LCI students race to Cannes

The Louisiana Culinary Institute is in the throes of its annual Race to Cannes cooking competition, in which top students vie for a spot on the American Pavilion cooking team at the Cannes Film Festival in France this May. The LCI has held the local competition since 2009, which gives a student the opportunity to cook at the main gathering spot for Americans at the famed event. The LCI winner will help prep more than 1,000 meals a day and cater parties, press events, receptions and luncheons.

Last Friday, the bracket-style competition featured four students crafting original dishes from specified proteins, starches and vegetables. Group One participants Corrito Geologo and Janesa Emberson-Cottrell were assigned eggs, broccoli and jasmine brown rice, which Geologo converted to the winning dish, arroz caldo with picked broccoli salad and double-cooked eggs— hard-boiled, then crusted with pork rinds and deep fried. Group Two’s Travis Stringer and Noelle Brown were given whole catfish, red bell pepper and rice grits, out of which Brown created Catfish Dodo, a safe, but solid mustard-crusted fried catfish fillet with creamy rice grits and bell pepper etouffee.

The competition resumes this week and continues until the final face-off March 23.