I Made a Fruit Sculpture for the Nakano Knives Contest

I love working with my hands, being creative, and making beautiful creations. Nakano Knives reached out to me to be an ambassador for the Fruit Sculpting Contest. 

Please vote for me! 

I thought it would be easy since I have seen it done many times on the Food Network. If Aarón and Chris can do it on Chefs vs. City with no training, then I should be able to carve a piece of fruit into a wicked sculpture too! 

Chefs vs. City was probably one of my favourite Food Network Channel shows! It ran for two seasons airing from 2009 to 2010. Chefs Aarón Sánchez and Chris Cosentino travel go head to head with two chefs from the city they are competing in. Sort of like the Amazing Race that you go to the city, compete in games for clues, racing around the city to the finish line. Each episode has several challenges that are centered around the local food culture in the city! I do not remember the exact episode, but maybe you can find it!

Like I said, I thought I was going to be amazing at making a fruit/vegetable sculpture, but in reality, it was way harder than I thought. At first, I tried to make a parrot out of daikon which was a massive fail. The firmness of the daikon allowed me to make a lot of sharp details, but it was tough to cut. So when I added more force behind the knife, I would end up cutting off too much. Ugh so annoying. For me, working with softer produce was easier! 

My Papaya turned out amazing. The bird on it looks sharp and crisp and I was able to add a lot of detail. My main piece, the parrot, I started with a big eggplant for the body. I took inspiration from Polynesian Tattoos for the pattern on the wing! The cut-outs looked really amazing because the paler flesh contrasted against the outer dark purple skin. Carving the turnip and carrot into a head and beak was so hard. Being very firm vegetables, it was ridiculously hard to shape it. The tricky part was attaching the head to the body without it looking really weird. I ended up making a collar thing from the dragonfruit. Looked kind of cool. For details, I carved an eye from the eggplant and smushed some of the dragonfruit flesh around the eye. I made a crown of some sorts from strawberries and gave it a flamboyant tail from cucumber strips and dragon fruit! 

This took me TWO DAYS to sculpt and was a ridiculous amount of work. I do not want to do this again! The contest ends on April 19th, so please oh please give me a vote! 

BYES