Teens learn cooking tips from two masters

Angie Wagner

Tuesday, April 14, 1998 | 10:24 a.m.

Sasa Nikolic twists his wrist and lets the scoops of ice cream fall gingerly over a fudge brownie. Four scoops later, the 18-year-old is still going, adding gummy candy, chocolate chips and colored sprinkles.

"Now do we eat it?" asks 13-year-old Jennifer Ross.

Celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck gives the nod and the teen-agers dig into their gooey creations.

Six junior high and high school students who serve as youth ambassadors for the Inner-City Games got a few cooking tips from Puck and chef Barbara Lazaroff during a workshop Tuesday at Chinois inside the Forum Shops at Caesars.

"He is so nice," Ross squealed after Puck showed her how to perfect her ice cream sundae. "I even asked him for his autograph."

The teens are mentors to the some 13,000 inner-city youth who participate in the games, which were started in Los Angeles by Actor Arnold Schwarzenegger and offer young people an alternative to drugs and violence. The games are now conducted in more than a dozen cities nationwide.

A special dinner was planned at Chinois Tuesday night, hosted by Puck, Lazaroff and Inner-City Games co-chairwomen Elaine Wynn and Yvonne Atkinson-Gates.

"I see a lot of kids who end up doing drugs," said Nikolic, who moved to Las Vegas four years ago from Yugoslavia. "There's some way to tell them there's positive things out there in the community."

Puck said he wanted to show kids there are other professions besides being a sports star.

After the teens licked the sundaes down and sampled the fortune cookies they made, Puck shared the most important reason for becoming a chef: "You're never going to go home starving."