Local chef appears on Food Network

When chef Jennifer Meadows agreed to appear on an episode of the Food Network’s reality show, “Chopped,” that aired in June and will be rebroadcast on July 2 and 3, she didn’t know her experience as the executive chef of Montauk’s Fishbar restaurant would help her swim past the competition in the entrée round.

For each of the three rounds—appetizer, entrée and dessert—the contestants are given a “box” of four ingredients they must use in creating their own dish. Whichever contestant scores the lowest in a given round is “chopped” and cannot proceed to the next round.

“I was so excited to see turbot,” Ms. Meadows, 30, said of one ingredient in her entrée box. “I fabricate fish every day.” Other ingredients in the box included purple cauliflower, dried wasabi peas and satsuma mikan, a type of Japanese orange.

With just 30 minutes to prepare four platefuls—one for each judge and another to be photographed—she visited the show’s limited “pantry” and set to work pan-searing the turbot and basting it with tarragon oil, 
sautéing the cauliflower and preparing a smoky tomato chutney while also incorporating the peas and satsuma mikan into the mix.

The contestants all cook at the same counter, in personal workstations, and they seldom look over at the competition. “You’re so focused, honestly you 
barely see anything,” Ms. 
Meadows said, reflecting on her Food

Network debut while sitting on the patio of Fishbar looking out at the rows of boats docked in Lake Montauk early one morning.

Ms. Meadows’s fish entrée received a number of rave reviews, including “cooked perfectly” and “the hint of tarragon was wonderful,” from the panel of three judges.

To work under the time constraints, Ms. Meadows chose to break down and

analyze the anatomy of a successful dish. “I tried to take a realistic approach and see where these ingredients might be applied,” she said, explaining that a chef looks at many factors when deciding what to combine, including the different parts of the food pyramid.

“If you take all the elements of a plate and take different textures, you want to combine those and see where are those going to fit into the elemental process of the plate,” she said.

Ms. Meadows’s career as a chef started with a recipe for Dijon chicken. Debating whether she should become a chef or an English teacher, she picked a recipe out of a cookbook and decided if it came out well, she would become a chef.

She burned the chicken.

“It really intrigued me,” she said, “It presented a different type of challenge.”

She decided to enroll at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, Rhode Island, receiving her associate’s degree in culinary arts in 2000.

Born in New Jersey, she has jumped from coast to coast, cooking

in California, Hawaii and Washington, D.C., before landing in Montauk.

“With cooking, I kind of wanted to travel and go all over the place with it,” Ms. Meadows said.

The Food Network first approached the chef last year when a producer dining at the restaurant encouraged her to be on the show. The one-day taping in January was in a studio in Long Island City.

Ms. Meadows did manage to advance to the third and final round, which presented the challenge of making a dessert out of English muffins, Brie cheese, frozen cranberries and rutabaga. Using the muffins, she prepared French toast with caramelized rutabaga in sugar and cinnamon. But she did not win the round.

“I really don’t feel like I lost,” she said, explaining that Fishbar has been

busier than usual since the show aired and many patrons have told her they disagreed with the judges on the final round.

“It was a lot of fun,” Ms. Meadows said. “All chefs should have some competitive cooking in their repertoire.”

The show will be rebroadcast Friday, July 2, at 3 a.m. and 8 p.m. and Saturday, July 3, at 3 p.m. on the Food Network.