Vic Valbuena bareng/viewAbel Ramirez, a culinary arts student at the College of Southern Nevada, 3200 E. Cheyenne Ave., prepares oranges for a garnish.
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As you walk down the classroom corridor, you can smell the aromas wafting out of the work space. Directly outside the Modular Kitchen, a window lends a view of the five-member team working on their craft. Everyone looks busy.
Samantha Lew is heating up fresh strawberries, and you can almost taste the sweet fruit while it's liquifying. The College of Southern Nevada's culinary team is dressed in their white uniforms, and they look ready to pounce.
Coached by chef John Metcalfe, director of culinary arts at CSN, the team consists of Teejay Joaquino, Svetlana Almante, Abel Ramirez, Lew and Bryan John. The five college students are practicing for the upcoming American Culinary Federation Western Regional Conference Saturday through Monday in Salt Lake City, where they will represent Nevada.
The competition will include a one hour and 20-minute skill section where individual team members are assigned an on-site task. Required skills include butchering chicken or fish, making pastry cream, peeling and segmenting an orange, rolling out pastry dough and small dicing an onion.
"They don't even know who's going to get what until that morning," Metcalfe said.
After skills, the team has an hour and a half to cook a complete meal with a fish appetizer, salad, entree and dessert. Four people on the team will prepare the food, and the alternate helps with kitchen duties.
"It's quite grueling," Metcalfe said.
The entire crew has to create the menu for CSN's entry, complete with nutritional information to be submitted to the judges.
"The salad, the appetizer and the dessert, it's totally ours," Joaquino said. "I'm having fun, and at the same time, I'm learning a lot."
To prepare for their upcoming competition, the team has been holding all-day practices at least three times a week inside the Modular Kitchen at CSN's Cheyenne Campus, 3200 E. Cheyenne Ave.
"They learn a lot more than they can get in a six-hour class," Metcalfe said.
Almante said that as the competition gets closer, the team sometimes practices from 6 to 2 a.m.
"For me, it's about commitment," she said. "This helps a lot with future things that I want to do."
Lew agreed that being on the team will help her in her future career and said she doesn't mind the long practices because it's important to her.
"It's fun to be on a team. It's like high school sports again," Lew said. "You can really be yourself."
As the students continue to work, smells and sounds continue to fill the kitchen air. Sausages are made, ice cream is churned and fish is poached. The team, though, won't be satisfied until competition day.
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