Bruin chef imparts culinary knowledge to club members

The president of UCLA’s Cooking and Baking Club once burned water while making pasta.

Ten years later, Elliott Cheung stood in the Sunset Canyon Vista Room at the front of a steel kitchen table cluttered with cheddar cheese, Jello mix and oregano, overseeing a club member as she seasoned her salsa.

“Not too much,” Cheung told her. “Cumin is strong. It’s like the Mexican umami.”

Cheung, a fourth-year physiological science student, joined the Cooking and Baking Club as a first-year student. He said he was drawn to cooking because, as a food lover and self-taught amateur chef, he saw cooking homemade food as the best way to explore new flavors and textures on a college budget.

Cheung is now one of the Cooking and Baking Club’s longest standing members and a current participant in the six-month professional diploma program at Culver City’s New School of Cooking.

At one of the club’s tri-quarterly cooking events on Oct. 31, Cheung bustled between the kitchen and the dining room, shifting his attention from chatting with fellow club members to seasoning diced potatoes. More than once, he gathered a few people standing nearby and pointed with excitement to a few potatoes in the pan, praising their lightly browned hue as the mark of perfectly roasted potatoes.

At the meeting, younger members looked to Cheung for guidance on topics ranging from whipping chocolate mousse to purchasing club t-shirts.

“(Cheung) is a very motivational leader,” said Elaine Cheung, a second-year neuroscience student and member of the Cooking and Baking Club. “He’s good at getting people to try new things and leave their comfort zone.”

Elliott Cheung said his own motivation to explore new activities drew him into the culinary world. His earliest memory of cooking was at age eight when his parents asked if he’d like to make ramen noodles on the stove. Excited to play with fire, Cheung agreed to the task.

However, neither of Cheung’s parents knew how to cook. As his interest in cooking grew, he said he turned to YouTube videos and Food Network, particularly Gordon Ramsay videos, in an attempt to teach himself.

“For the first four years or so, I sucked,” Elliott Cheung said. “That’s why I’m trying to pass on my knowledge and teach people how to cook. I’ve made every mistake possible.”

Cheung said he advocates for kitchen safety because of his history of kitchen mishaps.

Mignon Huang, a third-year electrical engineering student, said knife skills are the most important piece of knowledge that Cheung has given her during her two years in the club. He showed her techniques to tackle what Cheung considers to be the most dangerous parts of cooking: chopping and slicing.

Safety concerns aside, Cheung believes cooking is not as difficult as it seems.

“My favorite moment is when I see people’s shock, like ‘Oh my god, I made this? It was that easy?'” Cheung said. “Everyone thinks there’s this high learning curve with cooking, but it’s really not that hard to do. It’s a fun moment getting to see that expectation torn down.”

The Cooking and Baking Club has played a defining role in Cheung’s UCLA experience and has brought him closer to the UCLA community, he said. Club members have bonded while preparing dishes like ratatouille, liquid nitrogen ice cream and homemade cheese.

“One of my favorite things about the Cooking and Baking Club is that we bond over food,” Huang said. “We’re always making fun of people when they mess up.”

Cheung said he enjoys cooking as a hobby, but after working two jobs in a kitchen, he decided that a chef’s lifestyle is not for him. He is currently in the process of applying to medical school and hopes to feed his passion for cooking by hosting regular dinner parties for friends and family after he leaves the club.

At the end of the Cooking and Baking Club’s event, Cheung cleared a space on the table between egg cartons and pans of roasted sweet potatoes with Gorgonzola.

With hands scarred from multiple knife accidents, he demonstrated to several club members how to spread butter over the top of chimichangas before popping them into the oven, professing his belief that nothing can replace real butter in cooking. He paused only to warn another member that his oven mitts were on backwards.

“The most important lesson (Elliott Cheung) taught me is that if you fail it’s all right, just keep going,” Elaine Cheung said. “From him, I’ve learned that if you have the motivation to keep going, eventually you will discover your own personal style of cooking and accomplish great things.”