Photos by Andy Tullis / The BulletinCascade Culinary Institute instructor, Jessica Smith, top center, gives instructions to students as they practice their knife skills during Central Oregon Community CollegeÌs culinary youth camp at the Cascade Culinary Institute in Bend Wednesday morning.

Twenty aspiring chefs were hard at work in one of the kitchens of the Cascade Culinary Institute last Wednesday.

They were furiously chopping potatoes, using their knife skills to dice, brunoise and julienne the starchy staple. The students held a laserlike focus on their work, typical of only the most serious of culinary students.

The oldest student in the class wasn’t more than 14 years old.

“My hope is that this camp keeps their love of food going,” said Jessica Smith, the culinary camp’s instructor. “I just want them to have that hands-on experience and be able to bring that home with them. Cooking is such a good family activity.”

The aspiring chefs in the All-American Culinary Youth Camp turned the culinary classroom into a fully functioning restaurant kitchen, grilling hamburger patties, whisking salad dressing and slathering olive oil on hamburger buns to prep them for grilling.

But before any of this took place, the students started the day with a lesson in knife skills.

Students, wearing the chef’s trademark tall white hat, huddled around a large table while their instructor showed them how to make classic knife cuts with a potato. Students learned the first step in perfecting these cuts was to start by shaping the potato into a square.

They watched with a hushed attentiveness as Smith showed them how to make the precise, matchstick-thin cuts that constituted the julienne, the tiny cubed cuts that typified a brunoise cut, and the bulkier square cuts that represented a medium-dice cut.

“What does keeping the cuts uniform help to achieve?” Smith asked the class.

One student raised her hand and answered without missing a beat.

“So it all cooks the same.”

Students were then provided with their own knives and chopping boards and dispersed to table stations across the classroom. Earlier in the week, they received a crash course in knife safety and how to properly handle blades.

Alan Gottlieb, 12, carefully diced one of his potatoes, creating a plethora of tiny cubes. He put his knife down on the cutting board, held up one of the brunoise-cut potatoes and showed it to a friend at the next station.

“Look — this one’s perfect!” he said.

A second later, the starchy cube slid out of Alan’s fingers and bounced off the ground.

“Shoot,” he muttered, picking up the dirty potato slice off the floor. But it didn’t set the young chef back for long. A moment later, he used his handy knife skills to make a brand new, perfectly cut cube.

He said knowing how to hold your hands in the right way while chopping is key to staying safe and making good cuts.

“I learned that you want to hold your left hand like a claw,” Alan said. “You want to tuck your fingernails under. That way, you can’t get hurt.”

At another station, Kenzie Williams, 12, held a potato delicately with one hand while slicing with the other. She sported a blue bandage on her left index finger.

“I just cut my fingernail a little bit earlier this week,” she said, holding up her finger. “I’ve never really cut myself before, but it didn’t really hurt.”

Kenzie said she signed up for the camp because she loves cooking. She said both of her grandmothers are great chefs, and she wants to be like them one day.

“I like learning about all the fancy cuts,” Kenzie said.

Across the room, Ben Capozzola, 11, one of the few students not wearing a white chef’s hat, stood back and looked at the pile of medium-diced cubes on his chopping board.

He said he could see himself becoming a chef one day, but only if his first job choice wasn’t available.

“I really want to be a pro baseball player,” Ben said.

As for that missing hat, Ben said he wasn’t wearing it because he couldn’t: His dog ate it the night before.

Once students chopped all the potatoes at their stations, they transitioned to a new activity. After cleaning up the classroom, they began making a meal that showcased their newly learned knife skills. The meal, which consisted of potato salad, sliders, watermelon soup and carrot cupcakes, was a practice run for the same meal the students would make for their parents at a special luncheon Thursday.

“I hope that the kids learn here that it’s not that difficult to help out with dinner, rather than always going to the drive-through,” Smith said.

— Reporter: 541-383-0354, mkehoe@bendbulletin.com.