4/21/2008 2:41:00 PM Hopkins culinary team heats up
PHOTO: Mark Trockman
Hopkins junior culinary student Robyn Pokorny cleans around a plate design, as one of many timed tasks the team must accomplish. The high school culinary team recently took first place in a statewide competition.
Winning menu
All of the cooking teams were required to invent their own recipes. At right is the menu that won the state title for the Hopkins team.
The students were also judged on their knife skills and use of other kitchen equipment, the cleanliness of their cooking stations, the storage temperature of their food, their cost analysis of their menu, their organization,
their professional appearance and their creativity.
Main course
Schezwan duck served with cilantro, jasmine rice and a stir-fried vegetable medley accompanied with a pomegranate sauce.
Starter
Salmon fritters served over a bed of bok choy and julienne red peppers with a spicy citrus sauce.
Nobody ever bought Robyn Pokorny an Easy Bake Oven. Turns out, she didn't need a toy kitchen - as a little girl or as a high school junior.
Instead, Pokorny now holds her own as the only female on the Hopkins High School Culinary Team, which recently won first place in a state high school cooking competition.
The Minnesota Culinary ProStart competition, which is organized by the National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation, was held March 26 at Southwest Minnesota State University.
More than 20 high school teams from across the state competed in the cook off. On Tuesday, April 15, the Hopkins team was awarded its first place trophy.
While she was happy her team won the state championship, Pokorny admitted the event was filled with tension.
"I got so stressed out," she said. "I don't like it when people watch me cook."
Pokorny may not like it, but she better get used to it. This week, the Hopkins team travels to San Diego, Calif. for the national Culinary ProStart competition, which is being held April 24-26.
In San Diego, the Hopkins team will cook off against the winners from 30 different states for a chance to win the title of top teen cooking team in the country.
The Hopkins culinary team is comprised of four students: Pokorny, Scott Silverman, Nathan Trombley and Corey Groshens.
Groshens, who is a senior, is eager to arrive at the national competition.
"I'm looking forward to San Diego," he said. "I'm really excited to get out of Minnesota."
"My family isn't surprised," Groshens said of his talent in the kitchen. "I've been cooking since forever. I used to cook with my grandma. She could cook anything, but she really liked to bake bread. I think that's where I get my interest in pastries."
Groshens will graduate from Hopkins this spring and he's banking on a career involving food.
However, he hasn't decided yet whether to pursue a degree that would train him to be a food stylist or a degree that would train him to be a chef.
Scott Silverman, the other senior on the team, has already decided where he'll attend school next fall: Le Cordon Bleu in Mendota Heights. He's already scored a scholarship as well.
"My favorite thing to cook is fish. I love fish. Fish of any sort," Silverman said. He credits his mom for positively influencing his kitchen skills, but also said he's always had a knack for cooking.
He also has a knack for fluting mushrooms, a painstaking process that involves peeling 17 thin, twisting strips from a mushroom's bubble top to make it look like a delicate puff of meringue.
The team's captain is Nathan Trombley, who is a junior.
Trombley is credited with creating the team's designer dessert - a pretty dark chocolate, green tea, whipped cream and raspberry concoction that looks like a piece of expertly rolled sushi.
One of the judges at the state competition so liked the dessert, he said it had raised the bar for all future teams in Minnesota.
Even though it was Trombley who came up with the recipe, pastries and desserts aren't his favorite things to whip up in the kitchen.
"I like to cook wild game," he said. "I'm a hunter. I'll hunt basically anything that moves."
Trombley is already looking ahead to his high school graduation. He hopes to attend Johnson and Wales University in Rhode Island and earn a culinary degree and a business degree. He'd like to one day own a restaurant.
The team's coach, Gayle Odette, has no doubts that Trombley, or the other three students on the team, will achieve everything they plan.
"All four of these kids are incredibly bright and smart and dedicated," she said, noting that each is involved in other after-school activities and outside part-time jobs.
"They have even gotten up early to cook with Chris Dwyer in his kitchen at the Double Tree," Odette said. Dwyer is a chef at the Minneapolis hotel. He volunteered his time with the Hopkins culinary team.
Tom Berg, a chef with the Minneapolis Convention Center, also volunteered time with the team.
"I think this ProStart culinary program is such a great idea," Odette said of the competition's sponsor and organizing body. "Cooking lets these kids express their creativity and develop their skills in a way that they may not be afforded elsewhere."
This is the first year that Hopkins has had a culinary team, said Odette, who is the head of the high school's Family and Consumer Science department. She teaches child psychology and culinary instruction during the school day.
She also organizes a weekly lunch café where high school staff pay to dine on meals planned and prepared by high school cooking students who are in cooking class during third block.
"The staff has been extremely generous and appreciative of the café," said Odette. "It's a really positive way for the students to make a connection with their teachers outside of class."
Besides cooking, Hopkins' culinary classes also teach nutrition, sanitation, knife skills, the business side of running a restaurant, and what Odette calls "soft skills."
"We spend a lot of time learning about how to serve adults. It's very different from cooking for your friends," she said. "We work hard to keep the staff café a professional environment."
But the café takes place during school hours. The culinary team, on the other hand, meets after school. Odette will accompany the team to San Diego. She knows the competition will be stiff, but she feels lucky for the time she has spent coaching this winning small group of four thus far.
"The relationships I've been able to form with these kids," Odette said, "to see them grow and to see their pride, to see how happy they looked when they won the state title. ... It just brings tears to my eyes."
