Pressure cooking: Teams vie for top chef honors in inaugural competition at WCCC

The three members of the Sizzle Squad combined all the right ingredients to pull off a win in Westmoreland County Community College’s inaugural culinary competition.

Brittany Martin of Belle Vernon drew upon her previous experience working in a restaurant and her love of food-based TV reality shows as she led her team of fellow college staffers to capture the first-place trophy in the test of kitchen skills held on the main campus near Youngwood.

“I love “Top Chef,” I love “Chopped” and I’ve been watching Emeril (Lagasse) since I was in third grade,” said Martin, who coordinates donor and alumni engagement for the college’s educational foundation.

She filled out her team by recruiting Brittany Shinsky of Clarksburg, Indiana County, director of community engagement, and Lorrie Douglass of Derry Township, a workforce development coordinator.

“I needed people who can engage the audience,” Martin said of her teammates. “We’re a fun bunch, we’re friends and we all work together on projects anyway. I knew I’d be in good hands.”

Modeled in part after the “Chopped” show, the WCCC competition attracted four three-member teams comprised of a mix of faculty, staff and students from various departments. They were allowed 90 minutes to prepare an entree and salad from a prearranged list of ingredients and then serve the dishes to three judges who are chefs and faculty members of the WCCC School of Culinary Arts, Baking and Hospitality.

The Sizzle Squad scored points for the flavor and tenderness of their chicken entree, their use of homemade pasta and the creative presentation of their salad, which featured blanched broccoli and was encircled in carrot strips.

“All three of us ate the whole salad,” said judge Cindy Komarinski.

“I’ve had salad before with cucumber wrapped around it,” Martin said of her inspiration for the side dish. “I thought that was so neat.”

Second place went to a team formed by WCCC instructor Dale Glessner of Latrobe and two of his welding students —Jessica Kotchey of New Kensington and Sarah Mesinger of North Huntingdon.

The judges took notice of the balsamic onions in the team’s salad and the fact that they bounced back after a potato faux pas and were able to serve their culinary creations before time expired.

“I dropped my first set of potatoes for the entree,” Mesinger admitted. “They were baked potatoes that were cut open, and I dropped them face down all over the floor. After that, it was really stressful.”

Still, she said, “It wasn’t the end of the world.”

Mesinger made up for the mishap by preparing a bacon dressing for the salad.

“This was pretty chaotic,” Kotchey said of the competition, “but I’m kind of used to working under pressure like this.”

Her previous jobs have included a stint in a nursing home and managing a warehouse.

Kotchey veered from her original plan of operating a home-based baking business and now is intent on starting her own metal fabrication venture when she completes the two-year WCCC welding program.

Mesinger is slated to finish at WCCC this summer. Then she’s hoping to land a job in a local shop.

“There are a lot of machine and welding shops in the North Huntingdon area,” she said.

Mesinger was inspired to enroll in the program while working in the office of an area construction company.

“They did industrial construction, so they had a lot of welders,” she said. “I enjoyed seeing the guys make stuff. I wanted to do something with my hands.”

A team headed by Greg Nemchick of Hempfield, the only culinary student in the competition, won the People’s Choice Award, voted on by audience members who witnessed the competition.

A nontraditional college student who was part of the high school Class of 1974 in McKeesport, Nemchick was assisted in the competition by two WCCC staffers — his computer instructor, Mike Caglia of Acme, and his counselor, Jesse Somers of Latrobe.

Nemchick enrolled at WCCC after retiring in 2017 as CEO of a commercial office furniture company. He was slated to graduate at the end of the current spring semester.

“I did a lot of cooking and baking during covid,” he said. “I always wanted to be a chef. After about three years off, I thought, ‘Wow, this is my opportunity.’”

At the last minute, the competitors learned there was an additional “mystery” ingredient they had to incorporate into their menu: horseradish.

“Some used it in the salad dressing,” said Komarinski.

“I thought it was awesome,” she said of the competition and the response it got from competitors and spectators. “It was so much fun.

“We wanted to bring the community back to the community college. We wanted to make sure we had something that was fun and that people could engage in, no matter their level of experience.”

Money raised through entry and audience admission fees will be donated to a food pantry at WCCC, the event organizers said.