Culinary crusaders.

Byline: Anne Williams The Register-Guard

Some chefs might react a bit defensively at being told their gnocchi is too salty, their bacon bits are burned and their garnish of spring greens is so 1990s.

But the four young cooks on Willamette High High School's culinary arts team were grateful for the advice, delivered kindly on Monday morning by Lane Community College chef/instructor Clive Wanstall as he sampled the fruits of their labor.

They understood that any one of those lapses, small as they may seem, could spell doom in the upcoming National ProStart Student Invitational, to be held in Charlotte, N.C., on April 21.

"It's always the little things that put you over the edge," remarked Austin Berge, 18, whose job in competition will be to prepare to perfection a Cobb salad of avocado, comice pear, candied walnuts, Rogue Creamery bleu cheese, apple wood-smoked bacon and mesclun greens, all of it piled in an edible bowl made from grilled, shredded Parmesan.

He and the other three team members - Krystle Kinports, Christina Knotts and Stacy Tognazzini, all of them seniors and all of them planning careers as chefs - have proved themselves and their menu once, nabbing first place among 31 teams in the Boyds Coffee Culinary Cup last month and earning an all-expenses-paid trip to represent Oregon at the national level.

Under the rules of the contest, which are the same at both the state and national levels, the team has one hour to prepare - from scratch - a three-course dinner for two, using just two burners and no electric or battery-operated equipment.

Willamette's menu - designed in consultation with mentor Frank Beber, executive chef at the Shadow Hills Country Club - also includes a main course of pan-fried wild salmon with apple gremolata, sauteed beets and ricotta gnocchi with white truffle and chive sauce and, for dessert, mascarpone panna cotta and chocolate hazelnut pancake on a caramel stand with huckleberry sauce.

A flotilla of judges rates them on virtually everything imaginable: safety, sanitation, teamwork, presentation, recipes, cost of ingredients, taste, even how much food is wasted.

"It's very intense," said Willamette teacher and team adviser Martha Humphreys, who was named national ProStart Teacher of the Year in 2006.

Pulling off a win at the national contest, where they'll be up against 35 top-ranked teams from around the country, is a tall order, and the students know it.

So at 7:45 a.m. Monday, while their classmates were slumbering through the first blissful hours of spring break, the foursome was already in Humphreys' classroom preparing for the latest in a long series of trial runs - this one under the watchful eye of not just Humphreys and Beber but Wanstall, a bushy-browed Brit with an irreverent sense of humor.

While Berge fussed with his Cobb salad, Knotts kept a laser-like focus on dessert, creating adorable, squat little "tables" by pouring hot caramel sauce over silicone muffin cups and waiting for it to harden.

She drew delicate designs from chocolate, huckleberry sauce and sour cream on both plates, and garnished each panna cotta with fresh huckleberries and whimsical curlicues made from winding sugar syrup around a thermometer.

Kinports, meanwhile, concentrated on the entree, which involved fashioning the gnocchi dumplings and julienning two kinds of beets. Tognazzini, the team captain, pan-fried the salmon and assisted with the other courses.

Despite the team's calm, deliberate focus and near-constant communication about which burners were available, from which direction a hot pan was coming and how much time was left on the clock, preparation ran about a minute too long - potentially a deal-breaker in competition.

Wanstall lauded the team for its flow and communication, but joked that the flaws - among them falling behind on time and occasionally bumping elbows - were "nothing another 30 or 40 practices won't cure."

Sampling the dishes, he offered a long list of suggestions: take the salmon off the heat sooner, use dressing on the salad greens, make sure the pears are ripe, use a pepper mill instead of a shaker, have more rubber spatulas on hand, place excess food in labeled leftover baggies rather than tossing it in the compost or trash.

"News flash: It's going to go in the garbage anyhow, but you need to show that, in a real kitchen, you know what you're doing," he explained - and that means wasting as little food as possible.

Sitting across the table from him, the students listened intently to every word, nodding and occasionally asking questions.

They'll do it all again today, and as many more times as they can squeeze in before April 20, striving to get it just right.

"The more we do it, the better we get and the easier it gets, every time," said Tognazzini, who missed a family trip to the coast this week in order to practice.

Humphreys is convinced it's that drive, shared equally by all four, that's made the difference for Willamette this year.

"It's strictly their dedication," said Humphreys, who led a team to the national contest in 2004. "They knew from day one it would take a real commitment to win the state competition, and they're even more committed now that they're going to the national competition."

TO HELP

The Willamette High School culinary arts team is raising funds to pay for its mentor chef, Frank Beber, to join it at the national competition in Charlotte, N.C., in April. To help, send a check to Willamette, c/o Martha Humphreys, 1801 Echo Hollow Road, Eugene, OR 97402.