Newfield library holds Chop Chef Challenge

The Newfield Public Library held its first Chop Chef Challenge — a cooking competition in which youth chefs are recorded cooking their favorite foods — to show that the library has more to offer the community than books.

The challenge started as a result of the cooking camp held in last summer’s programming, in which several of the attendees expressed interest in holding a contest. According to Library Director Sue Chaffee, the library had a student employee who had experience recording videos — Aiden Gaydos.

“One of the big takeaways from both the camp and this cooking challenge is that cooking is a great way for getting people together, and our youth are very interested in getting together with friends and cooking,” Chaffee said. “And so, [in] our programming that we offer to the community, we’re trying to include programming relating to cooking and food and other cultures and that sort of thing.”

Registration for the challenge ended May 6, and after the chefs were finished recording their videos, the videos were posted by July 26. The voting ended Aug. 4, and the winner was decided Aug. 5.

The challenge was held out of the activity center shared with the Newfield Historical Society. Though the event was open to anyone ages 16 and under, Chaffee wanted to especially focus on older youth.

“We were looking for teenagers that had a little bit of experience because we wanted them to be able to really highlight their own skills,” Chaffee said. “So, we thought that making it for teenagers would be a way of highlighting that age group, as opposed to younger or older participants. It was just a place to start. It was the very first one that we did, and that age group, we thought, would be best based on what our vision was for the challenge.”

Two chefs participated in the event, which had a maximum of six contestants. Aurora Korbel won the event’s first prize of $100 by making American goulash, while Luke Landphair got the second prize of $50 by making peanut butter cookies. Those who watched the event and left comments praised the young chefs.

“They were very complimentary to both chefs but obviously could only vote for one,” Chaffee said of the commenters.

Korbel heard about the challenge from Chaffee while taking a cooking class at the library and decided to participate. She said she enjoys cooking and sees it as a way to help out her family.

“I really like cooking; it’s like an art that I can really relate to, and it’s easy to do,” Korbel said. “You can feed people and help out your family and ease some burdens on your mom.”

Sarah Robbins, a local chef, tasted the dishes and judged the chefs. About 55 Newfield residents watched the videos of the challenge and voted for the chefs.

“We were pretty happy with the turnout,” Chaffee said. “They had a week after we posted the videos. … So in a week, 55 people watched them and voted, and we were pretty happy with that turnout.”

Chaffee said that since the pandemic was a concern at the time the event was planned, broadcasting the event helped ensure more people could see it and allowed the library to highlight its video equipment and videographer.

“We got 55 people to be able to see the challenge,” Chaffee said. “Had we done it in person, it would have been a lot less.”

The video equipment used in the challenge was purchased from the Newfield Masons using money gained from a grant, and the prizes were funded by a grant from the Triad Foundation.

“That level of prize is higher than we would normally do,” Chaffee said.

Recording and editing the event proved challenging because the library had to take 45 minutes of footage and edit it down to 15. Chaffee said the editing was the most time-consuming part of the challenge, and that next time, she hopes to enlist students to help with the editing as Gaydos has left for college. Nevertheless, Chaffee believes it’s important to show Newfield what its library can do.

“We really want our community to know our library has a lot more than books,” Chaffee said. “We are here for the community, and based on what the community would like to see more of — like technology, like cooking challenges — that’s our mission, really, to serve the community by, in part, providing programs that interest them.”

Korbel enjoyed being on camera and cooking and hopes to take part in another Chop Chef Challenge.

“I really enjoyed doing the Chop Chef Challenge and very much look forward to doing it again with the library,” Korbel said. “And thank you to everyone who voted for me and was supportive of this.”

Newfield Notes appears every Wednesday in Tompkins Weekly. Send story ideas to editorial@VizellaMedia.com.

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