Columnist Susan Snyder: At Games, chef learned to sprint

Friday, Sept. 10, 2004 | 4:28 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Mondays, Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4082.

WEEKEND EDITION

September 11 - 12, 2004

Donald Wood came home from Athens with plenty of photographs from the 2004 Summer Olympic Games.

But not a single snapshot included an athlete or a sport.

"Bake at 165 degrees for 30-45 minutes," was scrawled across plastic wrap covering a peach cobbler in one of the photos.

They were baking directions for another cook. Wood's Olympic photos are of food -- mostly pastries and sweets the Las Vegas culinary student concocted as pastry chef for the U.S. Olympic hospitality house.

Wood, who graduates from the Art Institute of Las Vegas later this month, thought his friend of a friend in New York City had landed him an internship at the Olympics.

"I walked in the first day, and someone turned around and said, 'Oh, good. The pastry cook is here,' " Wood recalled last week. "I was thinking I was going to be a prep guy. And here I was the pastry guy.

"So I was basically in a brand-new job. It's the Olympics, and the whole world is watching."

And since he thought he was going as an intern who would be told what to do, he arrived without a single cookbook or recipe. He had to build desserts from memory using foreign ingredients with labels and metric measurements that were Greek to him.

In Athens they don't measure in ounces. They use kilos. Oven temperatures aren't Fahrenheit. They're Celsius.

And finding brown sugar? Forget it.

"It's different than we have here. It's more like cane sugar," Wood said.

He figured he could use molasses to make brown sugar out of regular sugar. Then the problem was finding molasses. One of the locals jotted down the Greek word for molasses, and Wood spent an entire day going store-to-store. After a day's searching he gave the task to someone else, who found molasses three days later.

"It really opened my eyes as to how well we have it over here," he said.

The U.S. hospitality house was for U.S. Olympic committee members, dignitaries and sponsors. It also hosted three of the numerous parties given for medal-winners.

"The rowdiest were the softball players," Wood said. "They showed up about 1 a.m., and at 4:15 the neighbors were like, 'Get rid of them!' "

The hospitality staff's goal was to give U.S. representatives and athletes a taste of America. Menus changed numerous times each day, depending on what ingredients were available. And much of what was available were cake mixes and other goods provided by Olympics sponsors.

The ingredients turned out to be the European versions of such items. So Wood had to "Americanize" them. For example, Americans prefer cakes sweeter and moister than Europeans typically eat. So Wood had to figure out how to alter flavors, texture and baking times to use the required sponsor products.

The assignment was so intensive and included other types of cooking, so Wood managed to complete his internship requirement in a month.

"It was a great experience," he said. "I'd do it again in a heartbeat."

Or in two years. Wood has been invited back as the USA pastry chef for the 2006 Winter Olympic Games in Italy.

"It'll be a little easier going in," he said. "I know now that I need to come up with a month's worth of dessert ideas."

And learn to read labels in Italian.