The third-annual Student Culinology® Competition at RCA’s 2009 conference exemplified the blending of culinary art and food science.

An enthusiastic student team from University of Cincinnati took first-place honors, along with a $5,000 cash award and industry-wide recognition as rising stars in food-product development, at the third-annual Student Culinology® Competition, May/June 7, during the Research Chefs Association’s (RCA) 2009 conference at the Sheraton Dallas Hotel. The award was presented by Agnes Jones, principal culinologist at National Starch Food Innovation, at the 2009 RCA Annual Luncheon, where nearly 500 food-product-development professionals gather each year to celebrate industry achievements.

The competition is designed to challenge and recognize the industry’s young talent in the Culinology field–the blending of culinary arts and food science.

The winning team from UC was led by faculty advisor Christopher Keegan, CEC, senior research chef at Cargill Flavor Systems, and team leader Christian A. Serrato, CC. Team members included Robert Coltrane, CC, John Parsons, CC, and Andrew Scholle, CC.

In this episode of Culinary Secrets with Chef Tomm, Chef Tomm shows us the ancient Chinese Secret of Hand Pulled Noodles. It took Chef Tomm years to learn this guarded Chinese Secret. Now he is going to teach it to you. Visit his site www.cheftomm.com for the free recipe

Crossword and word-search puzzles can be fun, effective tools for familiarizing students with important terms.

By Adam Weiner, JobTrain and the Sequoia Adult School

We all get in a rut. Line cooks start turning out dish after dish, caring less for the quality because they have done it over and over again. Customers go to the same places and order the same thing, not because they are afraid to try something new; they are just stuck on their tracks like a street car. Teachers have the same problem, and when we do, the students turn on their I-pods and tune us out.

I am always looking for new ways to teach the same old thing. New tricks to pull out of a hat. One of the things that I have found is the very effective use of puzzles in teaching.

Occasionally, I start a class with a word- search puzzle with all of the terms I am
going to cover in the class. I end the class with a “test” of a crossword puzzle using the same terms. It is, I have found, incredibly effective. The best part is that there are many places on the Internet where you can create puzzles for free.

One thing that separates professional cooks from their moms is how they present food. Here are five things students should remember when plating

By Adam Weiner, JobTrain and the Sequoia Adult School

Students new to cooking go through three stages of trauma. First, they worry about making enough food; second, they agonize on how the food tastes; and finally, they stress about how the food looks. Much of the presentation pain comes from most of the new generation of cooks experiencing “presentation” as bags of fast food in a car seat and “plating” by ordering at the mall’s food court.

I have found the best way to minimize the pain of the third stage is to tell students not to prepare anything until they have in their minds (or better yet, a drawing on paper) how the final plate will look.

Students think this is strange. They feel that if they start cooking, the plating and presentation will fall into place. I explain that if I asked them to build a car, they wouldn’t just pick up some screws, tires, sheet metal and glass and start hammering. They would first have a picture of the finished car. To build a car or a plate of food takes a picture and a plan.

Preparing a rack-of-lamb dinner for two, from ACF’s 2008 Educator of the Year

By Wilfred Beriau, CEC, CCE, AAC

Center-of-the-plate proteins, including American lamb, are the focus of this lesson plan for freshman in the Associate of Applied Science degree program at Southern Maine Community College in South Portland. The course, of which this lesson is a part, addresses the basic fabrication of meat, fish and poultry; stocks; the five major sauces; derivative sauces; coulis, jus lié, and reductions. The class covers moist and dry methods of cooking that demonstrate appropriate cooking methods for a wide array of products.

A key component of this lesson plan involves the preparation and presentation of a NAMP/#204A domestic rack of lamb with accompaniments of a starch, a vegetable, jus lié and herb garnish.

The method is the constant, and the ingredients are the variables.

By Samuel Glass, CEC, CCE, CCA

As the demographic of culinary schools shifts to a much more multicultural environment, embracing and celebrating cultural diversity is becoming part of the everyday life of culinary institutions. The challenge for culinary instructors is in finding a way to integrate cultural diversity into the curriculum in a tacit manner, one in which students might not recognize the true objectives, yet at the same time, achieve a sense of accomplishment and pride in their own cultural heritage and cuisine.

One of the mantras that I have always used as a culinary educator is, “The method is the constant and the ingredients are the variables.” Keeping that mantra in mind, I have found a way to celebrate the diversity of my students, while meeting the objectives of the curriculum.