Culinary Club cooks up exciting experiences

Clustered around a kitchen counter, the 15 or so students soaked ladyfingers — long, oval sponge cakes — in coffee and watched as the pastries soften into mush. They then began to combine the ladyfingers into a single cake layer, mixing it in coffee powder to make a cream. The budding chefs were gathered in senior Kyle Yuen’s home for a culinary night and just successfully created tiramisu.

With its 20 members, the Culinary Club meets every Friday in adviser Suzanne Herzman’s room 004 to hold cooking demonstrations, plan sessions for culinary nights and listen to guest speakers.

During cooking demonstrations, one or two members bring the ingredients and equipment needed to create a simple dish and show other members how to make the food at the meeting. As they prepare the food, they discuss the ingredients and steps to producing the finished product. Then, once the dish is ready, the rest of the group samples and evaluates it.

These dishes can range from bruschetta to homemade mango ice cream. They are generally simple and doable because the lunch period does not offer enough time to complete a complex recipe, but Yuen, the club’s vice president, believes this is an advantage to the members.

“It gives members more reason to cook, since most people don't have the time to cook large, elaborate meals,” Yuen said.

An added bonus of simpler foods is that members gather culinary knowledge to take to college. The more basic a recipe, the easier it is for day-to-day use.

“If you don’t want to eat take out all day [in college], you should definitely learn how to cook,” Yuen said. “And that’s why we’re doing all of these simple recipes: to prepare you.”

The club also hosts culinary nights, which occur around three to four times each semester at a club officer’s house. For these events, club members are invited to get together one night over the weekend and cook an average of six dishes.

Often the meal features a themed menu with food that members vote on in the meeting beforehand; then, members either bring ingredients or pitch in around $5. Themes are based on a certain culture or country's food, and the club selects appetizers, entrees and desserts based on that theme. For instance, a French-themed culinary night had items that included potato au gratin for the main course and bread pudding for dessert.

“During culinary nights we have a lot more freedom to create whatever we want,” Yuen said. “Just organizing alone and having all the food come out correctly, not burnt, is pretty rewarding in itself.”

According to the club’s president, senior Corey Wong, the most popular themes so far have been Japanese and Italian culinary nights. He feels that these events help expose students to new foods.

“It gives us an opportunity to see different variations of food, rather than just eating hamburgers and pizza all the time,” Wong said.

Besides cooking demos and culinary nights, Culinary Club is trying to schedule guest speakers to come to meetings.

On March 6, the club scheduled its first guest speaker with the help of a club member, senior Ian Bautista, who works at the restaurant Oak & Rye with chef Shelve Rifkins. Rikfins came to the club’s meeting during lunch, which was held in the cafeteria that day.

She discussed her experience of attending culinary school and the techniques she learned there. Then, she showed members how to cook an Italian pasta dish with tomato sauce and bacon oil in the cafeteria kitchen.

Yuen said hearing from Rifkins about the depth that chefs go into with cooking particularly stood out to him.

“She talked about the stress in the kitchen, and I find that pretty interesting because normally when you do casual cooking, you’re not stressed out. You’re doing it for fun,” Yuen said.

Though Yuen does not plan on pursuing a career in the culinary arts, he wants to continue cooking as a hobby, as he has done since his childhood.

“I’ve always helped around the kitchen as a child during big dinners over the holidays,” he said. “I love eating and making food, as well as teaching techniques that can improve the quality and plating of it.”

As for other members, Yuen hopes to spark a long-term interest in cooking. He believes that anyone who wants to learn how to cook should join the club.

“Cooking is definitely an art form — we’re just teaching it,” Yuen said. “We hope to achieve finer skills in the culinary world, generate interest in food and spread the love of it. Hopefully, it’ll impact people later on in life.”