Until last summer, Ryan Hickey had never tried kale ribs. As it turns out, they’re his ticket to Paris.
The executive chef of Harris Millis Dining on the University of Vermont’s Athletic Campus, Hickey dreamed up a vibrant dish of vegan kale gnocchi with celery root purée, shaved beets, fried celery root and those underutilized center-of-the-kale-leaf stems for Sodexo’s Cook for Change! Sustainable Chef Challenge. Three hundred and fifty chefs took part in the international challenge’s first round in June, and Hickey was one of eight finalists. In November, he’ll head to France to represent all of North America in the Global Cook-Off.
A UVM alum, Hickey has worked for Sodexo — which runs dining operations at the university — for three years. Prior to that, he cooked at Burlington restaurants such as Rí Rá Irish Pub, Pascolo Ristorante‘s original location, and now-closed Breakwater Café & Grill, Sweetwaters and Bluebird Tavern.
“It’s a little more structured here than the restaurant world,” Hickey said of his job on campus. “It’s more predictable — you feed a lot more people, but it’s the same amount of kids every day.”
When he’s not cooking for 4,000, Hickey is focused on initiatives that fit in with the challenge’s focus on sustainability. Last year, his team members participated in a pilot program tracking greenhouse gas emissions in which they replaced meat with plant-based protein. Over a four-week period, they saved enough power to charge 500,000 smartphones, Hickey said.
“We can really effect change, because we feed so many people,” he added.
We asked Hickey how he came up with the dish and what he’s looking forward to doing in Paris next month.
What’s it like being a chef for a college dining hall?
It’s like a playground for a chef. Whatever you want, we cook it here at least once. In our five-week menu rotation, we cook stuff from all over the world, all sorts of cuisines and all different [dietary] requirements to feed such a vast customer base. I’ve learned a lot more than I thought I would when I came here, just from pure exposure.
How did you come up with your dish for the Sustainable Chef Challenge?
I thought about local stuff that I knew would shine on a plate — really Vermont, like root vegetables and kale. Basically, that’s the dish. It’s two ingredients, just in different ways. I wanted something simple, good, local, and that could be done in 45 minutes, the [competition’s] time limit. You gotta have a plan for that.
One of the rules of the challenge was to use a part of the plant that would normally be composted; in this dish, there’s kale ribs, which I’d never had before. But if you peel the rib of the kale and blanch it, it’s actually pretty good.
Also, one of my personal favorite things to do is change the color of pasta. So I dyed the gnocchi green with the tops of the kale plant to give it a fun appearance.
What are you looking forward to in Paris?
Eating a baguette sandwich on a bench along the Seine river. [Laughs.]
But the competition is really exciting, too. We’ll be training with Michelin-starred chefs for two days at the Lenôtre Culinary Arts School. Then we’ll compete, with 90 minutes to cook the dish that got us there and a mystery box dessert. We don’t know anything about what’s in the box, just that it’s vegan. I’ve been watching a lot of “Chopped.”
I always think of food as this language where no one has to talk — you just see, smell or taste it. I’m excited to see how chefs from other areas of the world took that sustainability mindset and translated it into their food.
This interview was edited and condensed for clarity and length.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Chef’s Challenge | Three questions for UVM Dining’s Ryan Hickey”
This article appears in Oct 9-15, 2024.
Got something to say?
Send a letter to the editor and we'll publish your feedback in print!
