Kylea McMurray
Moapa Valley Progress
Thirteen students from Moapa Valley High School (MVHS) traveled to the Art Institute of Las Vegas to compete in the Nevada ProStart Invitational held last weekend. This competition included hundreds of students from high schools around the state. MVHS Students took high honors in all divisions of the competition.
The ProStart competition is usually divided into two categories: gourmet cooking and culinary management. This year, two new competitions were added: knife cuts and cake decorating.
This year two MVHS students participated in each of the new categories. Cori Cook and Sarah Hendrix competed in the cake decorating competition where they both received participation medals.
MVHS students Alex Shurtliff and Houston Costa competed in knife cutting, where they worked with different kinds of knives to create perfect juliennes, batonets and other difficult cuts. Shurtliff won the competition, and Costa took third place. MVHS almost completely swept the awards in the new competition.
The Hospitality and Culinary Management team from MVHS stood out at the huge competition. The team of Kirk Bullock, Caley Dunlap, Marsha Gutowski, Jonathan Xie and alternate Grant Mecham competed at the top of their game on Friday.
The management competition has two parts, the Knowledge Bowl, where the team is quizzed on their collective knowledge of the food-service industry and business, and the case study. In the case study, the students are given a tough case scenario, and they have thirty minutes to discuss solutions to the problem. Then they present their solution to a panel of judges in ten minutes.
“They won the Knowledge Bowl part of the competition, missing only three questions,” said MVHS Culinary teacher, Mary Bullock. “They were also fantastic in the case study part of the competition, and the judges complimented them on their smooth presentation and their attention to detail.”
The team took second in a highly competitive invitational, coming in behind Carson City High School.
The gourmet cooking, or culinary competition is for teams of four students who work together to create a gourmet meal for two on two portable burners in exactly one hour, using all fresh, unprepared ingredients. The team has to create two identical plates, and they are judged on teamwork, flavor, safety and sanitation, organization, presentation, cooking technique and level of difficulty.
This year’s team included Shelby Abbot, Jonathan Barbosa, Simone Costa, Anton Zander and alternate Alex Shurtliff. They created an outstanding dish of roasted lamb, surrounded by ahi tuna, apricot couscous, and other succulent appetizers and side dishes, and then topped it all off with vanilla bean panna cotta and raspberry sauce.
The judges were raving about MVHS when they finished evaluating the meal. “The judges absolutely loved it,” said Bullock. “They asked everyone in the competition to get a good look at our dish because they said that all chefs should aspire to that kind of cooking.” The team’s exceptional performance earned them first place in the competition, which is a first for the culinary team at MVHS. ”
The team will be traveling to San Diego to compete in the national ProStart competition in April.
Overall, the teams from MVHS came out on top of the entire competition. “The Nevada Restaurant Association sponsors this competition, and they call Moapa Valley High School their stellar school,” said Mary Bullock. “It was such an amazing feeling to compete with other schools of that caliber and represent Moapa Valley so well.”
The teams would like to thank their Chef Mentor, Chris Lindsay, and Tracy Rodgers, Harold Tusler, Maria Chidester, Kim Hardy, Collet Phillipenas, and Dr. Kincaid of University of Nevada Las Vegas for helping the teams prepare for the competition. They would also like to thank Scott Carson of Tiffany’s Pies, and the Booster club for generously contributing to their program.
