A star of such televised cook-offs as “Top Chef” and “Food Network Challenge” alerts educators that Women Chefs & Restaurateurs will hold its annual conference in Chicago during National Women’s History Month.

By Elizabeth Falkner

I want to share my enthusiasm for the upcoming Women Chefs & Restaurateurs (WCR) Annual Conference in Chicago, March 9-11. The conferences have continually been a highlight to my years as a chef. Being surrounded by like-minded professional women for a few days leaves me inspired and grateful for being in this field. I’ve met some incredible women and have maintained long-lasting relationships.

The highlight of the conference, The Women Who Inspire Gala, is being held at the Chicago Art Institute this year, and will be emceed by Rick Bayless. We gather some of the best chefs in the community to cook for you, as well as a celebrity-chef-studded 2nd Annual WCR Culinary Challenge. This year we have Stephanie Izard, Christina Tosi and Hedy Goldsmith, to name a few.

The conference offers you a great opportunity to mingle with some of the best in the business. Have cocktails with Deanna Bayless. Ask Barbara Lynch or Gale Gand about being a chef. Talk to Nell Newman or Ina Pinkney about the business of restaurants or production. The opportunities for networking are endless.

The theme this year is the Art of Keeping It Green, Environmentally and Financially. Renowned restaurateur Rohini Dey will provide the opening remarks about women seeking financial success in the culinary world. We will be exploring green topics relevant to women and their businesses.

WCR is a great organization and becoming stronger every day. Come join us. Take a peek at the registration and you will see the wide variety of events, classes and tours that are calling for your participation. Go to www.womenchefs.org and register.

Cheers.

Elizabeth Falkner, executive chef of Corvo Bianco in New York City, frequently appears as a competitor and judge on TV cooking competitions, including “The Next Iron Chef, Super Chefs,” “The Next Iron Chef, Redemption,” “Chopped All Stars,” “Top Chef Masters,” “Top Chef: Just Desserts” and “Food Network Challenge.” She is the incoming president of Women Chefs & Restaurateurs.

Healthy whole grains are hot all over the menu. But what diner wants to consume a simple bowl of them? Chef Renee Zonka explains how to teach students to look beyond oatmeal at breakfast to showcase whole grains in dish development in a whole new light.

By Renee Zonka, RD, CEC, CHE

March is National Nutrition Month, and everyone’s talking whole grains these days as consumer interest in them soars. Many foodservice establishments, however, are still challenged with making whole grains not only palatable, but craveable.

Here are five flavorful ways you can teach students to incorporate whole-grain goodness into menus and elicit guest delight.

Brown: the New White
Brown rice is one of the most familiar whole grains to diners. Diehard white-rice lovers might rate brown rice as second fiddle, but they like the healthy halo brown rice carries. So here’s a tip for students: Replace part of the white rice in a pilaf or other side dish with brown rice. Doing so not only adds flavor and nutrition (such as fiber and magnesium, which are stripped from white rice during processing) to a dish, but also contrasting color.

Yellow, red, white and sweet onions all bear different qualities and thus require different approaches to maximize their exquisite flavor and texture contributions to a dish.

By Robert Danhi

Many dishes begin with cooking an onion, but why? Because no other ingredient adds subtle sweetness and bolsters other flavors at the same time quite like an onion. In fact, the type of onion, the way it’s cut and the way it’s cooked all affect the flavor and texture of a finished dish in dramatically different ways. So, when you set out to create a new dish or you just want to tinker with an old favorite, pay special attention to the onion.

Types of Onion
While leeks and scallions can play a delicious role in cooking, globe onions of all kinds—yellow, red, white, sweet—and shallots are more assertive and versatile in cooking.

Yellow onions are all-purpose. Readily available and inexpensive, I use them more than any other type. They have the strongest flavor of all globe onions, so they are best when cooked. They’re usually my first choice for stocks and broths.

White onions retain their firm texture. They're a bit milder than yellow onions, so they can be eaten raw (in a salsa or on a hamburger), but they're also strong enough to hold up under heat. I especially love how white onions hold their shape and texture when sautéed.

Robert Garlough’s goal is for graduates to become a source of intense pride to the Middle-Eastern kingdom’s foodservice and business communities and the college’s programs to be respected worldwide.

Laureate International Universities (LIU) announces longtime hospitality educator Robert Garlough, MS, HGT, has been appointed founding executive director of the new Laureate Tourism & Hospitality College of Excellence in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He was most recently president of The Culinary Group, a consulting firm to the foodservice and culinary-education community. Prior to that, Garlough served as the founding program director for the Hospitality Education Department (renamed the Secchia Institute for Culinary Education) at Grand Rapids Community College, where he worked for more than 30 years.

Garlough assumes his position during a time of great expansion and investment by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which has instituted a multi-billion-dollar plan to build and operate “Colleges of Excellence” for Saudis seeking vocational-technical educations in a variety of skill areas. The KSA is embarking on one of the largest vocational and technical education reforms in the world, increasing its capacity from currently 110,000 students to more than 400,000 students by 2020.

A multi-stage tender process has been launched to select the best training providers for setting up and operating 26 new colleges in the kingdom. These colleges will be independently run by international providers and regulated, funded and overseen by the Colleges of Excellence Corporation on behalf of the Saudi government. New college buildings are provided, built with state-of-the-art designs and providing space for up to 2,000 students.

For the first time, researchers and campus visitors can now schedule appointments to view.

After years behind closed doors, The Culinary Institute of America (CIA) archives and special collections is now available for public viewing. The Archives and Special Collections room is located in the Conrad N. Hilton Library on the CIA’s Hyde Park, N.Y. campus. It houses materials from the college’s history, a collection of more than 30,000 menus from 80-plus countries dating back to 1855, and a rare books collection.

The treasures include a history of the college written by cofounder Frances Roth, handwritten recipes by famous chefs given to Craig Claiborne on his 70th birthday, and a menu signed by legendary late 19th/early 20^th-century chef Auguste Escoffier. These and other items, along with a selection of rare books, were on display at a grand opening held at the library on Jan. 21.

The archives and special collections are available to researchers and campus visitors by appointment. Learn more about the archives at ciachef.libguides.com/archives. To schedule an appointment, contact Nicole Semenchuk at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.or 845-451-1270.

Wondering and thinking about everything that is done in the kitchen—and considering how and why—are important behaviors we want to build in our students and encourage a stance of questioning.

By Dr. Fred Mayo, CHE, CHT

For much of the fall, we discussed helping students learn about themselves, assisting them in taking charge of their lives and in other ways building their professional skills. This spring, we will focus on another aspect of working with students: helping them expand their curiosity and their creativity. This month, we will discuss developing the habit of curiosity.

A Habit of Curiosity
The habit of curiosity is a pattern of looking at and wondering about things throughout the day. It involves noticing when things do not work the way you expected them and asking why things happen the way they do. Since it means asking a range of questions—who, what, where, when, how and why—this process of thinking actively engages the mind and builds critical-thinking skills, something so necessary for our students.

Unfortunately, there are many people who can look at a loaf of bread, a plate presentation, a clear soup, a glass of wine or a composed salad and not see anything. They do not wonder why it was prepared the way it was, where it came from, what was involved, what else could have happened, and why it smells or tastes like it does. While that acceptance without noticing and thinking may be acceptable in a restaurant patron, it does not belong in a professional chef or a student learning to become a chef. Wondering and thinking about everything that is done in the kitchen and considering how and why are important behaviors we want to build in our students. Therefore, we need to encourage a stance of questioning and a habit of curiosity.

Chef Weiner’s dad has chemical-engineering degrees all over his wall, written hundreds of articles and flown around the world to advise companies, yet his cooking was never as good as that of Weiner’s grandmother, who only made it through the second grade.

By Adam Weiner, CFSE

“Food is love.”
—Culinary instructor Adam Weiner

“Cooking is a mistake, baking is a science.”
—Elihu Kittell, chef for the County of San Mateo and longtime friend of the author

“Cooking takes advantage of many basic science principles that apply in the kitchen and throughout the universe. Knowing these principles will enable you to perform endless culinary experiments, and to view the world through the eyes of a scientist.”
—Page 7 of The Epicurean Laboratoryby Tina Seelig,1991

In January 2013 I tackled the controversy of whether culinary instructors need to emphasize technique or recipe. Please see my 50-Minute Classroom articles on Reading and Writing Recipes, Braising, Baking, Sauté, Steamingand Grilling.

Are you preparing students to be kitchen and career ready?

By Paul Sorgule, MS, AAC

Sometimes the military gets it right. The training program that all soldiers must go through is designed to not just prepare individuals physically for the demands of this type of service, but more importantly prepare these same individuals to function as members of a larger entity. The methodologies used are very well thought out, and all conditioning is directly or indirectly focused on a high level of preparedness. Some may call this conditioning excessive, but I think most would agree that the result is a unit of men or women with a common focus and a total commitment to their respective tasks as part of a team.

Apply those same realities to the function of a professional kitchen, and it would not be a stretch to admit that this type of outcome is exactly what is needed from culinary educational programs. The desired outcomes for both the military and programs focused on careers in a kitchen are: respect, attention to detail, professionalism, image, repetition, physical conditioning, teamwork, respect for chain of command, the ability to follow directives, and accepting roles within an organization.

Approved by the ACF for CEHs, this curriculum released in January arrives at a time when mango consumption in the United States is up considerably.

Courtesy of the National Mango Board

The National Mango Board announces the release of its new education materials for culinary students, culinary instructors and professional chefs. Fresh Mango-The Basics for Foodservice video and Fresh Mango Curriculum cover the product essentials from how mangos grow to how to maximize their menu versatility—everything operators need to create fresh, delicious and healthful menu items with fresh mango. Culinary-education materials are available at www.mango.org/foodservice/culinary-education.

The Fresh Mango Curriculum has been approved by the American Culinary Federation for 8.5 continuing-education hours. Viewers may take the online quiz and program evaluation and send to the e-mail provided; the National Mango Board will review and send a certificate.

“In our foodservice program we’re finding that success using fresh mango on menus rests not only on knowing the basics of how to order and handle this popular fruit,” says Megan McKenna, director of marketing for the Mango Board, “but also with understanding the remarkable versatility of fresh mango across all dayparts, in sweet and savory applications.”

Culinary programs nationwide are invited to submit their best ideas for this sixth-annual recognition program by April 1.

The Kendall College School of Culinary Arts and the Center for the Advancement of Foodservice Education (CAFÉ) are accepting applications for the 2014 CAFÉ/Kendall College Green Award. This is the first national award to recognize secondary and postsecondary culinary-arts and baking/pastry programs for their commitment to teaching and practicing sustainability. Additionally, the winning program will receive a $1,000 cash prize plus complimentary registration to the 10th-Annual CAFÉ Leadership Conference, June 19-21, 2014, in Salt Lake City, where the award will be presented.

All secondary and postsecondary culinary-arts and baking/pastry programs in the United States, whether diploma- or degree-granting, are eligible. Selection criteria are based on the integration of sustainability into educational programs and operations.

“Kendall has dedicated itself to sustainability in its curriculum and campus operations since 2005, and the value we’ve reaped from sharing our knowledge with other educators and learning from them has been extremely gratifying,” says Christopher Koetke, CEC, CCE, HAAC, vice president of the Kendall College School of Culinary Arts and of Laureate International Universities Center of Excellence in Culinary Arts. “By working with us to build this body of knowledge, foodservice educators throughout the United States now have many tools with which to impact the future of our industry and our world through our students.”