Pulaski students get cooking on national stage

ProStart program gets youth involved with professional food prep
By: 
Lee Pulaski
City Editor

Dahlia Maroszek had never considered pursuing cooking as a career, recalling a disastrous time years ago that she had messed up instant pudding at home.

However, the Pulaski High School student and four of her classmates got the chance to showcase their culinary skills on a national stage as they competed at the national ProStart competition held May 6-9 in Washington, D.C. Making up the rest of the team were Sophia Berg, Angely Lee, Abi Roberts and team manager Brayden Pelot.

The chance to go to the national competition came after Pulaski won the state competition earlier this year. Pulaski was able to compare its food prep skills with other public schools as well as charter schools that are specifically geared toward culinary education. Pulaski did not place at the national contest, according to Liz Moehr, Pulaski culinary arts teacher. The winner at the national level was a public high school from Delaware.

“The National Restaurant Association Education Foundation has a two-year curriculum that students get hands-on experience to get them ready to be in the culinary and hospitality industry,” Moehr said in describing the ProStart program. “If students complete both years with 400 hours of work experience, and there’s certain competencies they have to get at the workplace, and there’s two year-end tests … they get college credits for a number of different culinary schools across the country.”

Among the places nearby accepting ProStart credits are Fox Valley Technical College, Northeast Wisconsin Technical College and University of Wisconsin-Stout, according to Moehr. More than 130,000 students in 1,700 high schools across the United States participate in the ProStart program.

The students were tasked at the national competition with making an appetizer, a main course and a dessert, with only 60 minutes and two butane burners to prepare all three. Pulaski started with a lobster ravioli with sage butter sauce and red pepper chutney, followed by the main dish of porcini-breaded veal chop served atop stracchino polenta, sauteed broccolini with red peppers and caper gremolata aioli. The dessert was a raspberry tiramisu with coffee pearls.

“It’s quite the undertaking,” Moehr noted.

Besides prepping the food, the students had to come up with their menu, price out how much it was going to cost to make it and determine the menu price, according to Moehr.

Maroszek said the experience of competing at a national level was “super awesome and super stressful simultaneously.” She originally hadn’t planned on competing for Pulaski, but when a friend said she was going to try to make the team, she decided it might be worth trying.

“We’re small-town Pulaski competing against, like, so many higher-level schools,” Maroszek said. “Our fingers were crossed that a public school would take it all.”

There were some challenges that the Pulaski ProStart team had to face, including lost materials that threw off the team. But Moehr said that it didn’t matter that the team didn’t place, as long as something positive was gained from the experience.

“I couldn’t be more proud of them, because they showed that they knew what they were doing,” Moehr said. “Their floor judge said they were one of the most poised teams. They just generally looked like they love cooking, and that’s what I care about.”

While having the skills to prepare difficult dishes does help in a competition like ProStart, Maroszek said teamwork was a key factor in what made the Pulaski team move so far. The team members had not all been friends when they first came together, but they’re certainly bonding now.

“We all trust each other enough to be like, ‘This person’s going to have my back.’ We’re going to get a little bit funny here, but even then, we’re going to be up until 1 a.m. talking for no reason,” Maroszek said.

There were over 20 regular three-hour practices prior to the Wisconsin ProStart competition where the students got to refine their dishes, experiment with flavors and more. Moehr noted the students also came during their free periods to practice and even came in a couple of times when school was not in session.

The constant prepping and refining was a benefit to Pulaski High School teachers, as they got to taste the students’ work, according to Moehr.

“We were toying with flavors and seasonings until the very end,” Moehr said.

Maroszek got a lot of her culinary skills in school, noting that she wasn’t allowed to be in the kitchen much when she was younger.

“I screwed up instant pudding when I was young so bad that no one would eat it,” Maroszek said with a laugh. “I enjoyed taking cooking classes in summer school at the middle school, and then the high school had such a broad variety. I took Foods for Life, and it was during COVID, so I didn’t actually get to cook here.”

The exposure to culinary training has made Maroszek seriously consider going into the restaurant business as a career.

“One of the things I say is that food is the way to someone’s heart,” Maroszek said. “If I bake cookies, this is my way of introducing myself to you.”


lpulaski@newmedia-wi.com