Chocolate: where most people see a tasty treat for immediate consumption, Chef Ebow Dadzie sees a world of possibilities for his next creation. A chef instructor at Monroe College and pastry chef for the New York Marriott Marquis Hotel, Chef Ebow has earned a host of praise for his chocolate artistry — named as one of the Top 10 Pastry Chefs in America by Dessert Professional magazine in 2015; awarded the honor of Most Influential Pastry Chef by the Black Culinary Alliance in 2012; named pastry chef of the year by Paris Gourmet in 2007; and more.

In the international culinary scene, Spain is hot right now...white-hot. With a rich culinary history going back hundreds of years and local chefs who continually push the boundaries of modernist cuisine, Spanish cuisine offers a rarely seen depth and diversity — and the culinary community agrees. Three of the top 10 restaurants on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list call the Iberian peninsula home. In celebration of Spanish cuisine, ICE has partnered with Eat Spain Up to bring two of the country’s best chefs, Mario Sandoval and Toño Perez, to the kitchen classrooms of ICE. This is the second series of courses in our Advanced Culinary Center program.

Julie Resnick (Culinary Arts) didn’t start the feedfeed with the goal of creating a behemoth crowdsourced food Instagram account with a following of over one million enthusiastic foodies. Her initial motive was simply to swap recipe ideas and to find inspiration for ways to use her weekly allotment of CSA (community supported agriculture) goods. Something like, How about a new way to prepare those sweet potatoes? But her education from ICE — which helped give her the ability to recognize truly good food and innovative preparations of it — along with her background in digital marketing, led to the creation of a community that self-selected foodies and talented photographers were clamoring to join.

Sometimes it’s okay to reinvent the classics, as long as it tastes as good or better than the original. This brittle recipe is just as delicious as your classic brittle, but with a tasty, seasonal addition: pumpkin seeds. Before I share the recipe, here’s an overview of this sweet, crunchy treat.

“Generation Chef: Risking It All for a New American Dream,” a new book by journalist Karen Stabiner, is an insider’s look at the first year of operation of Huertas, Jonah Miller’s Spanish restaurant in the East Village. Karen was granted open access to Huertas – the kitchen, management meetings, applying for licenses, and other trials and tribulations of the first year of restaurant ownership.

As a young girl, my family took many long car rides north from Chicago to visit my aunt’s apple and horse farm in Wisconsin. As we pulled up the dirt driveway, the horses ran to the gate to greet us. We spent each day of our trip working and visiting. Every morning, the sound of beer cans tied to the trees tinkling in the breeze like wind chimes woke us. (My uncle was convinced that the odor would send away the hungry deer.) We went into the orchard first thing, the better part of the morning consumed by gathering bushel after bushel of apples, my brother and I chasing after the best fruit that had already fallen to the ground.

“My mom told me I couldn’t play with my food growing up, but culinary school has taught me otherwise,” said Jessica McCain (Culinary Arts ’16). After following a unique path from college to reality television on MTV's Real World, the twenty-five year old Jess, who had always dreamed of going to culinary school, woke up one day and thought to herself, “It’s now or never.” She reached out to the Institute of Culinary Education and ten days later she was a student in the Culinary Arts program.

Calling all foodies: Beginning October 13, the New York City Food & Wine Festival will be taking New York by storm. Held in the culinary capital of the world, the four-day festival has an amazing lineup that includes tastings, demonstrations, dinners and hands-on classes led by culinary experts.

When you speak with Adrienne Cheatham (Culinary, ’07), you can hear the tenacity in her voice. As a former sous chef at Le Bernardin and executive chef at Red Rooster, and the subject of a recent NY Times Taste Makers video, Adrienne is mindful of the accomplishments behind her. She’s more concerned, however, with the missions that lie ahead — like leaving her comfort zone (if working 16-hour days seven days a week can be called a “comfort zone”) and branching out on her own.

In New York, the bagel capital of the world, it’s only proper that the No. 1 Ranked Culinary School in America offers an exclusive course in bagel making. Here's what I learned.