Phil Bencomo / Lake Superior Magazine
Food for Thought: Where Students Hone Culinary and Restaurant Skills
Thai Shrimp Stir Fry, a recipe from the Food for Thought student-run eatery at Duluth East High School.
The restaurant is called Food for Thought and it serves up much more than just meals. This student-run eatery at East High School in Duluth is a training ground for future chefs.
Open to the public during the school year, the restaurant is part of the culinary arts program available to students from throughout the Duluth School District.
“My goal is to make it an actual culinary school experience,” says Chef Glenn D’Amour, a certified executive chef who teaches the program. “My students are experiencing the classic courses taught in the first year of culinary college.”
That classical line cooking education starts with a focus on safe food handling as prescribed by the National Restaurant Association. Those safe-handling practices make students eligible to work in any commercial kitchen.
They learn to create stocks, then master the five mother sauces of classical cooking, the ones from which all other sauces are derived: béchamel, velouté, tomat, espagnole and hollandaise.
“Once you’ve mastered those five essential sauces, there are hundreds of derivatives,” Glenn explains.
Master the emulsification process used in making hollandaise, and you’re on to bernaise or charon or a cold emulsification mayonnaise. Master a clean, bright sauce tomat and you’re on to marinara, and so on. Through three courses, students progress from introduction to food to classical line cooking, then on to the most challenging, classical cooking.
1 of 2
Kathleen Kaufman
Food for Thought: Where Students Hone Culinary and Restaurant Skills
Students cook meals in classical line cooking at Duluth East High School last year. Left to right: Mike Mirtica, Lake Jacques, Hunter Leider (red hat) and Sean Lindblad.
2 of 2
Kathleen Kaufman
Food for Thought: Where Students Hone Culinary and Restaurant Skills
Chef Glenn D’Amour teaches the culinary arts program for the Duluth School District.
Students hone culinary skills in the program’s Food for Thought, which is open to the public for lunch Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays during the school year.
“Guests can expect a dining experience as good as any fine restaurant in the area,” says Glenn. That experience gets a boost from a restaurant-related waiter/waitress course he developed. “The class teaches students how to describe and serve menu items with enthusiasm and prepares them for jobs in any of the best restaurants in Duluth.”
On the menu are classic salads, soups, sandwiches and entrées like Cajun penne pasta, scallops in saffron sauce and salmon Oscar. Shrimp dishes (shared here) are favorites. It is a challenging menu by any measure, created by a chef with decades of experience developing successful restaurants and signature recipes.
“I want our Food for Thought customers to walk away from eating a dish with origins in Italy or France, having tasted it exactly the way it would have been made in those countries, which means working with exactly the right, high-quality ingredients.”
Glenn has been the instructor of the culinary arts program for eight years. Program alumni are working in our region’s top restaurants, including Stephanie Madson, sous chef at Restaurant 301. So why did one of our most successful and accomplished executive chefs make the effort to go back to school and get a bachelor’s degree so that he could teach high schoolers?
“I started out rough, a bad kid headed in the wrong direction. It wasn’t until I found food that someone told me I could do something right.”
And boy did he do things right. “I rose pretty quickly to leadership in the kitchen and found real success in the food industry.”
He is proud to say that he has found and fostered some talented young chefs through his program.
“You can see it right away. They come in with what I call a ‘kitchen sense.’ They take what you teach them and expand on it almost immediately.
“I want to give my students a flavor of what the restaurant and hospitality industry is and what it has to offer. Combine food with an aptitude for chemistry and you could become a food chemist, which is a growing and high-paying field. Mix food with a talent for writing and photography and you have a potential career in food writing.”
And that leads to the last lesson that Glenn teaches his students.
“I sit the whole class down for one final lecture and tell them what I wish someone had told me when I was their age. It is their decision-making that will decide where they go and how far they go. Great things can happen to you, wonderful opportunities open up when you make good decisions.”
Glenn gets his satisfaction when students sucessfully move on in life. “The best thing is when former students come back to me and say they listened to me … and it launched their career.”
And that kind of result leaves one with plenty of food for thought.
Thai Shrimp Stir Fry
Serves 2
- 1/4 c. oil
- 2 eggs, whipped
- 8-12 shrimp, half steamed or precooked (thawed if frozen)
- 2 tsp. fresh garlic, chopped
- 2 tsp. fresh ginger, chopped
- 1/2 c. green onion (chopped)
- 1/2 c. carrots, blanched (sliced)
- 1/2 c. peas (fresh or frozen)
- 2 pinches sugar
- 2-1/2 c. rice (after it’s cooked)
- 4 tsp. oyster sauce
- 2 tsp. chili sauce
- 2 tsp. soy sauce
- 1/2 c. tomatoes, diced
- cilantro, chopped, to garnish
Heat the oil and add the whipped eggs. Stir in the shrimp, garlic, ginger and onion. Sauté onion for one minute.
Add the carrots, peas and 2 pinches of sugar. Stir until heated. Add the rice.
While stirring, add oyster sauce, chili sauce and soy sauce. Just at the end add the tomatoes, but don’t overcook them.
Presentation tip: Heap the ingredients into a bowl, then turn upside down on a plate for best display. Put a pinch of cilantro on top for garnish.
Half-smoked Irish Salmon
Serves 5-6
- 2 Tbsp. butter, melted
- 2 shallots
- 1 c. fresh fennel bulb, chopped
- 1 c. water or vegetable stock
- 1 c. white wine
- 3 lbs. salmon fillets, skinned
- 1/2 c. heavy cream
- 1/2 lb. butter, cut into cubes & chilled
- 1/4 c. fresh fennel tops, minced
- 1/4 c. fresh fennel tops, chopped and reserved for sprinkling
- salt & pepper to taste
Preheat oven to 325° F.
Slowly caramelize the shallots and fennel in the 2 Tbsp. butter, and then add the stock and wine. Simmer for 10 minutes. This is for poaching liquid.
This recipe calls for you to lightly smoke the salmon in a separate smoking pan or in a smoker without cooking it, about 5 minutes. However, the recipe will work great without smoking, just jump to the next step.
Lay the fillets in a 2-inch shallow pan and cover them with poaching liquid. (Salmon should be skinned.) Bake salmon in the pan at 325° for 10 to 15 minutes or until salmon is just done – 145°. If you prefer, you can poach the fish on top of the stove with the liquid reaching 190°.
Pour excess liquid from salmon into a saucepan, and reduce the liquid to 3/4 cup, then keep salmon warm. In a mixing bowl, strain the poaching liquid, incorporate the cold butter and minced fennel.
Just before serving, pour butter sauce over salmon and sprinkle with chopped fennel tops.
Hawaiian Garlic Shrimp
Serves 2
Seasoning:
- 1 c. flour
- 2 Tbsp. paprika
- 1 Tbsp. chipotle or cayenne pepper, ground
Main:
- 8 large shrimp (4 per serving)
- 1 c. clarified butter
- 1 Tbsp. garlic, chopped
- 4 oz. shrimp stock
- lemon juice (from half a lemon)
- 4 oz. pineapple juice
Sauce:
- 4 Tbsp. whole butter, cold
- 2 tsp. parsley, chopped fine
Mix together the dry ingredients for the seasoning. Dredge shrimp in the seasoned flour. Place heated clarified butter in sauté pan and cook shrimp halfway. Add the garlic and cook until brown.
Quickly add all of the stock (with lemon and pineapple juice) and finish cooking until shrimp is done (when shrimp is white and not opaque).
Set cooked shrimp aside on a plate. Place cold butter into a sauce pan and warm with parsley. Pour the sauce over the shrimp.
Good to Know Before You Go
Food for Thought restaurant at Duluth East High School is open to the public for lunch Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays until May 21.
Meals are served on a pre-order basis. Patrons need to call 24 hours in advance to make reservations and leave their menu selections. The reservation line is 218-336-8845, ext. 4055. (Please note: reservations, or changes, cannot be made on the day of your meal.)
Call and leave a message with your name, phone number, date you wish to come, the number of people reserving a seat and your meal selection from the online menu and weekly specials. You’ll receive a confirmation call.
Seating is at 11:30 to 11:35 a.m., so guests are asked to arrive between 11:20 and 11:30 a.m. (Late arrivals cannot be seated because of time constraints.) Only checks or cash are accepted. Prices can range from $7 for salads or burgers to $12 for scallops in saffron sauce, or up to $15 for beef Wellington.
East High School is at 40th Avenue East and Superior Street, with parking available in the main lot or at the curb outside the entrance. Enter where you see the red awning to the right of the main entrance.
To view the menu online, go to duluth-east.isd709.org.
Juli Kellner hosts “WDSE Cooks” for Channel 8 WDSE-WIRT public television.