BY DUSICA SUE MALESEVIC | Like a typical teen,
Allison Lee, 13, likes pizza and really really likes tortillas. What is not typical, however, is that she’s probably a better chef than most adults.
Lee knows what she calls the “basics” — how to make a roux, the base for many classic French sauces, how to make a bechamel sauce, break down a chicken, and balance the flavors in a dish.
At age 3, she remembers going into the kitchen with her mom to bake brownies.
“But the first thing that I made on my own were pancakes,” she recalled during an interview at her Tribeca apartment last week. “My dad was so nervous about letting me stand alone in the kitchen with the fire on.”
Around four at the time, she was so short she had to stand on a stool to cook.
Her father then took over the training in the kitchen, teaching her things like sauces and how to contrast flavors.
The interest in cooking grew slowly over the years as she continued to learn. If she had a dish in a restaurant, it would spur her to look up online different recipes for it. From those, she would create her own recipe and then try to see if it would work. Her sister Erica, 11, is often the taster.
“She likes to experiment,” said Jonathan Lee, her father.
Not just with food, either. Recently, she took his Metamucil and made little gummies with it. Early on, she would freeze things, such as grapes, he said.
“I really like science,” said Lee, who is going into the eighth grade at Brearley School, the private all-girls school on the Upper East Side.
She cited an ice cream shop in Seattle that makes the desert to order with liquid nitrogen.
“I always thought that was, like, super cool,” she said. “I want to do something with that because I like science and I like food, so why not combine them?”
Lee is also a huge fan of the Food Network, watching several shows — “Chopped,” “Cupcake Wars,” and anything with Alton Brown, like “Cutthroat Kitchen.”
She saw “Rachael vs. Guy Kid’s Cook-off” and said, “I was like, I need to be on the Food Network!”
She filled out an online application and went to a casting call for a teen tournament on “Chopped.”
“I really wanted to be on the show,” she said.
Lee was chosen and it was her first time on television. Her episode, which has already been filmed, has Lee and three other teens grappling with vegan chicken, big butternut squashes and okra, according to the Food Network.
“I was really nervous to compete,” she said. “Also, I was worried about having the cameras everywhere. Because you’re cooking and the cameras are like there, right there, they’re in your face while you’re cooking. They’re there when you’re plating.”
Lee, who also plays volleyball and softball, isn’t sure she wants to be a chef when she grows up and is leaning toward studying medicine.
She is excited for her episode, which will air Tues., Sept. 8 at 10 p.m., but there will be no party that night — Tuesday is her first day of school.
