Winning is easy as pie for Tongue Point Job Corps Center student

A humble dish recently helped cast the spotlight on a Tongue Point Job Corps Center student.  The dish – called "Simple Salmon Sauerwein" – won first place in a seafood-cooking contest at the Northwest Food Processors Association 2008 trade show.

23-year-old Job Corps student Charity Sauerwein dressed up her fillet with a lemon-cream sauce, perched it on a bed of portobello mushrooms and named it for her grandfather.  As the first word in the name implies, the dish requires few ingredients.  The fillet gets only a quick dusting of flour before it is sautéed.

 Sauerwein practiced preparing her dish at the center’s recently opened state-of-the-art cooking facility.  Center leaders hope Job Corps classes can one day rival the prestigious programs of Western Culinary Institute, a prestigious Portland, Oregon school.

"Simple Salmon" took the gold after a heated one-hour competition against two Western Culinary students, whose creations included sturgeon with blueberry sauce.

Under observation by a panel of judges, each contestant had to make and plate six identical meals onstage at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland.

Tongue Point Job Corps Center culinary art students start with basic food preparation before moving on to more advanced cooking styles and techniques. They also learn the business side of the industry, costing out ingredients, materials and labor, and studying workplace sanitation.

(Posted 2/10/08)

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