Casino chefs sweep Rez Kitchen Tour event

Spirit Mountain Casino chefs won first-, second- and third-place awards at the third annual Rez Kitchen Tour held Friday, Nov. 4, at Three Rivers Casino in Florence.

In the three years since the competition started, Spirit Mountain chefs have won awards every year.

This year, the Spirit Mountain team of Tribal member Ray Nelson, Carl Hoover and Jason Bergan, all lead cooks at the casino, worked together preparing three dishes.

The appetizer came from Nelson, who has competed in the event all three years and who won with Hoover the first year. Hoover created the recipe for the main dish, and the dessert was the brainchild of Bergan, who was competing in the Rez Kitchen Tour for the first time.

"The emphasis was on Native American ingredients," Nelson said.

"It was kind of intense for my first one," said Bergan, but the Spirit Mountain team drew the last slot, so they ended up with more time to prepare than they expected.

"We planned for doing (each dish) in 15 minutes," Bergan said. "Actually, we ended up with an hour for all of them. We had time to smooth out all the hiccups before we got started."

First place went to an appetizer that was a "trio of spoons, single bite spoons; from the land, sea, and air series," Nelson said, meaning each spoon focused on an animal that lives on land, swims in water and flies in the air.

The first spoon was duck confit with a huckleberry rhubarb sauce and fried leeks. The second spoon featured butter poached salmon with a mushroom broth and sautéed chanterelle mushrooms. And the third spoon was elk meatball stuffed with pumpkin seeds and hazelnuts with a Yukon gold potato cake and truffle and pepper jack cheese sauce.

The main dish earned a second-place award. It was smoked trout wrapped in wild boar bacon, with a huckleberry glaze, a smoked apple and a fried polenta cake with fried yucca root.

Dessert earned third place honors. It was a hazelnut cake with a hazelnut cream filling and a hazelnut waffle cone, topped with the same huckleberry glaze used for the trout.

"It's a fun experience. I enjoy going to other casinos," said Nelson. "It's nice to see what other Tribes have been able to accomplish."