Posted by The Star Tribune, MN on April 10, 2008 at 11:42:52:
By KIM ODE, Star Tribune
Beginner's luck hardly begins to describe how two Minnesotans wound up among 100 finalists competing next week for a $1 million grand prize in the 2008 Pillsbury Bake-Off in Dallas. Both have entries in the "Entertaining Appetizers" category.
Edgar Rudberg of St. Paul has cooked for his friends and family for years, but this is the first food contest he's entered, he did it on a whim and submitted a recipe he'd made only once. Rudberg will prepare Salmon Pastries With Dill Pesto using Pillsbury pie crust; the official site describes the dish as "bursting with salmon and cheesy-dill flavors."
He'd made the dill sauce many times and used it while grilling salmon, "but always had an idea of doing something else with it." Thoughts of a sort of Salmon Wellington dish evolved into small dumplings of pie crust filled with the fish and sauce.
Rudberg, 29, is a doctoral student at the University of Minnesota in natural resources science and management and runs a company, Verdi Strategies, that refurbishes 55-gallon drums into rain barrels. "So yeah, I'm kind of busy," he said.
Paula Naumann of Sleepy Eye, Minn., had never entered a cooking contest before, but saw TV coverage of a previous Bake-Off on the Food Network. While on the Internet one day, she remembered the contest, looked up the rules and deadlines and decided to go for it.
"I worked on probably eight different things -- pizza, Mexican, sweet," she said. Her final inspiration was her family's love of orange chicken at Chinese restaurants, which resulted in Spicy Orange-Chicken Charmers. She uses Pillsbury crescent dinner rolls to make mini-tarts filled with a chicken mixture that the official site says "packs a punch that's matched by a hint of sweetness."
Naumann, 44, works at Minnesota State University, Mankato. She and her husband, a pastor, have five children. She was a home economics major in college, but looks even further back to her days in 4-H Club for her cooking success.
Finalists will prepare their dishes Monday, with winners announced Tuesday. For a list of finalists, as well as recipes from past contests, go to www.bakeoff.com.