PUHI — Chef Lee Anne Wong said cooks are just craftsmen. Television makes them famous. One of the stars on the public television series, “Moveable Feast with Fine Cooking,” spent Tuesday morning with Kauai Community College culinary arts students. “It’s
PUHI — Chef Lee Anne Wong said cooks are just craftsmen. Television makes them famous.
One of the stars on the public television series, “Moveable Feast with Fine Cooking,” spent Tuesday morning with Kauai Community College culinary arts students.
“It’s really good to have some of these (well-known) chefs to come and teach us,” said Angelito Roslin, a KCC student. “It shows us that we can achieve things we never would have thought we could.”
The chef drew from the pages of her book, “Dumplings All Day Wong,” to create three different fillings while demonstrating the different folds for the wide number of dumplings.
“It needs more salt,” Wong said, stopping a student helper to taste the developing filling. “What? Would you believe there are chefs out there who never taste their food? They’re robots. I love eating!”
Through her childhood growing up as a second-generation Chinese in New York, Wong was drawn to sports and typical American favorites such as pizza, jalapeno poppers, and burgers.
Her passion for cuisine was fired up during her first year studying fashion design when she started cooking for friends. She graduated from The French Culinary Institute.
This served as her diving board where she jumped into the restaurant world, cooking with Marcus Samuelsson’s Aquavit, Jean Georges Vongrichten’s Chinese venture, Restaurant 66, and moved to different kitchens throughout the world.
When she appeared on the first season of Bravo’s “Top Chef,” Wong’s fusion of flavors took her to No. 4 in the competition, and the show’s producers saw her innate talent and media experience, bringing her on as the supervising culinary producer on Top Chef, and its spin-off, “Top Chef Masters.”
Hayley Matson-Mathes of the Hawaii Culinary Education Foundation said Wong’s visit was coordinated through Kauai Community College.
“We usually do one visit each semester,” Matson-Mathes said. “This is done after consulting with the college on what areas will benefit the students.”
