Chef reaps rewards from teaching teens

Daryn Slover/Sun Journal

Scott Johnson, center, and Josh Reil, 17, make a squash and vegetable dish while Denise Dill makes fresh mozzarella at the St. Mary's Nutrition Center in Lewiston.

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- Daryn Slover/Sun Journal

Scott Johnson brings his passion for food to the teens he educates in the Lots of Gardens cooking program, and in return they remind him what accomplished chefs often forget: "Keep it simple."

"The big thing I get from them is simplicity," said the 34-year-old who Esquire magazine called a Top 5 Chef in the U.S. "As a cook you want to show off your craft and as a cook, you want to make it overly complicated and it's not suppose to be that way at all."

"Simple, raw ingredients, cooked well,” is the secret to pleasing sophisticated pallets, Johnson said.

The Lots to Gardens program plants and harvests food from gardens throughout Lewiston.

Fresh produce is something Johnson appreciates. He used to eat raspberries and melons while working at Farmer Whiting's in Auburn where he spent his early years. After graduating from Leavitt Area High School in Turner he studied to be a chef.

He prefers to know the source of the food he prepares and for that reason, he will visit with the farmers and fishermen as he picks up provisions. "You buy this chicken that has been well taken care of and it tastes like a beautiful chicken," Johnson said.

While cooking for a fly-in-only lodge in Alaska, he said, "I learned there to go to the source" because everything other than local game and vegetables had to be brought in by plane. My cooking roots really came from there."

The Esquire honor came during Johnson's next job at Canoe Bay in Wisconsin. With that fame came a lot more work. Food critics were knocking on the door and high ratings brought more diners. Johnson was working 60 hours during a slow week and 90 during a good week so he decided to change course.

He is now the executive chef at the Blair Hill Inn in Greenville and volunteers during his winters off with Lots to Gardens, teaching youth cooking classes and practical skills in the kitchen.

“Fingers in, knuckles out," Johnson reminds a teen slicing onions from Wales during a recent gathering in Lewiston. "They are kind of like french fries without the fat," Johnson tells another youth cutting rutabaga from a Lisbon farm. "I try and do as much as I can for them because it's such a neat program, a great bunch of people."