FOOD NETWORKING PALMDALE TEEN WINS COOKING PRIZE.

Byline: Charles F. Bostwick Staff Writer

PALMDALE - Palmdale teenager Bryan Mouron started cooking at age 5, making scrambled eggs with his baby sitter. By junior high school, he was preparing gourmet meals for family dinners.

On Saturday, it all paid off when he won a competition against the top high school cooks from around the United States and Canada, earning a full scholarship from The Art Institute's Best Teen Chef contest.

``I like to cook, so that's what I do - I cook,'' said Mouron, a Palmdale High School graduate who is getting a job washing dishes at Disneyland's exclusive members-only Club 33 restaurant while he attends the Art Institute of California's Orange County campus.

The 17-year-old's goal is to become Club 33's executive chef, then eventually run a restaurant of his own.

On Monday, Mouron was staying at a New York City hotel overlooking Central Park, preparing for an appearance on CNN at which he was expecting to prepare one of his competition dishes in a studio kitchen.

``For some reason, it's not really that big of a deal,'' Mouron said of his impending TV appearance. ``Maybe it's just not hitting me. It'll take a couple days to hit me.''

For Saturday's competition in Orange County, Mouron and 18 other teens from as far as Pittsburgh and Vancouver, British Columbia, prepared chilled avocado and cucumber soup, Caesar salad, steamed California vegetables with penne pasta and macadamia-encrusted mahi mahi with tropical fruit salsa.

``We got a real crop of real professional kids, real passionate individuals,'' said Paul Yarmoluk, The Art Institute of California-Orange County's culinary arts academic director.

Over the last two months, Mouron had cooked the meal five or six times at home and about a dozen times practicing at the Art Institute's Orange County campus.

``I knew it like the back of my hand, but once you get into the kitchen ... the nerves start going,'' he said.

Mouron got to the national competition by winning in March against 10 other high schoolers who had applied for the $30,000 scholarship to attend the Orange County campus' culinary program.

Mouron and the others got to that first cook-off by submitting a portfolio that included a menu and recipe for a two-course dinner and an essay on why they wanted to be chefs. The teens' menus were evaluated for their thoroughness and their recipes for innovation and realism.

Mouron's menu was for chicken linguine with white wine sauce, bruschetta on the side, and tossed salad with vinaigrette dressing.

``That's my favorite menu to fix - I do that all the time,'' Mouron said.

The chicken recipe came years ago from a family friend, and Mouron modified it.

``I experiment a lot,'' he said.

Mouron, one of three children whose father, Bob, works for the state, saw his cooking for the family take on more importance at age 16 when his mother, Arleen, was diagnosed with breast cancer. She is in remission now, he said.

But he still does most of the family cooking, when he's not at work bagging groceries at Stater Bros. supermarket in Palmdale.

``If I'm home, I'm usually cooking dinner for everybody,'' Mouron said.

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(color in AV edition only) Bryan Mouron, a graduate of Palmdale High School, readies a ladle of sauce during practice for becoming a professional chef. Mouron won a scholarship Saturday from The Art Institute of California.