Anasuya’s golden pastry

Jackson, 24, is an assistant pastry chef at Jaffa at the Oval and recently earned a gold medal for Pastry Chef of the Year at the Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association’s Taste of the Caribbean Culinary Competition in Miami.

She also won a silver team medal as part of the Trinidad and Tobago National Culinary Team 2017.

She was encouraged to enter Making the Cut, the local competition used to chose the national team members, by the pastry chef at Jaffa.

“I didn’t know much about it so I didn’t know it was actually for the National Culinary Team. I just thought it was a one-off competition.

It was only later on I realised what it was about.” Being a member of the National Culinary Team entailed three months of practising and training with the members for long hours.

She thanked the staff at Jaffa for their support when she went to work tired and fell asleep in the back room, for their encouragement when her confidence was low, their faith in her, and for allowing her to practice in the restaurant’s kitchen.

Jackson said the team had a lot of challenges but they overcame them together as they pushed each other to do more, shared techniques and tips, and helped each other grow as chefs and as people. Most importantly, she learned how to improvise recipes.

“That was so strange to me because every single time I had to make something I have had exactly what I needed.

I had to learn to do things by taste to get exactly what you want. That was something I had to break out from gradually over the weeks.” “One thing the chef said that stuck with me was that the competition was called Taste of the Caribbean, not Looks of the Caribbean, so we had to make sure it tasted really good. A lot of time was spent working on the flavours and getting that right balance.” Jackson achieved that balance with her dish: A Trinidad chocolate bar, Trinidad chocolate biscuit with toasted hazelnuts, chocolate cremeux with Trinidad chocolate orange and Angostura seven- year rum, cassava pone mousse, spiced ginger and orange gelee, a peppered coral tuille and a lime sauce.

She said after her competition, she did not think she would get gold as several things went wrong and the plate she ended up preparing was not the plate she planned to create.

One of biggest challenges on the day was that she could not taste anything as she had taken medication that affected her taste buds. Additionally, she was unable to see properly because her glasses had broken, and she was momentarily distracted by a judge resulting in her cutting her chocolate bars to the wrong size.

“Murphy’s Law was in full effect and the other chefs’ plates looked really, really good. Even after, when I spoke to the judges and they told me they loved how I worked the floor – confidently, clean, organised – I thought they were just telling me that so I wouldn’t feel bad.” And so, on the day of the results she was anxious. She said she could not breathe and was hyperventilating.

It was so bad that she had to borrow an inhaler to help with her asthma.

Her hands were also shaking badly and when she tried drinking water, she choked on it.

When it was announced that she had won gold, she said she was so happy she started to cry. In fact, she was so ecstatic that she hugged everyone on the stage...

twice.

Despite all the hiccups, Jackson said she would definitely return to the competition next year to go after the Pastry Chef of the Year title.