October 28, 2014. Two cooks and two pastry chefs from Uralvagonzavod Corporation’s head plant in Nizhniy Tagil won first prizes in the local professional skills contest for canteen staff, the corporation’s press service reports.

‘The plant employees competed with cooks and chefs from Corpus Group Ural and sole traders N.V. Yurk and I.V Sidenkova; these prepare meals for EVRAZ NTMK, Vysokogorsky Ore Mining & Processing Enterprise, and OAO KRZ, respectively,’ the press service says.

Head of Nizhniy Tagil Council Consumer Market Development Tatiana Semikolennykh chaired the panel of judges. Managers of local cafes, food technicians, and other experts from Nizhniy Tagil catering and restaurant industry were on the panel as well. The contest consisted in three stages – a company presentation, a home-prepared task, and a round of ‘MasterChef’.

In this latter challenge, two chefs were given forty minutes and identical Mystery Boxes to prepare at least two dishes using the six ingredients from the Mystery Box. The judges selected winners based on the number of dishes made, the way the ingredients were or were not compatible, the taste, the originality, and the elegance and simplicity of the visual appearance. Pastry chefs, in their turn, had half an hour and a kilo of fermented dough to bake an open-faced pie.

Natalya Spiridonova, a cook from Uralvagonzavod’s administration canteen, was No.1; the second prize went to Maria Samokhvalova from the cafeteria pertaining to Foundry Department 5.