TEACHING CULINARY ARTS THROUGH RATIOS  

Chefs John Reiss and Alisa Malavenda will be presenting at the Educational Best Practices portion of the CAFÉ Leadership Conference in Salt Lake City on the topic of teaching culinary arts through ratios (throw out the recipes!)

Most novices to the world of culinary arts easily become slaves to written recipes, ignoring the bigger picture of organization, productivity, and time management. The truth about professional cooking is that most operations depend on their staff to step outside the box of the written recipe, and to cook intuitively. By expanding traditional methods of teaching to include applying ratios to standard cooking techniques, this seminar will give attendees insight into different and exciting ways to teach culinary arts.

Discover ways to help students close the recipe book and hit the deck running. Without sacrificing classic techniques and culinary science, culinary educators will learn how to help their students use ratios and hone their ability to cook intuitively. In addition to benefiting from the firsthand experiences of the seminar leaders, participants will be provided with helpful charts and diagrams showing basic ratios. These will be useful as both a teaching tool for educators and a reference tool for students. Topics to be covered include the following:

• Cooking with Ratios
• Culinary Science
• Math and the Art of Guesstimates
• Mise en Place
• Station Organization
• Classic Techniques
• Cooking with Logic, Intuition, and Common Sense 

Chef John Reiss, CEC, CCE, is a culinary instructor at Milwaukee Area Technical College. John Reiss has over 25 years of teaching experience and 40 years of foodservice industry experience. Chef Reiss currently teaches professional restaurant cooking, a course that supports the award-winning, student-operated Cuisine Restaurant in the Culinary Arts Association Degree at MATC.

Chef Alisa Malavenda, CCC, is a culinary instructor at the Art Institute of Wisconsin. She has 30 years of restaurant and kitchen management experience as a restaurant chef-owner, private chef, caterer, and culinary educators in Milwaukee, Florida and New Jersey. She has published two cookbooks and collaborates and teaches with Chef Paola Baccetti at one of the top 10 culinary schools in Tuscany.

Register to the 10th Annual CAFE Leadership Conference. You can use your credit card or asked to be billed or reference a Purchase Order.

Hotel rates are $109/night and you can use the new TRAX system from the airport to within ˝ block of the hotel for a one-way rate of $2.50!