Posted by The Beacon News, IL on August 21, 2008 at 07:07:03:
Sweet success
Local pastry chef rises to the top in first national competition
August 20, 2008
By SUSAN FRICK CARLMAN scarlman@scn1.com
Andrew Chlebana's passion is pastry - something he picked up as a child whose parents and grandmother were bakers. His cooking abilities were further honed during his Boy Scout years, a period when camp-outs always bring out the inner cook.
"If you wanted to eat, you had to cook," said Chlebana, a culinary arts professor at Joliet Junior College and the pastry chef at White Eagle Golf Club in Naperville.
» Today, at age 33, the Plainfield resident is at the top of his profession.
Chlebana took top honors last month at the American Culinary Federation's annual convention in Las Vegas, earning the title of National Pastry Chef of the Year.
Precision pastries
It could be called a labor of love.
The event itself was intense, three hours of carefully choreographed movements that involved more than two dozen different recipes. In the weeks leading up to the convention, Chlebana and his apprentice, JJC culinary graduate Samantha Callanan, practiced all of the dishes in synchronized lockstep, running through their timed routine five times. They were keenly aware that when their moment in the spotlight arrived, everything would have to be just so. Work surfaces had to be kept entirely free of clutter, and every last tool and ingredient had to be within reach and ready to go.
"It's pretty crazy," Chlebana said. "They look at your jacket at the end, to make sure your jacket's clean."
A dazzling array of toothsome goods comprised Chlebana's entry. Among them were a chocolate-banana tart with vanilla mascarpone cream and strawberry sorbet; a blueberry-pistachio cake; lemon-olive oil ice cream swirled into handmade cones; yeast doughnuts dusted with ginger sugar; and a show-stopping creation made of almond cake layered with chocolate mousse and a caramel-tropical fruit cream, edged with macaroon wafers and topped with sculpted sugar.
In choosing the preparations to submit, Chlebana had to strike a careful balance between bling and substance. The judges need to be assured, he said, that the participants have their classic technique down pat.
"I think in competitions it's fun to do a little something different. You want to show them something they haven't seen before, but if you go too far over the line, it can hurt you," said Chlebana, who saw that happen to another contestant when he crafted blueberries into a caviar-like form and quickly discovered the judges didn't get it. "If you get sizzle and no steak, they look at it and they go, 'Why?'"
Learning and teaching
In the course of studying the pastry arts at JJC and at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., he has had a chance to find out why. As a pastry pro, he's drawn by the aesthetics and the magic that can be made with thickeners and sugars, but he is equally fascinated by the chemistry of baking. One of his current interests is a new sort of starch that gels in heat, unlike existing ones that require cold temperatures.
Chlebana is pleased to see that his profession is increasingly being drawn into research and development work for food manufacturers. It's a partnership that makes sweet sense.
"There needs to be some sort of connection between the food scientists and the R and D chefs," he said.
His role as a student of the craft is closely related to the teaching hat - or perhaps it's a toque - that he has worn at the Joliet culinary school for the past three years. A 1995 graduate of the program himself, Chlebana especially relishes the experimental aspect of cooking, and he makes a point of sharing it.
"I like figuring things out, trying a new recipe, and if you don't like it, playing around with it," he said.
While some rules of baking need to be followed closely, he encourages students to turn their creative instincts loose as well, when the opportunity arises.
"I know my grandmother didn't scale things out when she baked," he said.
He believes it's important for the hands-on pastry arts to be passed along.
"It would be a dying craft if you couldn't show people how to do it," said Chlebana, whose four young kids one day will be shown how to do it, too.
Eye on the future
He's aware that chefs have a reputation for having testy dispositions, but he tends to have a low-key temperament as a teacher. A big ego would only get in the way.
"We're trying to raise the bar. The program at Joliet is pretty well known (but) the industry is changing, and we have to keep up," he said.
He's planning to keep up with the competitive circuit, too. The Las Vegas triumph came after only one prior foray into the genre, a regional contest in Milwaukee last March. He's had nowhere near enough. His next event likely will be a one-hour plated dessert competition in Kansas City, set for November.
"It's a rush," he said. "You get bit by that bug, and you want to do it again."
Chlebana acknowledges that the Las Vegas event was a lot of work, and his expenses weren't entirely offset by the financial support he gathered from his employers, the local chapter of the ACF and other sponsors. But it's extremely pleasing to be chosen as the best of the bunch, and he would do it all again in a heartbeat.
"Now, to be on that list, it's worth it," he said.
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