington State University's Northside Café; Will Wohlfeil, a chef at Southfork, and Ryan Avery, an amateur chef and director of transportation at Council on Aging in Colfax. The chefs will have 30 minutes to create a dish using ingredients commonly available at the Community Food Bank, as well as a mystery ingredient that will be revealed right before the competition and must be featured prominently in the dish.

“I don't even know what it is,” Guyett commented.

The competition is modeled after Chopped, a cooking competition featured on the Food Network. The chefs will be judged by a panel of local celebrity judges. The celebrity judges include Pullman Mayor Glenn Johnson; Jamie Callison, executive chef of the culinary program at WSU; Chrisi Kincaid, an employee with WSU student services, and Joan Swenson, executive chef at Paradise Creek Brewery and former owner of Swilly's. The fifth judge will be chosen from the audience with a raffle. Tickets for that opportunity will be available for purchase at the event.

Guyett said the community kitchen will be ready in a couple of weeks. The Community Action Center will host cooking classes there, which will teach how to cook with items found at the Community Food Bank. Guyett also said food repacking will be done there.

“We get a lot of 50 or 100 pound sacks of lentils or beans, and we repack those into smaller serving size containers,” he explained.

The kitchen is at the Community Action Center in Pullman, and it will also aid in recovering foods from WSU dining halls and local caterers and restaurants, Guyett said.

Information about the cooking classes is available on the Community Action Center website.

Tickets for the Chef's Challenge are also available there. Tickets are $15 per person in advance or $20 at the door. Seating is limited to 175, and Guyett said 25 standing room only tickets may be opened up if there is demand.

Chef's Challenge will be at the Gladish Community Center in the view room starting at 5 p.m. March 26.

For pictures of the contestants, see Weekly Pages: March 16