Recipe for success

OREM — Rolin Christensen will still make the traditional oyster stuffing for his family's Thanksgiving feast when he's home in LaVerkin.

Jennifer Clark, of Provo, will be helping with the Thanksgiving dinner fixings, but she'll step back and let her mom bake the pies.

Eileen Marshall is under her husband's orders to bake her famous cherry pie even though she, like Clark and Christensen, are on the road to graduating as chefs in the Utah Valley State College Culinary Arts program.

"My husband was concerned when I decided to do this," said Marshall, a mother of five and grandmother of seven. "I've always loved to cook. It's always been my thing. But he was worried it would change things, and he has favorites that I make. He still gets pretty much hometown cooking most of the time, but I can cook uptown, too, because of the confidence the program has given me."

"In most situations, you need to do things the way the head chef does it. At home, my mom is clearly the head chef," Clark said. Clark graduates in April after which she plans to go into catering or food advertising.

"My father was the one who got me into cooking," Christensen said. "And the oyster stuffing is a tradition. The difference now is they expect me to do all the cooking."

Christensen said he doesn't mind. He's a huge fan of old-time recipes and comfort foods like meat and potatoes.

"I actually want to have my own restaurant someday," he said.

Christensen has two more semesters until graduation. He chose UVSC after checking out a number of different cooking schools.

"This was actually much cheaper and had a very good reputation," he said.

UVSC currently has 36 students who learn and work in about 2,700 square feet of space. There is a waiting list of 150, so in the next year, the program will expand to accommodate 144 students in 39,000 square feet of space in one of the former WordPerfect buildings in north Orem.

In the program, students learn to make gourmet recipes from scratch and to present those foods expertly.

Over the course of three and a half years, they learn to develop menus, shop efficiently and produce food in a variety of quantities. Their classwork is on the rotating menu served at Greg's, an in-house, highly popular, sit-down restaurant located in the McKay Events Center. (To make a reservation at Greg's, call 863-7054.)