More gold medals for Culinary Arts students and chefs

A Chef instructor and a student in Malaspina University-College’s Culinary Arts program won gold medals for pastries and sugar sculptures at a three-day competition hosted by the BC Chef’s Association in Vancouver in April.

Pastry chef instructor Ken Harper won gold for a grand display of petit fours (small individual pastries) and a large sculpture of sugar and chocolate as the backdrop.

Student Allison Bonney won a gold medal for a colourful sugar sculpture depicting life below sea level. The three-day cold food competition included entries in pastry sculpture, ice carving, banquet platters, plated appetizers, entrees, desserts, and many others. It was held at the EAT Vancouver Show along with many other food displays and hot food competitions.

"I always like to challenge myself," said Harper, who has won many international and national cooking awards. "It’s important for chef instructors to enter competitions and set an example for their students."

Bonney’s sugar sculpture showed a variety of sealife - including lobster, clams and starfish - swimming through coral.

"Being my first competition, it was very exciting to win gold," said Bonney, who graduates from Malaspina’s Culinary Arts program in May.

"After four months of intense preparation - possibly more than 400 hours - it was very rewarding to see the final product. Perhaps even more amazing was the realization of how much I have learned, how far I have progressed and what I have accomplished since starting this course."

Bonney graduated from Kwalikum Secondary School in 1998 and enrolled in the Culinary Arts Program at Malaspina's Nanaimo campus in September 2004. "It’s been a great year," she said. "Like anything, this course is what you put into it. Malaspina instructors are extremely devoted to their students. The amount of time the chefs spent to help me learn was enormous."

Bonney plans to move to Calgary once she graduates to pursue employment as a chef.

Three more Malaspina students also competed in the competition. Jason Lee won silver with his six plated desserts. John Costanzi won silver with his three course casual luncheon and Alex Amos won silver with his restaurant platters for two and four people.