Career and Tech students win state culinary competition

WASILLA — With just a few minutes left on a ticking kitchen clock at the 2015 Alaska ProStart Invitational, Mat-Su Career and Technical High School students feared the worst: coming up short, a second year in a row.

A drooping chocolate dessert could have done them in.

“We had like five minutes left and the chocolate wasn’t hardened. So if we put it on (the dessert like that) it would’ve drooped,” said Claire East, a senior student and returning ProStart chef.

According to East’s teammate, Jennika Conway, the chocolate was supposed to be tempered and harden on the dessert by itself, but with all the other food they had to prepare in that same 60-minute interval — two starters, two entrées and an extra dessert, one of each for display and one of each for judge tasting — the four young chefs hadn’t left enough time.

Or so they thought.

The team put the chocolate on ice to speed up the cooling process and finished their double three-course meal with seconds to spare.

“They were giving me and their mentor a heart attack,” said Chef Mike Graham, the students’ high school teacher. “They finished with five seconds left on the clock. If it went past that, they would start losing quarter-point deductions.”

Even though the maximum score is 105, .25 points can make a big difference in an individual category. Teams received scores for station set-up, knife skills and poultry fabrication, production “mise en place” (for more specific preparations, such as obtaining water and measuring dry ingredients), cooking, taste, recipe and menu development, station clean-up and sanitation.

Teams must also be able to give a verbal description of their dishes and cooking process. At the national competition, they must cook and speak in front of 1,000 people, Graham said.

While each category is important for the demonstration of “culinary knowledge, skills, and creative abilities” purposed in the competition rules, a sanitation violation will earn a team an instant disqualification, Graham said.

“It was a very challenging thing, the whole competition,” East said.

The team came in with some experience, however. Last year, East, Conway and their teammates Sara Ladner, Patrick Forman and Avery Ballais took second place behind the Chugiak High School team (this year’s runner-up).

“It kinda brought us all down. But we all came back together and (said) ‘OK guys, we’re gonna give it one more go.’ So we gave it our all and we took the gold,” Forman said.

East agreed.

“Losing was really hard on us last year. But it made us better and realize what we had to do to (improve), and that’s what made us win this year,” she said.

Developing friendships, too, had a significant effect on how the team performed this year. Ladner said the five of them frequently go out to dinner and make meals together, “just to hang out.”

“Successful teams develop good friendships, and I think that other teams, if they don’t learn how to be friends outside of ProStart, they won’t be able to communicate as well,” Ballais said.

Ballais has had a particularly subtle, yet vital role in the team’s success as time-keeper for competitions. Though not required, Graham said teams that don’t have time-keepers tend to finish too soon or too late, since the judges only announce the time every 15 minutes or so, although the time is also on display at the event.

Though the teammates are also friends now, they still sometimes have a hard time “hearing everyone and working as a team,” Ladner said.

“Even though it seems really easy, it’s honestly one of the most challenging things,” she said.

Ballais agreed that “trying to mediate things between them” has been a challenge, but it’s helped him come out of his “shell,” too.

“I’m not a very assertive or aggressive person,” he said. “So I’ve had to grow out of that real fast.”

In addition to forming friendships, all their efforts have paid off — literally. Each member of the first-place team received $49,000 in scholarships from 11 culinary schools and universities nationwide.

After the national competition in Anaheim, Calif., April 18-20, they intend to keep in touch by posting recipes to a group Pinterest page and through other social media.

“I know I’m gonna love all these people probably for the rest of my life,” Ladner said.

ProStart is sponsored by the National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation. In the state competition this year, the Palmer High School culinary team of Kayleigh Seagraves, Marissa Gubitosi, Xavier Shepler, Laura Bergey and Michael Lyman also received scholarship offerings amounting to $15,000 each as the third-place finishers.

Contact Caitlin Skvorc at 352-2266 or caitlin.skvorc@frontiersman.com.

For additional information on ProStart, visit alaskaprostart.com or nraef.org.