A feast for the eyes

A team of Culinary Arts 2 students from Huron High School will have one hour to whip up a three-course meal, using two camp-style butane stoves and no electricity or running water at the S.D. ProStart Invitational Monday and Tuesday at the Highland Conference Center in Mitchell.
Their menu will feature a salad of mixed greens with pears, feta cheese, dried cranberries and candied pecans with a balsamic dressing and yogurt cranberry sauce; pan-seared salmon with asparagus and lemon dill sauce, served on asparagus spears and topped with julienned carrots; and tiramisu mascarpone mousse with strawberries and cranberry yogurt sauce.
Team members are Emily Forrest, who took the Best Knife Cuts award last year, and Stephanie VandenHoek, Susana Olvera Camacho, Solayre Rivera Suarez, and Brendon Lanteri, team manager. This is also the second year to compete for VandenHoek and Camacho.
Last year’s team took second place in the competition.
On Monday, Forrest and VandenHoek are also taking part in the cake decorating contest, with the theme “Under the Sea.” The culinary competition takes place on Tuesday.
“This is the second year for the cake competition, but the first year we’re entering it,” said Kathy Engst, Family and Consumer Sciences instructor at HHS. “They can work in teams of one or two, and they have an hour and a half to get their cake completed.”
They plan to make a cake with two eight-inch layers topped by two six-inch layers with buttercream frosting and a caramel moose filling.
“This is a new unit, we haven’t been a cake decorating unit before,” Engst said Thursday morning. “We worked on that for two weeks, then had a class cake competition with teachers coming in as my judges.”

The most difficult part of the culinary competition is picking recipes and trying them out to come up with a plan that will work. Students found the recipes they wanted to use on Pinterest.
“It takes another couple of weeks to get ready for competition,” Engst said. “We come in on weekends to do practice runs and so forth. Missing two days of school this week didn’t help.
“They’re a little nervous,” she added. “I was kind of glad today, they ran a little late. Now they know they’ll have to pick up the pace. They have just one hour from start to finish to get their meal done.”
It turned out that a butane tank was low on fuel and the salmon took longer to cook than expected. This was the third time the team made this meal in practice sessions.
Working without electricity is a challenge, especially when it comes to whipping the cream, Forrest said. “It takes at least 20 minutes,” she said. We pass it back and forth to give your arm a break.”
As students worked within the confines of two tables in an “L” shape, they called out “hot pan” if they were carrying a pan away from a burner. While they worked Lanteri, the team manager, watched and called out the time they had left to work.
“They (judges) like to see team communication,” Engst said. “They have judges from all over the state. They’re all trained chefs, and we have people from ServeSafe to evaluate the kids on sanitation and kitchen safety.”
Teams are scored on numerous factors, including preparation skills, taste, presentation, teamwork, safety and sanitation.
They will prepare two complete servings, one to display and one for the judges to taste.
VandenHoek said she believes time management is crucial. “Making sure things go on the stove at the right time, otherwise it will be cold,” she said.
The best part, they agreed, is tasting the finished product they all worked so hard on.
The ProStart Invitational is a joint effort of the S.D. Department of Education, the S.D. Retailers Association and the S.D. ProStart Advisory Committee.

CRYSTAL PUGSLEY/PLAINSMAN

Culinary Arts 2 students Emily Forrest and Stephanie VandenHoek will make this cake in the ProStart Invitational Cake Competition Monday in Mitchell. Emily Forrest, left, and Susana Olvera Camacho prepare their portions of the meal during a practice session. HHS Family and Consumer Sciences instructor Kathy Engst, left, watches as Stephanie VandenHoek prepares balsamic vinegar dressing.