It’s Erinne Contival’s last day of her culinary internship at Mama Mia’s Ristorante Italiano in Morgan Hill, and the 17-year-old Live Oak High School junior keeps a trained focus on chef Conrado Chavez.
Whether dressing a particular dish with the corresponding garnishes, or frying up an order of calamari, an eager-to-learn Contival soaks up whatever new skills she can while perfecting the ones she already has banked.
“I love cooking for other people,” said the ambitious teenager. “I’d love to eventually open my own restaurant when I grow up.”
Sporting a white chef’s jacket and hat with her sunny locks tucked up inside, Contival pulls out a bag of calamari from the small refrigeration unit, pours the seasoned batter on top, shakes it in a strainer and gently drops the popular appetizer into the deep fryer.
“I think she’s doing pretty good,” said Chavez, a 12-year veteran of Mama Mia’s who started at the restaurant’s location in Gilroy before taking over the kitchen at the Morgan Hill site. “It’s kind of fun (having her in here).”
Contival has been interning at Mama Mia’s kitchen twice a week since March thanks to the El Cajon Project, an innovative culinary arts program that placed her with the Italian bistro. Founded by professional chef and teacher Betty Ewing, 61, who started the program in 1993 out of her Blue Sky Cafe in Mountain View, El Cajon’s mission is to assist all students in graduating high school and providing an opportunity for a pathway into a culinary career.
Ewing spent 12 years building a culinary academy at Los Altos High School before doing the same at Gilroy High School during the past six years. Each year, she places four students from each participating district in Santa Clara County at nearby restaurants to develop their culinary skills through “a rigorous, hands-on learning environment.” Students, who must be in their junior or senior years, are selected by a school representative and then El Cajon staff conduct an interview to determine if the applicant is suited for the program.
“If students want to stay on for a second year, their senior year, we make extra room for them,” said Ewing, who first partnered her El Cajon Project with MHUSD from 2002-2005, placing students at Mama Mia’s, Maurizio’s and the former Bistro (which is no longer in business).
Halfway through the 2012-13 school year, MHUSD’s Board of Education once again voted to employ El Cajon, using $4,500 in state funding designated for a Regional Occupational Program that provides career technical education to secondary students. Ewing said El Cajon also helps cover its own costs with grants from sponsors including Newman’s Own, Wells Fargo and Safeway. Contival is El Cajon’s first student since the program was re-adopted by MHUSD.
“She’s a perfect candidate. We were just lucky to get her,” said Ewing, a 2012 CBS Jefferson Award recipient for impacting the lives of 600 students through her vocational program.
“She’s just a real star,” added Ewing.
Contival, on that note, isn’t short on school credits or considered at risk of not graduating. She’s just passionate about cooking and wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to work in a professional restaurant kitchen.
On the last day of her apprenticeship earlier this month, Contival gauged the readiness of the calamari by its “golden” outside crust. She pulled it from the fryer, arranged it over a bed of lettuce, dusted it with fresh parmesan cheese and placed the completed dish on the pass.
Prior to her internship, “I didn’t know very much about Italian food. I’ve learned a lot here,” said Contival, who also takes a culinary arts class taught by teacher Terry Rounds through the Regional Occupational Program at LOHS.
Contival’s future plans include being accepted to the culinary program at Santa Clara-based Mission College. After that, she hopes to attend Le Cordon Bleu College in San Francisco, which offers one of the most intensive and practical culinary arts programs in the country.
“She had a wonderful time when she was a freshman taking my basic foods class,” recalled Rounds, who took note of Contival’s heightened interest in the culinary arts.
“She’s just a delightful kid,” added Rounds, a 40-year amateur chef who enjoys cooking at home and previously taught at Britton Middle School before switching to LOHS three years ago. “She has a nice personality, she’s respectful and she works well with others.”
Contival’s cooking passion began long before her junior year at LOHS. As a little girl, she recalls pestering her father when he was cooking family meals. She was especially amazed when he used leftovers from the fridge to produce a new, “cool dish,” Contival said.
“I would bug him and ask, ‘Can I taste it yet, dad?,’” she recalled.
As she grew older, Contival – lured by “the smells and color” of her father’s delicious concoctions – began experimenting on her own.
Years later, in the LOHS classroom, Contival learned cooking terminology and technique; gained an introductory knowledge of food prep; how to adapt recipes for larger groups; culinary math; kitchen sanitation methods; the cultural history of different foods and kitchen etiquette.
“She already had a feeling this is something she wanted to do (for a career),” Rounds said.
From the classroom to the workplace at Mama Mia’s, Contival put what she learned to practice. Her tasks were simple at first – chopping vegetables and observing the inner workings of the kitchen laid the groundwork for her internship.
“Everyone’s really nice and everyone respects one another,” she said. “Everyone stays calm when it gets really busy. That’s the hardest time.”
Eventually, Contival was helping with the presentation of dishes and preparing of appetizers for paying customers.
On a recent Wednesday this month, just Chavez and his intern manned the kitchen. The two were in tune with one another from the minute an order came in to the minute a waitress whisked it away to the table.
“Spaghetti with meatballs,” one order read.
After Chavez put the proper amount of pasta on the plate and plopped a giant meatball on top, Contival was right on cue with a ready ladle of marinara sauce.
After four months of shadowing her mentor, Contival departed with a utility belt of skills that will help jump-start her career and stretch well into adulthood: Cooking Italian style, knowing how to keep an inventory of products and supplies and a strong sense of how to manage a kitchen staff.
“I like it here a lot. I’m sad this is my last day,” said Contival, who already is anxiously awaiting where her next internship will place her in the fall. “Next year, I would love to learn a different style.”
