Cara Boese and Gordon Ramsay

Onscreen, he lambasts would-be chefs and berates restaurant owners who have too many menu items.

In person, he gave Cara Boese a big hug.

The senior relationship manager with Co-op Programs cooked in a competition with famous chef Gordon Ramsay on Nov. 20. It’s a feat she achieved for raising $6,676.21 for cancer research, in part because of the generous support of the Brock community.

Boese was the 46th highest fundraiser in the Chef’s Challenge – the Ultimate Battle for a Cure benefiting the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute and the Marvelle Koffler Breast Centre of Mount Sinai Hospital. An amateur cook who has themed dinner parties and is known for her “baseball burgers,” Boese went to the the Carlu in Toronto, where she was on one of five teams competing in a competition judged by Ramsay.

Boese was on a team of 10 under famed Canadian chef Jamie Kennedy. Each competitor had to choose to work on fish, meat or desserts. Boese chose dessert and was tasked with making sable. In a twist worthy of Top Chef, one of Boese’s teammates turned off the oven and didn’t turn it back on in time to cook the sable. So it wasn’t served to Ramsay.

“It was a kitchen nightmare,” said Boese, who held a fundraising pizza lunch at Brock to raise money for the cause.

As part of the competition, Ramsay gave Boese a taste test to identify six different fruits. She only missed one, which was “an obscure type of cherry,” she said.

As brusque as Ramsay is on shows like Hell’s Kitchen, he was sweet in person, posing for photos and giving hugs.

“You could see how he could lose his cool, but he didn’t,” she said.

“I just want to send out a big thank you to everybody for supporting the cause. The support from the Brock community was fantastic.”