Grand Valley State University Executive Chef Paul Mixa said cooking for Olympic athletes in London was the experience of a lifetime.

Mixa, a Chicago native who joined Grand Valley based in Allendale, Mich., in 2004, was part of a team of international chefs selected to prepare dishes for athletes who competed in the Olympics from August through September.

“It really was a great experience,” said Mixa. “I think the most amazing thing about it was that all these different chefs and people who never worked together came together to pull off a huge event. We were feeding 18,000 people a day.”

Chef Jacquy Pfeiffer, cofounder of The French Pastry School of Kennedy-King College at City Colleges of Chicago, has been named many things in his exceptional career in pastry: Pastry Chef of the Year at the 2004 World Pastry Forum; Celebrity Pastry Chef of the Year at the 2005 Jean Banchet Awards; and a Kings of Pastry in the 2009 documentary, “Kings of Pastry,” to name a few.

In recognition of his achievements, the Chicago Culinary Museum inducted Pfeiffer into the Chefs Hall of Fame at its Seventh Annual Fundraising Dinner and Awards Presentation. Pfeiffer is the first pastry chef to be inducted into the Chefs Hall of Fame, joining ranks with Charlie Trotter, Rick Bayless, Carrie Nahabedian, Priscila Satkoff, Art Smith, Jimmy Banos and his fellow 2012 inductee, Graham Elliot. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel provided the metaphorical icing on the cake by proclaiming September 20, 2012, to be Chef Jacquy Pfeiffer Day in the City of Chicago, in commemoration of one of the chefs who is turning the town into an international hub for pastry arts.

New England Culinary Institute announced Sept. 10 the hiring of celebrity chef Jean-Louis Gerin as its new campus executive chef.

Fresh off his win as Food Network’s 2012 “Chopped” champion, the appointment of Gerin is a huge coup for New England Culinary Institute, Montpelier and the State of Vermont. He comes to NECI from Greenwich, Conn., where he and his wife, Linda, have enjoyed a successful 28 years with their own Restaurant JEAN-LOUIS. Since opening in 1985, Restaurant JEAN-LOUIS has earned a reputation as perhaps the finest restaurant in Connecticut, and one of the best in the United States. It has been recognized by Wine Spectator for more than 20 years for its excellent wine list and as one of the “most romantic restaurants for wine lovers in the country” for five years running. The restaurant has consistently earned top ratings by Zagat, and has received Zagat’s “Best in Value” accreditation for the past three years.

According to the author of a new book, Demystifying Food from Farm to Fork, the benefits of organic foods are not justified by their cost.

By Maurice Hladik

In 2009, the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition published a similar report, Nutritional Quality of Organic Foods: a Systematic Review, which reached a similar conclusion. The later research was conducted by the University of London on behalf of the British government. Both these were meta-analyses, meaning the highly qualified teams gathered numerous research papers on both sides of the argument before concluding that when it comes to nutrition, farming is farming. The approaches by organic farmers, which differ from their conventional brethren, had little or no impact on nutrition.

These results are hardly surprising when one considers that nutrition is dependent on a host of issues, starting with the variety of the plant or animal. For example, hard red spring wheat has higher protein content than soft winter wheat, and Jersey cows tend to produce milk with higher butterfat content than black and white Holstein Friesians. Then there are a slew of other factors, including the maturity of whatever is grown at harvest, length of time in storage, the variables of humidity and conditions in transport, plus many more. Whew! With so many factors influencing nutrition, it isn’t surprising that a handful of farming practices would make little difference.

Demonstrating the importance of adding a little acidity to the final flavor of a dish is especially important when developing low-sodium recipes.

By Carrie Stebbins

In both culinary and dining classes I talk a lot about the balance of a food or beverage on the palate.

It seems like we teach our culinary students to add salt at many stages, but we only encourage them to add acidity on specific occasions. What I like to emphasize is that acidity can brighten a dish without making it taste sour.

A few years back I attended a wine and food pairing seminar given by Jerry Comfort of Beringer Wines. We tasted foods that represented the basic four flavors, plus umami, along with a variety of wines. The results were negative as often as they were positive! Some of the multiple combinations, however, were the best. I decided to try a similar technique with my culinary students at the beginning of a class to show how important adding a little acidity is to the final flavor of a dish. This is especially important for developing low-sodium recipes.

Learning goals should be actionable, visible, measurable and developmentally appropriate and should lead to authentic, motivating tasks.

By Jean L. Hertzman, Ph.D., CCE

As educators, we are always looking for ways to engage students in our courses so that their effort results in significant and lasting learning, which adds value to them personally and professionally. This is exactly the purpose of using Fink’s (2003) model of Integrated Course Design (ICD) to create Significant Learning Experiences. This article will briefly discuss the principles of ICD and Fink’s Taxonomy of Significant Learning and how to use them to develop learning goals, teaching and learning activities and feedback and assessment methods.

Just as Americans’ love affair with beef reignited in the 1990s, butter is coming back in a big way

Although butter has been vilified for decades as a “bad” fat best to be avoided, recent studies reveal that its negative profile was undeserved. That’s good news for anyone who cooks (and eats), because butter relies on a whopping 120+ unique compounds for its silky, incomparable flavor.

“There simply is no substitute for butter in cooking,” says Chef Christopher Koetke, CEC, CCE, HAAC, vice president of the Kendall College School of Culinary Arts in Chicago and the Laureate Universities International Center for Culinary Excellence. “Not only does the pure, sweet-cream taste of butter complement and enhance the flavor of dishes, but butter provides a smooth and creamy texture that is especially important in sauces.”

Indeed, the days of banishing butter from the back of the house are ending, Koetke says. Because, just as Americans’ love affair with beef reignited in the 1990s, butter is coming BACK—and in a big way.

This group’s need for powerful nutrition, flavorful food, comfort and indulgence, and speed and convenience are driving their food choices.

As incoming college freshmen packed their bags for school this fall, many said goodbye not only to family members, but also to existing eating habits. Thanks to innovative campus foodservice, adventurous global-cuisine restaurants and the influence of new acquaintances, impressionable students are exposed to new foods that quickly turn into favorites. They develop new eating habits and expectations that will stick with them long after graduation, impacting the food industry for decades to come, according to the recently released “Collegiate Gen Y Eating: Culinary Trend Mapping Report” by market research publisher Packaged Facts and San Francisco-based strategic food-and-beverage-innovation agency CCD Innovation.

In the height of the sweltering summer, some seasonal, fruity favorites have fared well, while others are falling from favor.

If you want to know what cocktails people are ordering in bars and restaurants, you don’t need to look any further than an episode of “Mad Men.”Classic cocktails are mixing things up on the drink menu this year. According to new research from Mintel Menu Insights, cocktails that are described as “classic” on menus have increased by a whopping 76% since 2009. Popular retro drink, the Manhattan, has seen a 35% increase on menus since 2009, while the Gimlet is up 63%, Sazerac is up 57% and the Side Car has jumped 50%*.

“Bartenders and cocktail geeks are taking a very academic approach to mixing drinks, and many are learning the history and the evolution of iconic cocktails,” says Kathy Hayden, senior foodservice analyst at Mintel. “This approach combines with better ingredients, some nostalgia for a time when people had time to enjoy cocktails and cocktail parties and widespread interest in ‘cocktail culture’ to boost interest in the classics.”

Among survey respondents who have ordered a drink at bars/nightclubs, 54% ordered a beer in the last three months, making it the most widely accepted alcoholic beverage. Cocktails also have a high incidence of use, however, with 44% of people saying they’ve ordered one in the same timeframe. A new cocktail claim making its debut on menus is “skinny.” In 2009, there were zero reports of the skinny claim and in Q2 2012, Mintel Menu Insights tracked 110 items boasting this descriptor.

Two effective strategies to consider are blogging and discovering, or instant research.

By Dr. Fred Mayo, CHE, CHT

Last month, we talked about expanding our connections to colleagues, industry partners and other professionals. This month, we will start the first of three columns on ways that students connect using social media, beginning with using social media in our classrooms.

Social Media
There are lots of ways to look at social media and a myriad of definitions available. After all, our students use a range of software programs to communicate, contact and contribute to discussions. They use Google, Google Alerts and YouTube for research purposes; they have RSS feeds and Mashups; they also thrive on a lot of time with Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, Tumblr and Foursquare, among many others.