On August 22, 2009, I took part in the first ever VeggieConquest, an amateur vegan cooking competition held in New York City.

The secret ingredient was apple and an entree had to be prepared. Including myself there were nine amateur chefs that competed. The winning dish was a filo ‘purse’ seitan, squash, apple stuffing by the East Village Vegan.

The judges were Brian Preston-Campbell, Joshua Katcher of The Discerning Brute and Kathy Patalsky of the LunchBoxBunch.

One of the highlights for me was meeting Barbara from GonePie vegan bakery. She provided a vegan chocolate chip cookie that I devoured too quickly to take any pics or a video of. Mmmm…good.

The day of the event I was the first chef to show up. That gave me plenty of time to prepare my dish and shoot video of the chef’s putting the final preparation on their dishes. Also had the chance to talk to some of the chefs and Michael Parish DuDell, Senior Editor of EcoRazzi.

A week before the event, I learned that apple was the ingredient and that I had to prepare an entree. Enough needed to be prepared for 50-60 bite sized servings and three dishes plated all pretty for the judges.

Once I learned this, I immediately had some ideas going on in my head…raw of course.

First, I knew that I wanted to use as many of the herbs and vegetables that I’ve been growing in my urban gardens. The apple zucchini wrap also came to mind.

After some experimentation with different wrap variations and vegetables to go on the inside. Here is the final description of the dish that I made:

Raw Stuffing Wrap
A raw dish that will conjure up memories of Thanksgiving. Stuffing made from dehydrated cauliflower, broccoli, celery* and red onion* in an apple and sage* dressing and placed in a collard green leaf*. It’s brought together with an apple, zucchini and red pepper wrap on a bed of sorrel leaves*. Served with an apple and plum sauce and a sprig of apple mint*.

* = homegrown