Teen chef has all the ingredients for success

Published 9:00 pm Tuesday, May 6, 2003

Teen chef Davicia Sughrim has a lot on her plate.

The 18-year-old Lynnwood resident goes to work at a day care center at 6 a.m., is a senior at Edmonds Woodway High School, takes a culinary class later in the day at Sno-Isle Technical Skills Center in Everett, then heads back to work in the late afternoon.

She’s student body president and vice president for Family Career and Community Leaders of America. In her free time she’s getting ready for the cooking challenge of her life.

Sughrim recently beat 10 competitors and won the regional phase of the Best Teen Chef in America competition. She will compete with 18 other teens in the final at The Art Institute of New York City on Saturday.

"I fall asleep with the recipes in my head," Sughrim said of the ingredients she’s been sent to memorize and put together.

When she gets to New York, accompanied by her father, Sughrim will prepare spinach salad with Dijon vinaigrette, a whole roasted chicken, roasted potatoes, sauteed greens, beans and carrots. She’ll also make crab cakes with remoulade sauce.

"It’s a fancy name for tartar sauce," said Becky Pechman, chef instructor at Sno-Isle Technical Skills Center.

Pechman helps Sughrim prepare for the final by providing guidance and tips.

"Become one with your chicken," Pechman advises Sughrim.

Trussing a chicken will become second nature to Sughrim, as will preparing the rest of the ingredients for the final dishes.

"You don’t teach recipes, because there are millions of recipes," Pechman said. "You teach technique."

Pechman has 32 students in the chef program at Sno-Isle where Sughrim has been attending class since September. She wasn’t in Seattle to see Sughrim win the regional title in March. But when she called from a Portland parking lot and heard that Sughrim had won, she sat screaming in her car.

"This is a big deal around here," Pechman said.

So big that Sughrim’s nerves were getting the better of her.

"On the way there I was crying," Sughrim said of the regional competition.

Once she got started on the recipes of two shrimp cocktails, two plates of chicken Chaucer (which Sughrim admits she couldn’t even pronounce) rice pilaf and broccoli, her confidence kicked in. She said she sang to herself as she perfected the recipes she’d already memorized.

The only time she faltered was near the beginning.

"I was clarifying butter and turned around and it had turned to brown butter," Sughrim said.

She thought her father, also a chef, who was watching through the glass, was going to cry. He did.

"I felt bad for her more so than anything," Steve Sughrim said. "But she recovered beautifully."

Davicia Sughrim’s passion for cooking began at an early age when she would accompany her father, who is now a chef with Eurest Dining Services at Microsoft.

It struck the young Davicia Sughrim that people were happy in the kitchen. Later she helped him cater banquets. More recently she’s been working with him on his new business, Seattle Chef Works, a range of ethnic spice rubs soon to be ready for retail stores.

Davicia Sughrim would like someday to open a restaurant with her father. Recently she received news that could help make that a reality.

She’s one of four at Sno-Isle Technical Skills Center to receive a Washington Award for Vocational Excellence scholarship awarded by the state Workforce Training and Education Coordination Board. This scholarship entitles her to two years full tuition to college, once a dream for Sughrim because of money concerns, she said.

Steve Sughrim is happy that his daughter has chosen to be a chef without his urging. But watching Davicia is like his dreams coming true through her, he said. "Honestly," Steve Sughrim said. "She’s going to be 10 times better than I am."

Reporter Christina Harper: 425-339-3491 or harper@heraldnet.com.