Salsa and Chiles with ICE Alumna and Chef Ivy Stark of Dos Caminos

This week, one of ICE’s many star alums returned to give a demonstration for career training students. Ivy Stark graduated from ICE’s Culinary Arts program in 1995, and has often returned to ICE to help current culinary students. At yesterday’s demo she demonstrated how to make a variety of Mexican sauces from her vast repertoire. Stark is the New York corporate executive chef of Dos Caminos, the acclaimed Mexican restaurant with four locations in the city, a position she obtained after being the executive chef of Dos Caminos Park. Her passion for international cuisines has led her to hold key posts in restaurants from New York to Los Angeles. She has worked as executive sous-chef and executive chef in the kitchens of Match Uptown, Cena and at Rosa Mexicano.

The students in the demonstration saw firsthand how quick and easy it could be to make the complex, layered salsas integral to Mexican cuisine. Stark demonstrated Guacamole, Salsa Verde, Roasted Tomato-Chile de Arbol Salsa, and Habanero Salsa, walking the students through various chiles and the variable heat levels of different varieties. Did you know there is a scale for measuring the heat of chiles? The Scoville scale is a measurement of the spicy heat of a chile pepper. The scale ranges from zero heat units for sweet varieties such as bell pepper to numbers into millions for super-hot varieties such as Bhut Jolokia chiles (also know as ghost peppers). The students sampled a variety of salsas and guacamole to get a sense of the complex ways chile peppers can be used in Mexican cuisine. It was a great demo for the students to get a deeper understanding of this complex and multifaceted cuisine. For more info on the next culinary demo, check out our online listings.