Sisters doing it for themselves in a national cooking championship

SISTERS Ryleigh and Jenita Hunt have spent a lot of time at the stove recently.

But they aren’t complaining. It was all part of their effort to refine their skills for the final of Australia’s longest-running culinary contest for young chefs.

Ryleigh, 20 and Jenita, 17, have competed at the Nestle Golden Chef’s Hat Award in Sydney over the past 2 days.

After “winging it” and getting away with it in the regional finals, Ryleigh said they were leaving nothing to chance for the national cook-off, where they are competing against eight other teams.

Speaking to the NT News from the kitchen at Charles Darwin University’s Palmerston campus last week, Ryleigh told the NT News she and her sister were “really confident” with what they were doing.

The sisters spent every spare moment of the past month in the CDU kitchen.

But Ryleigh knew the pressure would come when she and Jenita stepped into the purpose-built competition kitchen to prepare a three-course meal over a four hour cook-off.

Their job was to impress a judging panel made up of internationally recognised World Association of Chef’s Societies judges, Nestlé chefs and members of the Australian Culinary Federation.

But after countless hours of practice the sisters said they knew exactly how their meal would come together.

Source: Daily Telegraph   Fred McCue  22nd September 2015