Photos: Penta’s New Culinary Arts Kitchens; This Ain’t Home-Ec!

Posted on 28 August 2008 under Chefs, Culinary Arts Programs, Instruction, Kitchen Gear, Photos, School Lunches | 2 Comments

Update, August 29 - The Toledo Blade has posted an article about the new Penta facility this morning, along with more photos.

A couple days ago I blogged about Chef Mike Sader joining Chef Jim Rhegness as an instructor in the Culinary Arts program at the new Penta Career Center facility in Perrysburg, Ohio. I totally blew that, as Chef Denise Schaefer teaches there as well and I didn’t mention her whatsoever. Sorry Chef Denise! :-( I’ve mentioned previously (but I’ll do it again anyway!), Chef Denise was inducted into the American Academy of Chefs in a ceremony July 13, 2008 in Las Vegas. I’ve also previously blogged about the type of work her students are capable of, particularly this Chuck Tender Wellington I enjoyed for a lunch this past January.

This evening we were able to walk through Penta’s new facility, southwest of the I-75 Buck Rd. interchange south of Toledo. Each of the three teaching Chefs have their own separate, professional teaching kitchens, which we’ll look at shortly. But first, a couple comments …

First, these kitchens are built for teaching at the high school level, meaning 11th and 12th graders. This is NOT a college! Students come in from 16 high schools in a five-county area. I know of a few colleges with administrators that would faint if they could have kitchens that are THIS GOOD!

Chef Jim has asked me to mention and PUBLICLY THANK Calphalon, specifically, the company’s MASSIVE donation of ALL the pots and pans in these kitchens, totaling over $10,000 in equipment. The Chefs and the school administration are more than thankful for this donation as what they now have is exactly what was needed.

And Chef Mike would like to point out that there are, in fact, two days in a weekend! Being such a hard-working Chef at some rather innovative restaurants in the Toledo area, he’d totally forgotten about this. Now that Chef Mike is teaching at Penta, Mary and I are wondering what he’s going to think when he finally realizes he doesn’t have to work at all during the summer months!

Ok, on with our brief photo tour (click on any of these images for a larger version) …


Windows in the new Culinary Connection restaurant open into Chef Mike Sader’s teaching kitchen. Let’s step inside … (more after the jump!)

Read the rest of this entry…

Eat This Blog: Photos of Dishes from Young Chefs

Posted on 12 January 2008 under Eat This Blog, Instruction | 6 Comments

A couple days ago I posted a story of how this generation of high school students are able to get heavily into real, professional-grade cooking in some locations. Over at the Frog Leg Inn in Erie, Chef Tad employs a couple young Chefs (each a few years older than high school age) who are extremely talented, to the point where these two are now encouraged to develop dishes for the restaurant’s monthly Specials. Yesterday when I received Tad’s email with the January 2008 Specials so I could add them to the restaurant’s web site … well, my mouth started watering.

This month, these two young Chefs have really outdone themselves.

The above image, Scallops & Pear, was my dinner this evening. Chef Janelle, who created this dish, is a graduate of Chef Jim Rhegness’s class at Penta, the same school where I enjoyed the Chuck Tender Wellington a few days ago. The Frog Leg Inn menu describes Scallops & Pear as, “Fresh scallops served with fig and goat cheese nestled inside roasted pear halves. Drizzled with a pomegranate honey reduction.” This was quite simply the best scallop dish I’ve ever eaten. Moist, tender, beautiful flavor, the fig and goat cheese combining with the pear to contrast wonderfully with the seafood. Mary hasn’t liked scallops, mostly because the texture is usually a bit off. However, she called her few tastes of Chef Janelle’s Scallops & Pears, “Fabulous!”

Neither of us had Chef Cedric’s Martini Salmon … this particular dish belonged to the woman at the next table. Ced is Catherine’s son. Besides working almost full-time as a Sous Chef at the restaurant, he’s also attending the Culinary Arts program at Monroe County Community College. This dish is rather unique; “Fresh grilled salmon resting on top of a lemon, leek & mushroom risotto. Finished with a vodka cream sauce and garnished with caviar and skewered olives. Served in a martini-shaped plate.” Chef Ced always creates the most amazing desserts, even though he claims that’s not where his interest really lies. Having tasted a lot of his cooking already, it seems a lot of the skills he’ll need for a solid culinary career are already fairly advanced.

These kinds of dishes from these kinds of young Chefs really make one wonder what the next 20 - 40 years will bring us from the world of Culinary Arts.

Chuck Tender Wellington … A High School Lunch??

Posted on 9 January 2008 under Cooking Classes, Instruction, School Lunches | 1 Comment

Did you ever have one of those moments like Bourdain or Zimmern when they find something wonderful in a totally unexpected place, made by the least likely individual?

Lunch was like that today.

I’d headed down to the Penta Career Center in Perrysburg to have something signed and, since I’d gotten there at about 11 a.m., decided to have a bite to eat. Eating at Penta is always interesting in all the best meanings of the word. Chef Jim Rhegness, Food Network gingerbread competitor, is one of the Culinary Arts instructors at this high-school-level school. I’ve eaten in his classroom’s dining room before and have always enjoyed his students’ dishes. Chef Denise Schaefer teaches the Food Service side of things. She and her students run one student cafeteria and a place called the Snack Bar. I’d met Chef Denise at Taste of the Nation: Toledo last April but had never eaten anything her students have made. Her Snack Bar was where I ended up today.

I’m glad I did.

What I ordered appeared a little confusing on the menu; “Hot Sandwich: Chuck Tender Wellington - The chuck tenderloin has been seasoned with a ground steak rub and coated with finely chopped mushroom medley, wrapped in puff pastry and baked to medium.”

That was weird. I found myself thinking, “Is it a hot sandwich … or is it a Beef Wellington?”

My lunch entree turned out to be very similar to the Individual Filet Wellingtons Chef Tad Cousino made for the Chef’s Table (and for my video camera) at the Frog Leg Inn in Erie, Michigan on November 8, 2007. (You can watch the instructional video we made here.)

Not only was I surprised to be able to get any kind of Beef Wellington at a high school-level facility during a normal lunch hour (i.e., not a special event), what was even more surprising was the quality of this entree. It was cooked correctly, the beef medium as advertised. The “finely chopped mushroom medley” (a psuedo-duxelles) was more of a nice touch than I’d expected. The puff pastry was wonderfully flaky, and honestly, I could have cut that beef with a butterknife. There was a bit of A1 sauce for dipping, but I didn’t use it. I also had a dish of Wild & Brown Rice, and a Seasonal Fresh Fruit Parfait, both of which went quite well with the Wellington.

All this for … four bucks??? Amazing.

Heading back downstairs to drop off the trays, I showed Chef Denise the above photo in the camera’s viewscreen. She then pulled over Damien, the shaggy-headed young man who’d made these Wellingtons so he could also see the image. Damien seemed shy, almost embarrassed, almost as though he felt that a high-schooler like himself shouldn’t be told what he’d made was actually quite good indeed.

I think back to those awful Home Ec classes I had to take in Middle School in the early 1970s, with the classroom having multiple installations of cheap almond-colored electric ranges, complete with ratty cabinetry and old Formica counters. We were lucky if our single stack of four pancakes turned out right after 4 weeks of class.

These kids at Penta are training on commercial and professional equipment, preparing real-world dishes for lunch on a daily basis, and doing it well.

Damien’s Chuck Tender Wellingtons would have been more than acceptable in any number of good restaurants.

I hope Damien keeps going with his studies. If he does, he’s going to go places.

Video: Making Acorn Squash Bowls for Squash Soup

Posted on 2 December 2007 under Instruction, Recipes, Video | No Comments

It’s difficult if not impossible to post videos in here without a Mac. WordPress doesn’t like some of the underlying code for embedding videos from YouTube. But in the Mac version that dislike is broken, so posting videos from a Mac actually works. Go figure …

Anyway, over at the Frog Leg Inn’s web site I’ve posted a new video. On November 8th Chef Tad hosted a Chef’s Table at the restaurant. I followed him with a camera throughout the day and assembled a 30-minute TV show from the material I shot. In the new 6-minute video the Chef takes you through the making of soup bowls made from acorn squash which are still available at Ciolino’s Fruit & Vegetable Market on Lews north of Smith Rd. The bowls were used to serve Squash Soup with Chilled Porcini Mushroom Cream Sauce. In the video you can see the diner’s reaction to this interesting presentation.

You can find this new video on this page. Enjoy!

I’ll also be posting a video soon of the Chef putting together the entrée from the same Chef’s Table: Individual Filet Wellingtons.