2014 Cook of the Week winner reflects on life after victory
Jamie Andrade has long enjoyed cooking and entertaining.
But since winning the Daily Herald's Cook of the Week Challenge last fall, the Elk Grove Village mother of three's social calendar has found itself, well, stuffed.
“People keep inviting us over to parties, saying ‘Bring us food,'” Andrade said. “Everyone wants to know what I'm going to make.”
Andrade won a prize package valued at more than $2,000 after beating out 15 other suburban home cooks in a multi-round competition.
Since its inception in 2011, the challenge has grown each year. And registration for the 2015 challenge is now open at events.dailyherald.com/cook-of-the-week/. The deadline to enter is July 22.
In the first round, eight contestants move on and eight will be eliminated. In the second, four move on and four will be eliminated. The final four will compete in a live cook-off Nov. 2 at the Westin in Itasca.
For her live cook-off, Andrade took sturgeon, canned pumpkin, whiskey and BroccoLeaf — the four required ingredients — and added pumpkin beer, sweet potatoes and a lot of creativity and made what she called a Cornmeal-dusted Sturgeon with Sweet Potato, Pumpkin Puree and a Whiskey Orange and Brown Sugar Sauce.
While she'd never cooked sturgeon, is a self-proclaimed hater of pumpkin and had never heard of BroccoLeaf, she built off recipes she'd honed at home over the years, and from “messing around in the kitchen” at various suburban restaurant venues where she worked in her teens and 20s.
“I would say don't necessarily play it safe but stick with what you know,” she says as a word of advice to chefs taking part in this year's Cook of the Week Challenge.
“Everything I've done was a spin off something I grew up with, something I made in the past. You want to make sure it tastes good. You're not a Michelin chef.”
At parties, Andrade said she's become “really into” cooking mini appetizers, “because when I'm going to a party I'm not going to make a main course.”
A recent favorite creation is a Buffalo chicken puff, made with blackened chicken, cheese, hot sauce and puff pastry and baked in a muffin pan.
She and her husband, Jose, also have enjoyed seeing their home become the nexus of the neighborhood for Bears games and cookouts.
“He shares the love of eating what I cook,” she laughs. “We brainstorm together. He's my taste tester.”
Over the Fourth of July, the pair hosted roughly 40 people at their house, serving bacon-wrapped potatoes and Brussels sprouts along with marinated skirt steaks, burgers and hot dogs.
“My house is centrally located and, with the kids, we don't get out as much as we like to,” she said. “We've always had people at our house but now, after winning this challenge, they expect us to host the party.”