Sullivan University’s National Center for Hospitality Studies (NCHS) in Louisville, Ky., honored Chef Paul Virant of Chicago’s Perennial Virant with the prestigious Distinguished Visiting Chef award on Aug. 9. As recipient of the award, Virant presented on-campus cooking demonstrations in addition to a question-and-answer session held exclusively for Sullivan University students. He also signed copies of his book, The Preservation Kitchen: The Craft of Making and Cooking with Pickles, Preserves, and Aigre-doux.

Designed to connect today’s aspiring culinarians with industry leaders, the Distinguished Visiting Chef series has been recognizing three top chefs annually since its inception in 1988. Virant was the 52nd recipient of the award, joining an impressive roster of chefs that includes Bob Kinkead, Emeril Lagasse, Louis Osteen, Rick Tramonto and Marcel Desaulniers.

Virant is the chef and owner of Michelin-star restaurant Vie in Western Springs, Ill., and Perennial Virant in Chicago. His philosophy of local, seasonal eating stems from his childhood spent on his family’s farm in Missouri. He credits his grandmothers, both avid canners, for instilling in him a reverence for local ingredients and serving as the inspiring force behind his becoming a chef.

New England Culinary Institute alumnus Shawn Gawle has been named as a “Best New Pastry Chef 2012” by Food & Wine magazine.

Gawle graduated NECI in 1999 with an AOS degree in Culinary Arts. “For Shawn to have created such an impressive niche in the baking and pastry world with a culinary-arts background demonstrates how imagination, creativity and fearlessness—coupled with knowledge of ‘the basics’—can create unlimited possibilities,” says Fran Voigt, NECI founder and CEO. “Shawn will no doubt have many more culinary successes in what will surely be a long and illustrious career.”

Food & Wine attributed Gawle’s success to his combining “modernist and classic techniques to create thoughtful, elegant, French-inflected desserts that often highlight Asian ingredients, like yuzu and cardamom.”

Formally trained as a savory cook, Gawle has spent years working in some of America’s most highly regarded kitchens with world-renowned chefs from Chicago to Philadelphia and New York City. His mastery of classic French technique has freed him to channel his creativity and push boundaries with his desserts. Gawle has been serving as pastry chef at New York’s first-class restaurant, Corton, since 2010. This most recent award from Food & Wine is the latest of his many accolades.

Chef Gary Lyons of the Fox Valley Technical College’s (FVTC) Chefs Gone Grillin’ culinary competition team took home first prize in the dessert competition at the 8th annual UP Hog Wild BBQ Competition held July 21 and 22 in Kingsford, Mich. The winning dessert was Jones Cherrywood Smoked Bacon & Maple Cheesecake.

Lyons, a professor at FVTC who was voted the Wisconsin Restaurant Association’s “College Educator of the Year” in 2011, received a perfect score from the judges—a rare achievement for this type of high-level event. Nearly 30 culinary teams from around Wisconsin and Michigan participated in this state of Michigan championship sanctioned by the Kansas City Barbecue Society (KCBS).

The Club Foundation is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2013 Joe Perdue Scholarships:

• Jennifer Turowski, University of Delaware
• Natalie Fort, Michigan State University
• Jean Thomae, University of Delaware
• Rebecca Wyskiel, University of Massachusetts
• Adrian Vivas, University of Houston
• Salvatrice DiFrescoe, Fairleigh Dickinson University

The Club Foundation established the Joe Perdue Scholarship in honor of Joe Perdue, a long-time educator and pillar of the club management industry. The scholarship provides tuition support to students who are pursuing careers in club management. Since its inception, The Club Foundation has awarded more than 155 student scholarships totaling more than $270,000. Any individual who is actively seeking a managerial career in the club industry and is currently attending an accredited, four-year college or university undergraduate program may apply to The Club Foundation for scholarship aid.

“The Club Foundation commends these individuals on the pathway to excellence on which they have embarked,” says Seth Gregg, COO, The Club Foundation. “The Club Foundation provides these scholarships through the continued generosity and support of CMAA’s members, chapters and Corporate Advantage Program partners who provide the resources necessary to maintain these scholarships.” CMAA is the Club Managers Association of America.

For more information, visit www.clubfoundation.org.

Says this career educator, whether students in your program have a practice restaurant or not, teaching respect for the staff meal and how it contributes to a sense of team will follow your graduates to the kitchens that they work in and eventually run.

By Paul Sorgule, MS, AAC

I just finished watching the United States Girls Gymnastics Team complete an impressive collaborative win. What was most impressive was not their individual athleticism (incredible), but more importantly how they worked together, felt together, supported each other and fed off of each other’s strengths. This is such an impressive feat that I naturally began to think about how this same energy and working philosophy could be imbedded in a culinary-school curriculum. The significance of team is what it’s all about.

I had the privilege many years ago of participating as a member of the 1988 U.S. New England Culinary Olympic Team, an experience that changed my entire outlook on life and my profession. We became a family and learned through trial and error to build on each other’s strengths and accept and help each other with our weaknesses. Yes, we very successful in the Frankfurt “Olympics,” but more importantly we discovered what it meant to get past teamwork and move on to “team.”

Five ways to incorporate nutritious dry peas, lentils and chickpeas into the most important meal of the day.

By Ali McDaniel

A balanced and nutritious breakfast is often touted as the most important meal of the day. But combining the needs of consumers with recommended dietary guidelines can be a difficult task for foodservice operators, especially when competing with tasty, yet unhealthy, convenience products.

Though not usually viewed as a breakfast ingredient, pulses (dry peas, lentils and chickpeas), their flours and purées can be easily substituted for traditional ingredients in morning favorites. Packed full of nutrients, pulses are the perfect addition to many popular dishes—helping foodservice operators achieve USDA MyPlate and school dietary guidelines without sacrificing taste or texture.

By Bradley J. Ware, PhD, and C. Lévesque Ware, PhD

Lectures can be a very effective tool for the chef/instructor if they are carefully planned, prepared and organized. In conjunction with the course outline, the course syllabus and lesson plans must be developed to serve as guides in the creation of quality lectures. Once these instruments are in place, it is time to prepare lecture notes to guarantee the best delivery possible of the course content.

The syllabus generally lists the course objectives sequentially. Course objectives provide a summary of the material/skills that the student is expected to master by the completion of the course. Once all of the course objectives are established, the chef/instructor can devise a list of topics that will be covered throughout the lab/academic course. These topics ultimately facilitate the development of lecture topics.

National Honey Board awards $8,000 in Culinary Institute of America scholarships to culminate Sweet 16 Honey Recipe Challenge

After intense deliberations, the National Honey Board named CIA student Perry Xu Cao, enrolled in the Hyde Park, N.Y., campus, the grand-prize winner of the inaugural “Sweet 16 Honey Recipe Challenge.” Cao was awarded the $5,000 scholarship for his Goat Cheese Tempura with Honey Dipping Sauces following a morning of fierce but friendly competition at the Aug. 20 Sweet 16 Honey Recipe Challenge’s “Final Four” cook-off event at CIA Greystone in St. Helena, Calif.

Cao’s winning recipe was a simple yet elegant appetizer featuring three varietals of honey infused with aromatics to create mouthwatering sauces, providing a delicious balance to the crispy, citrus-laced and savory goat-cheese tempura. His tempura recipe was inspired in part by his first kitchen job, making shrimp tempura. For the Sweet 16 Honey Recipe Challenge, Cao artfully concocted three dipping sauces, infusing three honey varietals (from ubiquitous clover to bold buckwheat) with floral essences and uniting them with spices and flavorful berries. The result is a mouthwatering appetizer that can be dressed up or down, suitable for white-tablecloth to fast-casual establishments. For high-volume applications, the dipping sauces can be prepared in advance and easily served using squeeze bottles. What’s more, the colorful sauces will complement a variety of savory items, including pork, chicken and vegetables.

The taco renaissance taking the nation by storm is spurred partly by innovative chefs. But Americans seem to have recently realized that just about anything tastes better and is more fun to eat when it’s nestled in a folded tortilla.

By Christopher Koetke, CEC, CCE, HAAC

At the Kendall College School of Culinary Arts in Chicago, we keep our finger on the pulse of emerging food trends. What’s on the horizon in the taco realm? Fish tacos.

While fish tacos aren’t new, they’re not yet everywhere. After first tasting a Baja fish taco in Mexico, Ralph Rubio returned to San Diego to hand-craft his own recipe and introduced America to the fish taco in 1983. Now with dozens of restaurants in California, Nevada, Utah and Colorado, Rubio’s still menus The Original Fish Taco® that started it all: sustainable wild Alaska pollock hand-dipped in seasoned beer batter and cooked to crispy perfection, then topped with Rubio’s white sauce, mild salsa and fresh cabbage and served on a warm stone-ground corn tortilla and garnished with a slice of lime.

A Washburne Culinary Institute instructor wins second prize, and students from Wisconsin and Indiana cook their way to cash awards in the 2012 Discover Duck Chef Recipe Contest.

Duck, a natural fit for today’s global cooking culture, was very evident in the 2012 Maple Leaf Farms Chef Recipe Contest. This year’s contest challenged entrants in two categories—professional chef and culinary student—to produce an original small-plate recipe showcasing Maple Leaf Farms duck. More than 250 entries from across the country were submitted in competition for the cash prizes.