MCC culinary arts grad delights with her appetizing dishes
As a sous chef at Northwood Country Club, Camille McKenna, a graduate of Meridian
Community College’s Culinary Arts Technology program, enjoys creating memorable food
experiences for the club’s guests.
One night, she whipped up a New Orleans-style dish that featured grilled salmon topped with a Creole-style barbecue sauce and paired with bay leaf grits and sautéed buttered okra.
“That one went over really, really well,” McKenna said.” I just called it NOLA salmon.”
Another time, she prepared a mahi-mahi dish paired with couscous.
“I love cooking with couscous. It can be kind of finicky, but I was confident,” she said.
McKenna came up with the idea for the dish from a meal of crab cakes served with couscous she once had at a restaurant in Savannah, Ga.
She is always on the hunt for good recipes to experiment with whether she finds them on televised cooking shows or from scrutinizing menus while traveling.
“The creativity is my favorite part of being a chef,” McKenna said. “I think about colors, textures, and flavors. Balance is very important to me in a dish.
“I love just trying to make food exciting and new,” she added. “That’s what is fun because everything has been cooked before in some combination but not always in the same way.”
McKenna, 25, of Pachuta, grew up cooking.
By the time she was seven, her dad had her cooking breakfast for the family every morning.
“He wanted me to learn and to be capable,” she said.
McKenna quickly became adept in the kitchen, picking up skills from family members and learning from cooks who prepared meals for the hunters visiting McKenna Ranch, her family’s deer, and turkey hunting operation in Clarke County.
“I have cooked for groups of hunters from three to as many as 40 at a time since I was 12 or 13 years old,” she said.
Still, culinary school was not on her radar in 2015 when McKenna graduated from Resurrection High School in Pascagoula, where her mom served as a principal. A chef’s work hours seemed long and the pay scale low to her.
Instead, she embarked on college but returned home after the first year. She then worked at a couple of Meridian restaurants.
In 2018, after giving birth to her daughter, Juliana, McKenna enrolled at MCC taking prerequisite classes for the nursing program. She also started working at Saki Sushi, first as a server and then manager.
While there, she frequently petitioned the chefs to let her watch them cook.
“I kept begging and asking, ‘teach me, teach me, teach me,’” she laughed.
One day, after her constant appeal, they relented.
“They taught me how to roll sushi and stir fry in a wok,” she noted.
These lessons proved helpful after she switched her major from nursing to culinary arts in January 2020.
“I finally just decided if you have passion, then the money will follow,” McKenna laughed.
She excelled in culinary school.
“From day one, I knew Camille was special,” said An Howard Hill, coordinator, and instructor of MCC’s Culinary Arts Technology program. “She has a fire and passion for culinary arts and success.”
McKenna showed up to class every day ready to learn and work hard, Hill added.
“She was the type of student who always went above and beyond what was required, striving to be her very best in everything she did,” Hill noted.
McKenna was in her element in culinary arts.
“The program pushes you out of the box and makes you uncomfortable but teaches you,” she said. “You really learn a lot about people’s religions, lifestyles and everything through the food that they eat and the food that they cook.”
While in the program, McKenna began working at Harvest Grill, where she gained valuable experience as a line cook. She also picked up part-time work at Northwood.
Hill said that McKenna’s experience and knowledge about food, ethnic cuisines, and different cooking methods helped her advance quickly in both the classroom and kitchen lab setting.
“One of my favorite things about having Camille as a student was that she was constantly trying to put a creative spin on all the recipes we made in kitchen lab - always adding a spice, herb or different flavor layer to the food she was preparing,” she said.
McKenna earned her associate degree in Culinary Arts Technology last December. A Phi Theta Kappa international honor society member, she was one of five MCC graduates recognized as a Circle of Excellence recipient.
She was delighted to secure a job as sous chef at Northwood so soon after graduation.
“That was more like a two-year goal for me, and it happened within a couple of months,” she said.
These days, McKenna is happy to be bustling around a kitchen all day chopping, peeling, stirring, grilling, and cooking, much like she did in her youth. Expressing herself through her cooking, she hopes to bring a smile to the face of the club’s guests through her delicious dishes.
“Food is art. Food is life. Food is medicine,” she said. “I really believe that.”