FORT DRUM, N.Y. (Jan. 31, 2024) -- People often say, “Failure is not an option,” but sometimes it is a necessity.
For the 10th Mountain Division (LI) culinary specialists honing their craft at the Fort Drum Culinary Arts Center, failure is an opportunity to learn and push the boundaries of what they can do.
Since November, members of the Fort Drum Culinary Arts Team have trained daily to develop menus worthy of a fine-dining restaurant for the 48th Joint Culinary Training Event at Fort Gregg-Adams, Virginia, in March.
Staff Sgt. David Wisbauer, team captain, said perfection on a plate doesn’t happen without a fair share of mistakes made along the way.
“Everything we do is subject to mistakes,” he said. “But often, we learn more from our mistakes than we do from our successes.”
Sgt. Shunnaurtica George, culinary specialist with the 41st Brigade Engineer Battalion, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, was toiling over a delicate plate of mini tarts for a cold dessert platter: blueberry, peach, strawberry, and lemon – each about the diameter of a quarter.
But after finishing two, the next one crumbled while plating and ruined the entire production. George took a moment to compose herself and began the process all over again.
“I actually cried when it broke,” she said the next day. “It takes a toll on you, because you can be so close to perfecting something and then one little thing happens – one thing doesn’t look right, or one certain thing is missing – and it’s frustrating.”
“But I got it now,” she added. “The only thing now is perfecting it – making sure it looks perfect.”
Sgt. Melissa Galvan experienced frustration set in when she didn’t have all the ingredients needed for her Pastry Chef of the Year entry. Still, she managed an entire run-through using whatever substitutes she could find to complete her dessert.
“So, a bunch of things happened that I was not really happy with,” she said. “But I’m still working on it. I’m trying to make a plate that you go ‘wow’ when you see it. Instead of just good, let me see how I can make it, so people get crazy just by looking at it. Then they get more crazy after tasting it. That’s what I’m trying to do.”
She acknowledges that attaining that “wow” factor is going to take hard work. Galvan earned a spot on the team roster after winning Fort Drum Chef of the Year in 2023, and she is motivated to improve on her patisserie skills.
“I know it’s my first time, but I want a gold medal,” she said. “You never know unless you try, and I’m going to try my hardest, you know?”
Spc. Jeffrey Jackson Jr., a culinary specialist with 2nd Battalion, 14th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, stared for what seemed like an eternity at a portion of plain panna cotta, like an artist to a blank canvas.
This was but one plate of a four-course vegan meal in the cold food table category, but it had all his attention as he thought of ways to elevate it to a gold-medal dessert. He worked with blueberries, then strawberries and then kiwi, trying different techniques and designs, drawing other team members in for advice and opinion.
It was all about trial and error, he said. That, and tempering his urge to overcomplicate things when simplicity works just as well.
“I find it sometimes very difficult to come up with simple solutions,” he said. “I kind of thrive more with complexity. I need to tone down my mind a little and go from simple to difficult, and not the other way around.”
Jackson compared it to learning chord progressions on the guitar and wanting to play something complicated before mastering the basics.
“It’s frustrating at first, but then I get excited when I actually start figuring it out,” he said. “It’s the same thing for me with culinary arts.”
As an alternate on the professional chefs team, Jackson works on a variety of cold plates on the team table display – one of several categories
required to earn the coveted Team of the Year award.
“The cold food table is all about how the food looks,” Wisbauer added. “The judges really want to see how many techniques you use and how many different components can you create to perfection. There’s a big creative process to it because you can easily do it three, four, five different ways.”
So, they start over. Again, and again.
“To do well in all the cooking events, you need that repetition,” Wisbauer said. “If you practice your menu enough times, it becomes muscle memory. Then it becomes easier when you have to cook for the judges, because you know the recipes, you know all the steps and you are more relaxed doing it.”
“I know the word gets overused, but it really fosters resiliency in all of us,” he added. “Knowing we have are allowed to fail is a huge relief because if you accept that it might happen, then you’re willing to take the risk. And from the risks we take – and the mistakes we make – comes perfection.”
Photos of the team training inside the Fort Drum Culinary Arts Center are available at www.flickr.com/photos/drum10thmountain/albums/72177720314478479.
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