Students from Sauk Rapids-Rice took second place in the management competition at the National ProStart Invitational in Baltimore. From left: Instructor Mary Levinski, Kristin Campbell, Lexi Johnson, Ashley Bronder, Alex Brown and Shelby Studenski.

Minnesota’s ProStart teams make their marks at nationals.

The Hospitality Minnesota Education Foundation is excited to announce that Minnesota’s own Sauk Rapids-Rice team took second place in the management competition at the National ProStart Invitational! The competition took place over the weekend in Baltimore and winners were announced Sunday night. Congratulations to students Lexi Johnson, Kristin Campbell, Ashley Bronder, Alex Brown and Shelby Studenski and their teacher, Mary Levinski.

Using a visual display on their concept’s menu, décor, price structure, marketing plan and other considerations, the Sauk Rapids-Rice team entertained and impressed the judges with their Minnesota concept “Uffda,” a trendy food truck where “you’ll get stuffed.” It’s safe to say that all competitors, judges and participants learned a little about how to talk “Minnesotan” from them!

The culinary team from Forest Lake High School did not place among the top teams, but represented Minnesota well. We look forward to sharing more details of both teams’ experiences at Nationals soon!

ProStart is a curriculum offered through the Hospitality Minnesota Education Foundation (HMEF), which was founded by the Minnesota Lodging Association, Minnesota Restaurant Association and the Minnesota Resort & Campground Association.

Adapted from his popular memoir, Toast takes us back to one beloved chef’s humble beginnings in Wolverhampton, England in the late 1960s. Nigel Slater (Oscar Kennedy), age nine, craves fresh produce and cheese, much to his loving, but culinarily-impaired mother’s (Victoria Hamilton) bewilderment. It’s an era of canned convenience food where even dried pasta and powdered Parmesan cheese are too exotic for Nigel’s family.  A gentle soul interested in cooking, Nigel troubles his angry, uncommunicative father (Ken Stott), when he bothers to notice his son. Despite his family’s suspicion of food that’s not from a can or box, Nigel turns to cooking as his mother becomes terminally ill and the brassy Mrs. Potter (Helena Bonham Carter) catches his grieving father’s eye. Food becomes a central and undeniable force in Nigel’s life as he chooses to cook, despite the disapproval of his peers and family, to get his father’s attention, define himself and satisfy a craving he can’t quite identify.

It’s heady stuff:  messy, complicated, painful and occasionally sublime. Sometimes the finer points are lost in the film’s heavy-handed cinematic short cuts. Nigel’s mother’s tragically short life is symbolized by the half-finished tart shells left in the refrigerator. In more than one scene, crisp, buttered toast becomes shorthand for her simple, sustaining love as well as her limits. A pesky pop-up mixer that won’t stay put clumsily illustrates Mr. Slater’s growing attraction to Mrs. Potter. Instead of touchstones, these visuals become an overblown, oversimplified reflection of an emotional minefield.

When the movie shifts into Nigel’s teenage years, Freddie Highmore plays Nigel with a quiet intensity and stillness. His torturous home life has produced a young man who has learned to hold a lot in. By contrast, the earthy, wily Mrs. Potter, played with juicy abandon by Bonham Carter, provides a satisfying opponent. Their ongoing culinary skirmishes are the best part of the film, striking a enjoyable balance between humor and pathos. And there’s a lovely lemon meringue pie worthy of the glowing sunlight and heavenly choirs deployed by the director.

The path to professional cooking has never been smooth—and thank goodness for that. Toast gives us something to sink our teeth into and chew on. Thanks, Nigel.

Julie Brown-Micko was raised on sugar cereals and lots of hamburger casseroles, but survived and thrived in a Le Cordon Bleu culinary program.  A sometime writer, candy maker and pastry chef, she’s happiest combining her love of food and writing.  Her work has appeared in restaurants such as The Bayport Cookery and publications such as Minnesota Monthly and Foodservice News.  She’s currently exploring the world of cupcakes, debating the merits of buttercream versus ganache.

I’m tired of talking about trends, but then, I’m tired anyway, so here we go. Do you think, though, that we could come up with a new word for this discussion? “Infatuations” is too long, I suppose, and “meme” is too Twittery. Not “fads,” I suppose. Fashions? Mass hysteria? Media-mediated groupthink? Never mind.

There is a substantial number of people who specialize in the epidemiology of aesthetics, believe it or not. Among them, there is general agreement that a “fad” is a very different thing from a “trend.” The former are widespread and have a short lifespan (hula-hoops, Asian flu); the latter move more slowly and become, eventually, part of everyday life (compact fluorescents, bubonic plague). By this understanding, the Atkins diet was a fad, thank goodness, and we may once more eat bread. The Buffalo-wing diet, however, appears to be with us to stay.

If you look at the National Restaurant Association’s list of “Top Trends for 2013,” you will find that “locally sourced meats and seafood” and “locally grown produce” are in the top two positions. In itself, this is no surprise; they’ve moved steadily up in the rankings for some time and have been sitting in the catbird seat for at least three years. Molecular Gastronomy, darling of the food cognoscenti, has fallen out of the top 100.

A year and some months back, FSN convened a chef’s panel to talk about things local, and the consensus was that—while acknowledging that sourcing locally is generally a good thing in itself—the local-sourcing trend was driven by customer demand. At a certain price point and a certain level of service and ambience, a fair degree of local sourcing is expected by customers. Failing to do it (and to let it be known) actually hurts the business.

The reasons for this preference go way beyond gastronomy. Consider apples: if I gave you a blind taste test of a Minnesota apple and a New Zealand apple right now, the New Zealand apple would likely win. It’s April. Minnesota apples were picked in October. New Zealand apples were picked last week.

Carbon footprint doesn’t count, either. Those apples came over on a tanker and got put on a train, both of which travel on momentum once they get going. Put the tonnage shipped that way against the energy used to ship it, and then divide fourteen bushels of apples by the three gallons of gas it took that rust-bucket pickup to get to the farmer’s market, and you have your basis for comparison.

This is where the trendwatcher needs to do some more subtle forensics. If looked at closely, we are seeing in the everything-local craze the same emotional undercurrent that leads small-town bars to sponsor the high school softball team. It’s a desire for local connectedness; neighborhood feeling raised to a level of patriotism. Now we have arrived at a trend that can be used, whether to sell beans or Buicks.

In the same way, Cajun food has come and gone and left us with 63 kinds of blackening powder. The movement towards spicier food in this country, however, is a phenomenon of long standing and shows no signs of slowing down. The “line extensions” here are pretty much endless; piquancy can serve as a point of entry for cuisines around the globe, and for any industry segment: Wendy’s, Chipotle, Buffalo Wild Wings and Masa all have a huge investment in capsaicin-based self-abuse.

So whither the lobster-flavored pop rocks and the foam of unborn carrots? Well, that stuff is still around, and some of the techniques are sure to make it in the world of novelties. The search for larger movements needs to begin from a different point: the molecular gastronomists are cooks having fun—essentially a top-down structure, where one hopes to create consumer interest rather than responding to consumer demand. The big kids don’t play like that; they can’t afford to.

Think about how food manufacturers adjust their product lines. When I worked at Pillsbury of sainted memory, there was a full time librarian on a floor full of test kitchens, and she kept on hand every food magazine in the solar system and an astonishing array of current cookbooks—all in the name of guessing where the market was heading. The company would track what cutting-edge restaurants were doing, let the cool new ideas go through the pain of natural selection and the occasional mass extinction, and leap into the market when it found a trend that would support a 20-million unit rollout.

And the determination of strong market DNA was based not on what we normally refer to as “trends,” the kind of stuff chefs have voted onto the National Restaurant Association’s list. Instead, like a commodity broker watching the weather, it was based on a careful, extensive analysis of the social and economic undercurrents that produced the trends.

If, therefore, you have continued to buy softball T-shirts just on your own instincts, you’ve saved a lot of time. And incidentally, you’re right.

Jonathan Locke has been a restaurant chef for more than 20 years, heading restaurants in Minneapolis and San Francisco. In 1995 he joined forces with Susan Rasmussen to form FoodSense, a restaurant-consulting firm. He has written extensively for trade and consumer publications, and was KARE-11 TV’s Health Fair chef from 1995-1997. He can be contacted at foodsense@hotmail.com or at 612-724-9824

The Chef:

The Philosophy: My food philosophy is this as it pertains to my restaurant: use quality ingredients and solid technique to execute fresh takes on familiar, delicious food for an upscale bar clientele with discerning tastes. I like to stay knowledgeable on current food trends, offering fresh options for our amazing patrons.

The recipes:

Quinoa Veggie Burger

Grilled Marinated Flank Steak

Walleye Cake

Ingredients:
2 pounds walleye filet, skinned, de-boned, and cooked
¼ cup mayonnaise
Juice of one lemon
Zest of one lemon
2 Tablespoons green onion, finely sliced
1 Tablespoon fresh parsley, finely minced
½ cup saltine cracker crumb
Salt and pepper to taste

Method:
Coarsely flake walleye and combine with all other ingredients. Take care not to mix too aggressively to avoid turning mixture to mush. Taste for seasoning, and adjust accordingly with salt and pepper. Patty to desired size, and sear to order.

Ingredients:
2 ½ cups raw quinoa, cooked
1 large zucchini, shredded
1 large yellow squash, shredded
1 medium red onion, small diced
6 large portabella caps, cleaned and medium diced
2 Tablespoons fresh garlic, minced
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
2 whole eggs
1 cup fresh grated Parmesan cheese
2 cups panko breadcrumbs
Salt and pepper to taste

Method:
Sweat onion and garlic in large sauté pan. Add mushrooms, zucchini, squash, and pepper flakes and cook until tender, stirring occasionally. Combine cooked mushroom/squash mixture with quinoa and Parmesan, and chill.

When chilled, add eggs and panko to quinoa mixture and combine thoroughly. Sear off a piece, and taste it. Season accordingly with salt and black pepper. Patty to desired size.

Ingredients:
6 pounds flank steak
Salt and black pepper
2 cups quality brewed soy sauce
2 cups balsamic vinegar
½ cup olive oil
¼ cup sugar
1 Tablespoon granulated garlic
1 Tablespoon crushed red pepper flakes
1 teaspoon cumin seed, toasted and ground
½ teaspoon coarse ground black pepper

Method:
Season whole flank steak with salt and pepper, and mark on grill; two minutes per side. Put in cooler to chill. Combine all other ingredients thoroughly for marinade. Slice chilled flank steak against the grain, ¼-inch thick. Toss sliced flank well in marinade and let sit at least 12 hrs. Grill to order.