By Oona Mackesey-Green
Northside News
After finishing first in a statewide culinary competition, four East High School students traveled to Providence, Rhode Island, to show off their three-course menu at the National ProStart Invitational.
When students Casey McCabe, Gabriel Wasserman, Hayden Cohan and Isaac Wasserman began preparing for the event, they already had some cooking and knife skills from the culinary program at East, which is part of a national ProStart curriculum. Over the course of several months, they honed those skills while developing and practicing the recipes and techniques that evolved into their final menu. Local chefs and their advisor, Natalie Aguirre, mentored the students as they learned about the culinary process from menu development and food presentation, to staying calm under pressure. Chef mentors included Ami Shimanek, director of dining services at Capitol Lakes in downtown Madison, Capitol Lakes executive chef Mark Walters and food service director for Stoughton Schools, Michelle Madden.
While technical skills played an important part in the recipe development, Shimanek described the students bringing their own personalities — and taste buds — to the drawing board.
“We started by just talking about what the kids like,” said Shimanek. “What did they like to eat, what did they have a passion for? We dove down a list of their favorite ingredients and things that excited them. We slowly tweaked things and got to our final product. It took almost two months before we landed on our final menu.”
McCabe, Wasserman, Cohan and Wasserman designed a meal with a starter course of pan-seared corvina served alongside black bean-sweet potato hash and coconut broth with cilantro mojo, followed by an entree of jerk seasoned quail and duck fat masa cake, orange-avocado salad, cuban mustard and plantain chips, and finished with a Cuban Capuchino cake with orange-lime syrup, passion fruit sauce, whipped cream, blackberries and basil.
After months of practice, and a first-place award in Wisconsin’s ProStart competition, the students headed to Providence.
With high school students from all 50 states in attendance, Shimanek described the atmosphere of the national competition as intense and competitive. Judges walked from table to table while 14-15 teams cooked at a time at stations spread across the floor.
Despite the students’ commitment, Shimanek also said that “people were friendly. The kids made friends with so many students from all different states. Every team had a lot of talent and I didn’t see anyone taking it easy, but they also enjoyed themselves.”
The East High team placed 26th out of the 46 competing. By the time they returned from Providence, they had experience crafting a fine-dining meal, sourcing seasonal ingredients, hauling their cooking equipment halfway across the country and bringing their new skills to a national stage.