GrowFest! Local Culinary Cook-Off: What Was in the Mystery Box?

Here’s the challenge: You have one hour to prepare a dish using local ingredients found in a mystery box. You open the box and see familiar items: eggplant, okra, a long skinny cucumber. But what are these little green fruits shaped like gherkins? Or this branch of pointy, leathery leaves? And this bright orange, squishy fruit that looks like an overripe tomato? (Spoiler alert: Bilimbi, curry leaves, and persimmon.)

Welcome to the Local Chef Cookoff Challenge at the recent GrowFest! at Fruit and Spice Park, an annual event that kicks off South Florida’s fall/winter growing season. “GrowFest! is about connecting the dots between the farm or garden and the dinner table,” says organizer Margie Pikarsky of Bee Heaven Farm. The challenge – for amateurs on Saturday, and pros on Sunday – is one way to make those connections.

Local government officials were among the visitors, says Pikarsky. “[They] showed up and spent the entire afternoon visiting all the vendors and exhibitors. They thoroughly enjoyed themselves. District 9 was also represented, as was the Mayor’s office and GMCVB.”

Amateur Cook-off: Tropical Florida Girl Scouts

For Saturday’s competition, five teams from Girl Scout Troop 203, who meets at Our Lady of Lourdes school in southwest Miami-Dade, faced each other. The pairs were Cristina Martinez and Lidia Martinez; Claire Gil and Audrey Dominguez; Malak Orabi and Noha Elsakka; Lauren Hull and Brittany Hull; and Mia Bermudez and Lamar Aljbour.The rules: Create a dish using at least three ingredients in the box. The Girl Scouts also had access to a pantry of staples, including flour, local honey, olive oil, coconut milk, sesame oil and vegetable broth.

What’s in the Box?

The local boxes contained fruits, vegetables and herbs from different farms. Grow2Heal Garden at Homestead Hospital provided long, skinny eggplant; cucumber; and okra. Bee Heaven Farm added farm-fresh eggs, garlic chives and a tart mystery citrus fruit; Paradise Farms supplied curry leaf; Teena’s Pride included basil; a local bean farmer contributed dried beans, which were precooked for the event; and Fruit and Spice Park supplied bilimbi, a sour fruit related to starfruit. Other local items included an assortment of oyster mushrooms, lemongrass and ripe persimmon.

Another unusual item was a tropical green called Aibika (Abelmoschus manihot) aka South Seas Salad Tree. “Our selection is “Kiko’s Crump” with the broad solid leaf that’s perfect for wraps, bundles, and stuffing – either raw or cooked. Flowers are also edible, like okras and hibiscus  It’s a close relative of okra, though it doesn’t make a fleshy seed pod,” says Pikarsky.  

The Girl Scouts immediately got to work preparing their dishes while the audience and panel of judges looked on. These included Miami-Dade Commissioner Danielle Cohen Higgins and her team and Miami-Dade agricultural manager Charles LaPradd.When the time was up, the girls presented their plates to the judges. The Scouts' plates included jonny cakes, sauteed greens, poached farm-fresh eggs and fried eggplant. As LaPradd noted: "Every plate had something delicious in it."

The winners were Cristina Martinez and Lidia Martinez.