Posted by The Ottawa Citizen, Canada on April 26, 2008 at 12:05:31:
A touch of silver to her kitchen whites
Young Ottawa woman takes second prize in national championships for junior chefs
Laura Stone, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Saturday, April 26, 2008
Chocolate and beets may not seem like a match made in culinary heaven, but Ashley Stenabaugh insists they're perfect partners on a dessert plate.
"After a while you just kind of know what goes together," she says.
She should know. The 21-year-old apprentice in the House of Commons kitchen, who'll earn her red seal chef certificate next month, represented Ontario in the Canadian Culinary Federation's KNORR national championships for junior chefs in Montreal yesterday.
Beets and chocolate were two of the ingredients she had to work with to construct her menu. Obviously it was a successful combination -- she finished second in the competition.
"I'm pretty excited," she said after the award ceremony last night.
"It feels like gold."
The 10 competitors had five hours to create a three-course meal, but they were given their list of ingredients beforehand.
It was Stenabaugh's first national contest, but she's no stranger to the world of competitive cooking. The Huntsville, Ont. native won the provincial title in April and silver the past two years.
For her silver-medal winning menu, Stenabaugh made a salmon-and-scallop mousse, herb-encrusted pork loin with goat cheese and dried fruit pork rib, served with asparagus, butternut squash purée and braised leeks. Dessert was a flourless dark chocolate and Grand Marnier cake with -- who'd have guessed it? -- sweet beet sauce.
But when Stenabaugh goes home to her one-bedroom apartment in East-end Russell, don't expect her to make something fancy.
"I probably eat Kraft Dinner and stuff when I'm done work, because somedays I really don't feel like cooking," she says.
In this way, at least, Parliament's youngest staff member is like most others her age -- "I eat like a student," she says -- although most people don't start their careers before they're allowed to drive.
Stenabaugh was 13 when she took her first dishwashing job at the local diner out of "spite."
"I have an older brother and his first job was dishwashing in a kitchen," she says. "He came home one day and talked about all the fun he was having, and he said, 'Oh yeah, you could never do it, you could never handle it.' So the next summer, I was like, we'll see if I can handle it or not."
By 15, she had moved on to a more upscale restaurant as a cook, and after high school, she took the two-year culinary management program at Humber College, graduating in 2006. She started at the House of Commons a few months later.
It's a career path with far less intricacies than, say, a pan-seared scallop with astute tomato fondue. For Stenabaugh, her decision to become a chef was downright simple.
"I just really liked working in the kitchen. I'm very passionate about what I do," she says.
Learning what works -- and what doesn't -- is a trial-and-error process for Stenabaugh, who likes to cook Italian food and bakes for fun.
But the chef's life is not without its challenges. Stenabaugh admits that the kitchen can be a stressful place. And while the dishes may be delicate, the words thrown around the kitchen sometimes aren't.
"You have to have a certain personality to work in a kitchen," she says. "Tempers flare, and people yell, and you've got to learn that you don't take that kind of stuff personally."
She says that while some women may find it hard to work in the industry, the number of female chefs is growing -- and their reputations are as well. Although there were only three women entered in yesterday's competition, they took home all the medals.
Stenabaugh says she's not one to run away from confrontation; she just tries to learn from her mistakes.
"You just take it. You brush it off. You take out what you need out of what they yelled at you, and you use that."
Besides, it's not Hell's Kitchen all the time, she says. "It's usually pretty calm and people are collected."
The most difficult part is the physical aspect. There's a lot of heavy lifting, and Stenabaugh has cuts and burns up her arms from cooking mishaps.
During last year's provincials, she accidentally grabbed a hot pan with her bare hand and incurred a second-degree burn.
"I didn't want anybody to know about it, so I just put a glove on it. My hand was shaking, there were tears in my eyes," she says.
She finished the competition-- after plating her mains and her desserts with her injured hand.
© The Ottawa Citizen 2008