By Guadi Rabino
Assistant Managing Editor
Cooking up dishes on the Food Network, Manhattan Beach Middle School seventh-grader Sophie Viohl is pursuing her passion for cooking.
Since her Feb. 21 win on Food Network’s “Chopped Junior,” the reality cooking game show and spinoff of the original cooking show contest, “Chopped,” Viohl has been practicing her cooking more and more in order to further her career.
“I have watched ‘Chopped’ and ‘Chopped Jr.’ for many years now, and I’ve always wanted to be on the show,” Viohl said. “I never expected to actually get on, but it was cool to actually take that risk.”
Viohl’s love for the culinary arts stems from her grandmother’s strong influence on her, she said. When she was 9, her grandmother would pick Viohl and her siblings up from school and encourage them to cook with her, Viohl said.
“My grandmother was definitely my earliest inspiration,” Viohl said. “I developed an interest [in cooking] from her. My parents got divorced when I was three years old, so my grandma and I spent a lot of fun times together and had a lot of amazing experiences.”
In order to audition for “Chopped Junior,” contestants had to submit audition tapes last summer of them cooking at home and partake in interviews via Skype. Viohl and three other young chefs were selected to compete to win the grand prize of $10,000.
Click here to learn more about the Chopped Jr. audition process
The shooting was in New York City in October and lasted one week, Viohl said. Viohl was allowed to bring one guest and she chose her mom, and the two of them stayed in a local hotel for the duration of the trip.
“It was amazing to have my mom there with me,” Viohl said. “Without having her support and her there, I would not have the confidence to go inside the ‘Chopped Junior’ kitchen.”
“Chopped Junior” consists of three 30-minute episodes. Each round begins with an introduction of a mystery item, such as zuchini, brownies, or candy sushi, that all the contestants use their own interpretation to prepare. Once the dishes are completed, the show’s judges taste the creations and eliminate one contestant each round to eventually determine a winner.
Click here to watch the full episode of Season 5 Chopped Jr. “Heads Will Roll” featuring Viohl
“Before going on the show, I thought they were going to be ingredients with eyes or something really gross,” Viohl said. “I’m not saying the baskets were easy, by any means; they were still very challenging but definitely not as bad as I expected.”
The dishes that Viohl prepared in the finals were a persimmon salad and shrimp empanada with cayenne pepper chimichurri as the appetizer and turkey Milanese with arugula salad, roasted tomatoes and cauliflower as the main dish. For dessert, she made hazelnut and white chocolate ice cream sandwiches with zucchini brownie crumble and apple-berry compote.
Click here for a Food Network recipe of turkey Milanese
“I wasn’t really thinking about winning throughout my time on the show,” Viohl said. “I was mainly focused on each individual dish that I was making as each round of the show began.”
While Viohl is unsure of her specific future plans, she hopes to somehow involve her love for cooking, she said. She plans to invest the $10,000 prize money for any future cooking-related endeavours, such as culinary school.
Click here to see pictures of Viol in her element
“I would like to go to culinary school to take a chance, and I feel like it would be really amazing,” Viohl said. “However, I don’t know if I want to be a chef or not because I still have all of high school ahead of me and so much time to think about what I want to do with my future in cooking.”
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