Elena Robles said the shortest hour of her life actually ran about 20 minutes. Or at least that’s how it felt as she and other Santa Fe High School students feverishly worked to make a three-course meal in one hour as judges looked on in the New Mexico ProStart Invitational culinary competition last year.
Things did go wrong. Robles “overthickened” the sauce and couldn’t plate it. Someone knocked over a bottle of cooking oil, gumming up the works considerably. The unshelled shrimp they were expecting to use turned out to be shelled, which cost them 10 minutes to de-shell. A plate broke. And they undercooked the salmon.
