Food, food, glorious food!

Young and old put on their chef hats and stirred up some sizzling dishes at the annual Fire Up Your Stoke cooking festival during The Ballito Pro at Willard Beach last week.

The cook-off contests included the Mini Cooks (ages 3 to 6), the Fine Young Cooks (ages 7 to 13), the Ultimate Grill-off Ballito Style and the Battle of the Ballito Burger involving local restaurants.

In the Fine Young Cooks category, chefs had to pair up and prepare scrumptious sosaties using their own secret recipe with a side dish, cooked on a Weber gas braai. There were nine teams competing for the top spot but it was M & A Cooks, Minénhle Nzama (13) and Alwande Ncube (13), who blew the judges away with their special sauce. In second place was Grill Masters, Matthew Wocke (12) and Keenan Tocher (12) and in third was Nacho Mammas, Kai Muller (11) and Gerhard Ehlert (11).

The next category was the Ultimate Grill-off Ballito Style, where teams of two had to create a main course with either a starter or a dessert, while dressing the part.

The Salty’s Dolphins – Patrick Zenzile and Rich Sibiya – took the crown, closely followed by Team Zombie (George and Emma Morey) with Minnie Munchers (Gemma Limbect and Tusca Elmes) in third place.

Local restaurants had to win over the appetites of visitors by preparing a signature burger and sides for the Battle of the Ballito Burger title. Although it was a close call, East Oasis, won over the crowd, beating the other four competitors for the 2016 title.

In addition, the audience was treated to a special Celebrity Cook-off which saw Billabong surfer, Emma Smith of Jeffrey’s Bay, going head-to-head with World Surf League’s IT Manager, Mano Ziul from Rio, Brazil. Smith and Ziul were given 20 minutes each to create a dish containing the ingredients from their mystery baskets. This included fillet steak, prawns, chilli, garlic, lemon, coconut milk, spinach, baby corn, peppers and broccoli. Two judges were selected from the audience with both naming Smith the overall winner.

Overall, event organiser, Collette Bundy said they could not have asked for a better evening.

“Everything went so well with the participating chefs really showing off their talent on the evening, while the roughly 1500 visitors enjoyed all the activities and entertainment on offer as well as the spectacular winter weather,” said Bundy.

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