Practice makes perfect

(or perfect enough to get through preliminaries!)

Practice, practice, practice.

Then practice some more.

And that, according to any number of C-CAP grads and especially those currently supervising competition practices, is how you win a culinary scholarship.

Take Courtney Clardy, who won a $50,000 AI scholarship in C-CAP's 2013 competition. She stunned her student demo-audience when she admitted, "I made that salad four times a day every day for two years."

She admitted, too, that she "made like 30 omelets every week."

But, she added, "It's such a blessing to have college paid for - and to take that burden off your parents."

Along with 2013 C-CAP grads Sarah Cotton, Levii Lopez, Autumn Parrish and Noel Renteria, she was joined by 2008 grad Katie Pankretz in mentoring nearly half of this year's potential competitors at the recent salad practice at EVIT.

The grads offered tips and demonstrated techniques throughout, as well as ideas about making it through competition ("Play music while you practice and then sing along when you cook.").

Based on their observations, they had several specific suggestions beyond "practice!"

• ·       Knife cuts - don't chop, slice, and become familiar with the size of a small, medium, large dice, brunoise, julienne (familiar enough to cut it right every time)
• ·       Peel the vegetables
• ·       Sanitize - know how, how often and when
• ·       Season! Season and taste as you cook(especially that vinaigrette - taste it again after you strain it)
• ·       Prioritize: assess how much time you spend on each task and when you need to finish each element
• ·       Be professional - clean uniforms, no jewelry (not even a single stud - anywhere), no makeup and hair completely contained 

Remember, during preliminaries:  there are 80 points for your kitchen work and 20 points for your plate.

Looking for more help with preliminaries?  

The fastest way to find "official" tips? Google "C-CAP competition salad tips" to find the tips listed on this blog! (for your convenience, we will repost these in about a week - in other words, before preliminaries on Feb. 8!)