{"id":14741,"date":"2012-06-08T08:35:22","date_gmt":"2012-06-08T13:35:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.olemiss.edu\/?p=14741"},"modified":"2014-09-23T08:32:26","modified_gmt":"2014-09-23T13:32:26","slug":"food-network-star-finalist-uses-ole-miss-experience-in-competition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/food-network-star-finalist-uses-ole-miss-experience-in-competition\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Food Network Star’ Finalist Uses Ole Miss Experience in Competition"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Linkie Marais<\/p><\/div> \u2026 Program airs at 8 p.m. Sundays OXFORD, Miss. \u2013 With stars in her eyes and frosting at her fingertips, a former University of Mississippi pastry chef is a finalist to land her own television show through the “Food Network Star” competition. Linkie Marais is on celebrity chef Giada De Laurentiis’ team in the competition show, which airs 8 p.m. Sundays on Food Network. Marais, 28, emigrated with her family from South Africa to Tupelo in 1999, when she was 16. As a teen, she worked for a cake decorator there, and after culinary school at the Mississippi University for Women, she began working as a pastry chef. She lived in Oxford from 2006 to 2010 and worked for Ole Miss Catering, which is operated by Aramark Corp. After leaving Oxford, Marais moved to North Attleborough, Mass., where she is a wedding cake artist. Although Marais had tried out for last season’s show, she didn’t made the cut, so when she received word that she had made it for this season, she was ecstatic.<\/p>\n

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“It’s been an honor to work with mentors like these that are huge in the food industry,” Marais said. “It’s been incredible to be able to learn from them and work alongside them.” Her first-ever competition was in 2009, where she was named grand champion in the eighth annual Top Chef Competition sponsored by Aramark. That competition was hosted by the University of the South in Sewanee, Tenn., and fielded 10 chefs among culinary staff from colleges and universities in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi and Tennessee. She said that competition experience while working for Ole Miss prepared her for “Food Network Star” because she was able to work under pressure and work in the kitchen along with others. “I think it prepared me on the time frame because I was pushed to my limit to see what I could produce in a certain amount of time,” Marais said. There have been many tough challenges in the last few weeks of competition, but she said the first one may have been the most difficult because Alton Brown compared her Key lime pie to “cafeteria food.” View a profile of Linkie from 2009 when she won the Culinary Showcase Champion award in the 2009 Top Chef Competition.<\/strong>