Military Olympians

Fencer Kelsey sharpens his cooking skills

Fencer Seth Kelsey explores Chinese cuisine. Watch the video. (Credit: Gannett News Service)

BEIJING—Air Force Capt. Seth Kelsey grabbed the wok and shook it, the oil hissing as the chicken and peanuts and spices browned.

He was standing in a small kitchen in Beijing, the aroma wafting around him as he towered over the stove, his 6-foot-4 frame so out of place he banged his head into the overhead fan. The scene, though, was vintage Kelsey.

The Olympic fencer has always has been an adventurous type. His dad, Morton, tells stories of how a young Seth would just set off on his bike and end up miles away from home—so naturally a trip to the Beijing Olympics wasn't going to be limited to the Forbidden City and the Great Wall.

Kelsey and his family spent Wednesday at the TongRen Cooking School, learning how to make Kung Pao chicken, beef with peppers and a vegetable dish from scratch. No recipe was followed because the chef, Zheng, knows every Sichuan dish by heart, but then a step-by-step procedure wouldn't have appealed to Kelsey. Kelsey, 26, follows his instincts, not instructions, when in the kitchen.

"Sometimes if I see a glimpse of something, I'm like, that looks fun, I'll try that, and my family gets to be the guinea pigs," Kelsey said.

"The Kung Pao chicken was really good—just the crunchiness of the peanuts and the flavor of the Kung Pao, and then the beef with peppers was very pretty to look at," Kelsey said.

The group's day began with ridding peanuts of their skin, which required a duplicitously simple-looking routine of rolling it across the fingers. What made an impression on Kelsey was all the chopping and frying that pre-empted simply making the dish.

"It takes a long time to prepare everything and then it comes together in two minutes," he said. "So if you take the time to make proper preparation, then everything will turn out OK."

Unfortunately that didn't hold up for Kelsey's Olympic fencing; he lost in the first round of individual epee to France's Fabrice Jeannet, who went on to win silver.

Kelsey held a different sort of weapon during his cooking lesson: A very heavy, almost square knife, used for chopping every ingredient from chicken to ginger. Handling kitchen utensils comes naturally to Kelsey, whose love of cooking was nurtured by both his mom and dad.

"Ever since he was a little kid, he's always been in the kitchen and as he's gotten older, he's into it more and more," Morton Kelsey said. "He does a really great job. "

Holly Kelsey said her brother is a curious and experimental cook.

"We ate a lot of random food but it was always good," she said. "He made lots of weird concoctions, like porcupine meatballs—not actual porcupine, but with rice and meat. He would just throw lots of things together, just like he does now. No recipes."

Like any good adventurer, Kelsey is used to hazards. At one point the kitchen was so thick with the pungency of cooked peppers everyone needed a turn in the hallway to clear their lungs. As for that wok, Kelsey learned to handle it, gingerly.

"It's so heavy and it's so hot, and a couple of times trying to flip it, I put my hand too far," he said. "It's like putting your hand in a jet flame. So I had to be pretty careful with that."

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Helene St. James writes for the Detroit Free Press