#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. On December 17, the Norilskgazprom traditional corporate competition, Gourmet Secret, took place for the 15th time.
Norilskgazprom’s 21 employees presented 36 dishes. A popular city cafe Malina’s chef was invited to the anniversary event as an expert.
The jury selected the best dishes in six categories – the main course, appetizers, desserts, pastries, salads and drinks. The nominee for the Audience Choice Award was also determined.
“It is great when people support their own enterprise”, Andrey Chistov, Norilskgazprom general director, commented on the competition.
“The New Year is coming soon, it’s great to taste something that you would like to adopt and see on your holiday table”, says Elena Ananikyan, head of the department for social development, sports and public relations of the personnel and social policy department of Norilskgazprom. “Gourmet’s Secret”, in her opinion, is although a large-scale, but still a family holiday:
“Each dish is cooked in the circle of the gas worker’s family, and after serving, many culinary creations look no worse than Michelin star ones. It turns out that our professionals, besides producing gas, like spending time in such a cozy format”.
The dishes were beautiful and tasty, the winners received well-deserved awards, the participants got incentive prizes, and the guests had aesthetic and culinary pleasure from the Torch pastries, the Rotation Worker salad set, the Spicy Sea Buckthorn drink, the New Year’s Commotion and New Year’s mood salads, Love at First Sight cake, Snowiness dessert.
“I’ve walked around the hall and tasted everything. I’ve got satisfied. Our chefs are great! And the hot pie with potatoes and cheese, which was brought at the end, turned out to be beyond praise: I almost ate my piece together with the plate”, admits Konstantin Malahov, Norilskgazprom’s deputy general director for production safety and ecology.
Not only the Gourmet’s Secret participants but also the Malina cafe and the ProService Vostok enterprise’s chefs, pleased with the original dishes. A master class in making saguday (slightly salted fresh northern fish with lemon and onions) performed by the Norilskgazprom’s deputy head Yury Likinov, one of the permanent organizers of the competition, became a memorable moment of the holiday.
Malina’s chef Ruslan Asanov was invited as an expert, the master presented his New Year’s dish – Beef Wellington:
“It’s the zest of English cuisine, made from medium-rare beef tenderloin with mushroom puree, wrapped in puff pastry. It is important how to cook it, how to serve it, how to put it, and even how to cut it. The chef’s dull mood is out of the question – it will definitely spoil the taste. Homemade food a priori wins over any restaurant food. In dishes from non-professionals there is a special energy, its taste and smell remind of family, loved ones, a sense of home. Yes, this is a low-rise, but real, open kitchen. Having a meal at your friends’, you understand this as a place where you you’ve been waited for. And what is on the table is not only to surprise you: in the culinary language, the hosts tell about their attitude towards you”.
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Text: Marina Horoshevskaya, Photo: Vadim Kirpichenko
