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Thursday, September 14, 2000 By Jane Miller
The dinner for 100 at Pennsylvania Culinary last month could be classified as top secret. So there are no close-up photographs of food and no recipes -- at least until after the Culinary Olympics.
On Oct. 16, the "Dream Team" of American chefs departs for Erfurt, Germany (between Frankfurt and Berlin). There they will compete with teams of chefs from 40 other countries in the world's oldest and largest international culinary event, which is held every four years. Officially known as the International Kochkunst Ausstellung, it is unofficially called the "Culinary Olympics" and has been testing the mettle and mastery of chefs since 1900.
In the last two competitions, the Culinary Team USA won the overall silver medal. It will contend for gold in four categories of competition, which include pastries, cold food, hot food displayed cold, and hot food, for which the Downtown dinner was a practice session. In the Olympics of 1980, '84 and '88, the U.S. team took gold in hot foods competition, considered the main event.
"But the more important part is to display to the public the professional trends in the industry," said Edward Leonard, the team manager, from Chicago.
There aren't any "celebrity" chefs, but these chefs have attained the highest standards among the 20,000 members of the American Culinary Federation. Hometown chef Keith Coughenour, executive chef of the Duquesne Club, Downtown, was a team member for the silver medal in '92 and captain of the '96 team.
He became one of the three coaches after the birth of his daughter, Alayna Marie, now 14 months old. The team consists of five team chefs and a sixth member who is a pastry chef. The five-member team that practiced in Pittsburgh were: Alphonso Contriscianni, team captain, of Atlantic City; Charles Carroll, of Texas; Daniel Huglier, of Michigan; Daniel Scannell, of New York; and Derin Moore, of South Carolina. Derrin Aoyama, of California, is the pastry chef.
The entourage will include nearly 30 people, including a photographer. Rich Rosendale, 25, of Uniontown, a saucier at the Duquesne Club, will accompany the team as an apprentice. His official title will be glazer, and he will apply a gelatin glaze in the cold food competition, to keep appearances appetizing for a week.
He'll also help in the meaty task of lining up supplies, including uniforms, adapters, Windex cleanser (to wipe prints off the edges of plates), and food. Everything must be purchased here, even Saran Wrap, since European quality can't be depended upon, he said.
"If better quality items, such as fresh produce, can be found, they'll be replaced. The team also has to figure out a way of transporting a butane lighter, since combustible items can't be sent on airplanes," Rosendale said.
"They're thinking of sending it by boat. They've contacted the military."
Try-outs for this team began in 1997, a few months after the last Culinary Olympics. It included three- and seven-course meals. The hot-food trials could rival try-outs for the women's gymnastics team.
Each chef received a "Mystery Basket" of common and uncommon kitchen ingredients. Each then had a half hour to figure out a menu and four hours to put the basket's contents together to feed 20 people. "The rule is you have to utilize the special ingredients throughout the menu," said Coughenour. "And doing that as neatly, quickly, and with as little waste as possible."
Once the team was assembled, early in 1998, it began practicing approximately every four to six weeks in various culinary colleges around the country, as part of an educational mission.
"The culinary schools are the future of our industry," said Daniel Huglier, a Certified Master Chef and a team coach from Michigan. "It has always been a chef's responsibility to train teams for clubs, restaurants and hotels. Now schools are helping with that."
The team also requests critiques from the teaching chefs, and students and staff are invited to observe. "I'm impressed with how fast and clean they work," said Scott Schmucker, who teaches the classic cuisine class.
"Their knife skills are just incredible," said the chef, who cooks for the Steelers.
For this next-to-final practice -- the last one will be tomorrow in Houston -- the chefs replicated the hot-food competition as closely as possible. In Germany, seven teams will compete at a time, each responsible for 100 meals of three courses each. Tickets will be sold to the event, and ticket holders choose from seven menus. Extra points are awarded to the team that first runs out of food. The chefs won't know which plates go to judges and must be ready to serve exact portion sizes of any of the three courses at any time. In this "restaurant" style, they might be serving first courses at the same time they're dishing up desserts. They staggered it like that in the practice at Pennsylvania Culinary.
Judges sample 21 plates of food in a session. Coughenour said that the judges in past competitions were amazingly fit -- and they do finish a plate if they like it.
What will the judges be looking for? "First and foremost, they're looking for taste," he said. "That's 50 percent of the score, followed by presentation, composition, contrast. Do the courses flow harmoniously from one to the next? And there's a kitchen score that's important. Sanitation, technique, organization are all key issues."
The overall gold medal went to the Swiss team in both '92 and '96. Previously, in 1988, it went to the Canadian team. Coughenour expects a strong show from these teams again, and also the Norway team,"which has been together for a long time," and also the team from the Netherlands, calling Dutch cooking a "classical cuisine."
A documentary on the team will air on various Public Broadcasting stations around the holidays. A preview -- without any food footage -- will air sometime in October. And Coughenour assures us that recipes and photos will be released following the Olympics. The Americans will be in hot-foods competition on Oct. 23 and 26.
"You never know who's going to read an article or who could send it to Europe. The worst thing to happen would be to have those ideas viewed or tasted by someone who may be at the Olympics," he said.
The cooking marathon complete, Texas chef Charles Carroll leaned against a stainless steel counter, looking contemplative, while drinking coffee from a plastic foam cup. This will be his fifth Olympic competition. He has worn both silver and gold medals.
"We feel very good about the flavor and good about the menu. We need to fine tune the kitchen plating time," he said.
His eyes sparkled. "We're starting to get excited!"
Jane Miller is a free-lance writer who lives in Avalon.
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