Powisset Farm takes on Chopped Junior

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By Laura Drinan
Hometown Weekly Reporter

If you had 45 minutes to create an entrée using chicken drumellas, dandelion greens, frozen hash browns, apple-carrot sauce, and dulse flakes, what would you make?

Perhaps it would just be a smorgasbord of poorly-paired foods, but three children were able to perfectly plan and execute impressive dishes.

Helping to create these dishes at the Powisset Farm test kitchen was Charlotte Kilroy, a homeschooled ninth grader from Arlington, Massachusetts, and a champion of Food Network’s Chopped Junior.

Charlotte’s mother, Julia Kelahan, was not only Charlotte’s inspiration to begin cooking, but is also a frequent volunteer at Powisset Farm. With the farm’s engagement site manager, Nicole Nacamuli, looking to get more children and teenagers involved at Powisset, a Chopped Junior-inspired class with the mother-daughter culinary team presented itself as the perfect opportunity to bring some young chefs to the test kitchen.

“I wanted to do this because it’s really fun to take things that you might not cook with every day and you might not find these weird things in a recipe, but these are things you might find in your fridge or in your pantry at home,” said Charlotte, who claimed her title of Chopped Junior champion in January of 2017.

Participant Miranda Savla’s dish was inspired by her father’s favorite meal: chicken pot pie. With Julia’s help, she quickly got started on a roux, to which she added the peas and the chicken drumellas.

The fifth grader incorporated the hash browns to her side of mashed potatoes, and sautéed the dandelion greens with the apple-carrot sauce. To season, she sprinkled the dulse flakes – tiny bits of dried seaweed – over her dish.

Charlotte brainstormed with seventh grader, Alexis Jowdy, who wanted to transform the frozen foods into something healthy. Deciding to make a chicken salad wrap, Alexis sautéed her dandelion greens with garlic and onion, toasted the hash browns to use as croutons, and sliced the breading off of the chicken drumellas.

Alexis then combined her sautéed greens with the chicken and chickpeas, scooped the mixture onto a large leaf of lettuce, topped with dulse flakes, and then worked on creating a vinaigrette with the apple-carrot sauce.

The third participant, sixth grader Ava, handled her greens and chicken in a similar manner to her sister, Alexis. The dishes, however, were dramatically different, as Ava chose to create a classic: chicken noodle soup, jazzed up with a warm side salad.

After receiving tips from Charlotte on how to peel cloves of garlic, Ava set to work on building flavors in her broth, adding turmeric for an earthy flavor. With mushrooms and ziti accompanying the chicken in the soup, along with a side dandelion green salad with apple-carrot sauce dressing and crunchy hash browns, Ava’s dish was sure to please.

Having plated four servings of their meals, the participants and Charlotte sampled each one, supporting each other’s culinary creations with compliments and gentle critiques.

“This is just a way to be super creative and throw out every recipe you’ve ever cooked with and just have a creative space that you can just do anything with,” said Charlotte.