TV cooking shows inspire students
Published Saturday October 11th, 2008
Food Culinary schools flooded with applicants
EDMONTON - Madison Lytle, clad in a white coat and tall chef's hat, dusts off one final batch of lemon squares near a monster cook oven and muses about a career path some label a recipe for disaster.
"I've been told actually not to do it," says the Grade 12 student at St. Joseph High School.
"Everyone I've talked to - parents, friends of parents - has told me to keep it as a passion. Don't make it a profession because if you do, it loses its lustre."
Students like Lytle are jamming culinary classrooms in the Alberta capital, spurred on in part by glamorous reality TV shows such as Hell's Kitchen and celebrity chefs like Jamie Oliver.
At the city's Northern Alberta Institute of Technology, or NAIT, three aspiring chefs are turned away for every one accepted. Twenty years ago, administrators couldn't fill all the spots.
"What school counsellors are telling us is what you're seeing on television and career aspirations have a strong correlation," says Stanley Townsend, head of NAIT's culinary arts program.
The program and the perception of cooking, he says, have changed from an institutional trade churning out menu technicians for cafeterias to a profession underpinned by science and topped with the creativity and flair of the artist.
The metamorphosis is reflected in the NAIT program's name, he says: "It has gone from being called cook training to professional cook training to the culinary arts."
At any given time, he said, 250 students - the majority coming straight out of high school - are learning in working kitchens complete with drop-down screens and data projectors.
At St. Joseph, baking class instructor Art Bergevin agrees that programs like Hell's Kitchen - where cooks-to-be are badgered and abused by chef Gordon Ramsay before being weeded out Survivor-style - have had a profound impact on how cooking is perceived.
"Because of all those programs, the interest has just skyrocketed," says Bergevin, who has been at his post in St. Joseph for 27 years.
Darlene Kroy, head of the school's culinary arts program, says the cooking shows along with recipes and information on the Internet, have made the modern young chef far more savvy and keen to experiment than even a decade ago.
A few feet from Kroy, student Ryan Biglow turns the sprayer on for one final wash of an industrial-sized stainless steel sink that could fit about eight basketballs.
Biglow began cooking at age five, helping his mother make chocolate chip cookies. More than a decade later, the 17-year-old is coming off a second-place finish at a provincial cooking competition, wowing judges with souffle, salmon poached in butter, wild rice pilaf, and chocolate mousse.
He acknowledges the best chefs make the worst dinner companions.
"My stepmom hates going to restaurants with me now," he laughs. "I say 'This could've used a hollandaise sauce on it or something.'"
Lytle agrees, hearkening back to a recent family Disneyland vacation where she enjoyed the best eggs Benedict she had ever had.
Sort of.
"I was critical of everything from the colour of the hollandaise sauce to the way the egg was cooked.
"My mom said, 'What are you doing?' I said, 'I'm critiquing my breakfast before I eat it.'
"She thought I was insane. But it's what I do."
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