/usr/web/www.marshallindependent.com/wp-content/themes/coreV2/single.php
×

Dishing up success

SMSU culinology students came out on top recently at a national cooking competition

Photo by Jenny Kirk Peachy Keen team members (from left) Dean Zinda, Clarissa Geisel, Alexandra Froman and Megan Forster had a lot to smile about as the Southwest Minnesota State University students recently won first place in the Research Chef Association Student Culinology Competition.

MARSHALL

Peachy Keen team members Megan Forster, Alexandra Froman, Clarissa Geisel and Dean Zinda believed they had developed a good product for a national culinology competition, but they kept getting pressure to change it. The Southwest Minnesota State University team members said people didn’t seem to understand their overall vision for the dish.

United as a team, they chose to risk it all by holding onto their strong convictions. That confidence recently propelled them to a first-place finish in the National Student Savory Culinology competition at the 2018 Research Chefs Association Conference held in Savannah, Georgia.

“So many people kept telling us this is a bad idea — don’t do this,” Zinda said. “They didn’t understand it. We all kind of knew what our vision was, but at the same time, it was difficult to explain. It really taught me to keep pushing forward because we knew we had a good product and we knew this was what we wanted to go with.”

Zinda said the experience was life-changing and solidified his career aspirations in culinology, which is the blending of culinary arts and the science of food.

“We kept striving and in the end, it was super relieving and amazing to even be in the room with industry professionals and have them say to us, ‘This dish could be in a professional restaurant kitchen tomorrow and I wouldn’t even question it,'” Zinda said. “It was just the most exciting thing ever, to feel what it’s like to put a product on the shelf and to say, ‘I made that — that’s us.'”

Student teams from across the globe developed proposals for a frozen retail, single-serving, microwavable meal. From there, only a handful of teams were selected to compete in Georgia.

“Getting to go to Savannah meant so much for us because we know how much time and tears we put into it,” Forster said.

Geisel added that there was “some blood, too,” which occurred in the form of cuts and burns received during the many practice sessions in the kitchen lab — a lab that was extremely busy — because along with Peachy Keen, a second SMSU team qualified and competed as one of the five finalists.

In the end, it was a historic moment as it was the first time the same institution had teams earn the top two places in the same culinology competition.

“We’re the first school in history to get first and second, so that was pretty cool,” Froman said.

THE WINNING DISH

This year’s theme for the entrees was cuisine of southern Georgia-style United States as served in “Mom and Pop” style locally-owned restaurants. SMSU’s winning team called their dish “Flipp’in Biscuits.”

“I love that they said we made a new dish, but for us, we saw it as kind of jamming south into one dish,” Forster said. “It stems from the ideas of biscuits and gravy and then like breakfast hash like you’d get (in Georgia). There’s also the flavors of andouille because it’s in gumbos and throughout the cuisine a lot. So we took these flavors and looked at the trends and said, ‘Alright, what can we do, what does the market need and what do we want to do to add challenge into it?'”

Forster said the biscuit contained sweet potatoes and the flavorings of thyme, oregano and rosemary.

“It’s also laminated, so it’s flaky like a croissant,” she said. “Then it’s ground pork sausage and we made our own andouille spice blend, made with 11 different spices. On top of that, it’s a tri-colored hash containing purple potatoes, carrots, red bell peppers, onions and garlic.”

Geisel said the entree was kind of spicy.

“It’s more spicy than the average consumer would like, but still manageable,” she said.

Zinda noted that the team refrained from putting something green on the plate.

“Everybody kept saying to add something green, but we didn’t want to go with anything that was super traditional in that aspect,” Zinda said. “Green colors are used for lot of stuff that is fresh on the market, or advertised as fresh or natural, because consumers associate green with that. We wanted to try and break away from that and differentiate ourselves in that we don’t use green. So we chose purple potatoes and red bell peppers and orange, to bring these bright vibrant colors — other than green — to the market.”

“Flipp’in Biscuits” is also a gluten-free dish, though the team feels it also crosses over to the regular consumer menu as well.

“It’s not just for people who want a gluten-free meal,” Geisel said.

Forster added that the meal was not going be considered a “healthful product.”

“We made a distinct point as a group that it was going to be a product for someone who does not have the ability to digest gluten, to indulge a little bit,” she said. “When you look at the supermarket options for gluten-free, it’s always geared toward health. So this is just a normal product for someone who wants a little something warm to come home to at the end of the day.”

THE COMPETITION

About eight months’ worth of preparations took place before the actual competition. Geisel said about a week before their proposal was due, the team pulled all-nighters.

“It was rough,” she said. “And it was finals week, too.”

Along with the proposal, which ended up being 26 pages, there were countless hours of hands-on practice.

“This was quite the ride,” Forster said. “There were so many times where we were literally at each other’s throats, but it was always just because you can see in each person’s eyes, they have such a passion and fire within them to make the best-possible dish. So even though we’re screaming at each other at 3 in the morning because we haven’t left yet, it’s just because we want the dish to be as good as it possibly can. And of course, we want to represent our school well, but it gives us a lot of satisfaction as culinologists, to make something, to see hands-on, how we’re taking our classroom skills and applying them into the industry.”

Toward the end, Zinda said the team was practicing twice a week.

“We’d come in and we’d have to set up the kitchen so that it would look like our station would at the competition,” he said. “Then we’d just run through the motions, over and over, to the point where it was almost automatic for us.”

Forster said they developed muscle-memory skills.

“It’s just like a musician or soloist does when they practice over and over again,” she said. “If everything would go wrong, it would still be muscle memory for us.”

While it didn’t trip the team up, there were two issues that did come up. The first was when the rolling pin went missing.

“(Megan) was freaking out because the biscuits are her thing,” Geisel said. “The stoves we were using were brand new, so you didn’t know where the hot spots were. My vegetables cooked too fast, but we figured out how to do it, so we planned for that.”

The second challenge was in regard to timing.

“The group who went before us went into our time for serving,” Geisel said. “We didn’t know they could do that, so we were freaking out because our food is done and we can’t serve yet. Alex can’t begin microwaving and we can’t plate, so we’re just standing there. Our sauce was very time-sensitive, too. If you left it too long, it just became like a sludge.”

Fortunately, everything worked out well.

“As soon as the last microwave item came out, they were setting down the plates — the ones that they just made,” Froman said. “It was prefect timing.”

The judges then compared the fresh plate of food with the frozen version of the same products.

“A little after we were all done competing, the judges took all the competition teams in to a room and told everyone their comments, dish by dish, for each team,” Froman said.

Peachy Keen received a lot of positive feedback, adding to the competition suspense.

“The competition is based on our proposal and our cooking, and we knew some other teams had better proposals than us, so that was the one thing we were nervous about,” Geisel said. “(But after hearing comments from the judges) we knew we were probably in the top three at least.”

Froman said the excitement continued to build as teams waited patiently to find out who won the competition.

“I was already excited when they called out the other team’s second-place finish,” she said. “I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh! Did we get first?’ I was so nervous. And the judge was taking forever to read it. (Afterward), there was so much excitement and picture-taking going on, it was hard to believe it. We had to let it sink in.”

Historically, SMSU has done well in the Student Culinology competition, which has been a feature of the RCA annual conference since 2007. Along with making consistent appearances in the finals, SMSU won the contest in 2011 and 2013.

“Every group has to have a teacher sponsor, so we’re grateful to Zhenlei Xiao for sponsoring both groups this year,” Geisel said.

The team also expressed its gratitude to Culinology Department head Joyce Hwang, along with advisory board members and other supporters as well.

“They believed in their students enough to give us money to make things happen — to buy the groceries here, to make sure the space is clean, up and running and that the lights still work,” Forster said. “But more than that, we’re kind of on a first-name basis with a lot of the advisory board.”

THE FUTURE

The Peachy Keen team members credited the SMSU culinology program for preparing them for the competition and for their future. They suspect that the success at the competition will propel them further toward their dream jobs.

“We were able to take our dish to the competition and meet the professionals,” Forster said. “It means so much to the school and to us as well, to say we did something and to have professional recognition in an industry where you kind of have to know people to get into or have experience in. If you say you won the student competition, it has a lot of weight. There are SMSU graduates who are working at Bellisio now in Minneapolis. They still talk about (the competition) and it’s been five years since they graduated. It means a lot to the industry.”

This summer, Forster has an internship in Chicago, Illinois.

“It’s with CSSI, which stands for Culinary Skills and then Science Innovations,” she said. “They’re looking at a little bit of product development and a little bit of marketing. I’m very excited for that.”

Geisel said she’s going to miss her team members, but she’s extremely pleased that the experience solidified that’s she in the right career field.

“I really got to see what my major is,” she said. “You can learn about it, but it’s one thing to actually do it. And I will always be amazed that we got to create a new dish that has never been on the market before. We’re all college students and somebody in our industry might never even get to do that.”

Geisel has an internship this summer with Minnesota Valley Testing Laboratories.

“It’s actually a microbiology lab and I’m thinking of more going into the quality assurance side of our major,” she said.

Froman has an internship at a brewery and winery in South Dakota this summer.

“They’ve already told me I can keep working there full-time after my internship, too, so I’m set for awhile,” she said. “That’s pretty nice.”

Newsletter

Today's breaking news and more in your inbox

Today's breaking news and more in your inbox
Are you a paying subscriber to the newspaper? *
   

Starting at $4.38/week.

Subscribe Today