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Ten talented home chefs take on intense culinary challenges while under the tutelage of superstar chefs with a $50,000 grand prize at stake in the new Food Network competition series "All-Star Academy," premiering Sunday, March 1. The eight-episode series, hosted by Ted Allen, sees chefs Bobby Flay, Alex Guarnaschelli, Curtis Stone and Michael Symon mentoring the home cooks through challenges that would pose difficulty for even professional chefs and trying to elevate their skills along the way. Symon describes these cooks' talent level as "relatively advanced ... from a technique standpoint, like grilling, roasting, sauteing, poaching, things of that nature. Where they need a lot of guidance is, like, combining of flavors and putting together a complete dish, which isn't something that they've been making on a daily basis. Creativity. I think that they understand technique but they don't 100 percent understand creativity." "My job as a mentor," he continues, " is to help refine their technique, make it a little more refined. In that eight-week period, help them develop their palate and explain to them the things that I'm looking for when I'm tasting a dish and help them understand why a dish needs balance, why if it had something spicy it needs a touch of sweet, why acidity plays an important role in food. Not only why you season, but when you season. And just little things like that that are going to help elevate what they already know to another level." And developing one's palate, according to Symon, is key to cooking. "I think a lot of people, when they cook at home, they don't taste the entire time," he explains, "so to (supply) them with a lot of tasting spoons and as they're cooking, (I say) 'taste it, tell me what you taste, tell me what you feel.' And just getting their initial reaction from it. And some people are blessed with better palates than others. That's, I think, something that you are given but you can develop it and make it stronger. So what I did with my cooks a lot is the whole time they were cooking, taste it, tell me what you taste. ... So having them explain it to me and experience it, I think really helps develop their palates over that time period." CONTESTANTS get a master class in 'All-Star Academy' What book are you currently reading? " 'Prune.' The cookbook 'Prune.' I'm not in a novel right now. I'm just wrapped up in this book which has a lot of great stories and recipes and stuff in it that reads a little bit more like a book than a cookbook. So it's the one that's currently on my bedroom nightstand." What did you have for dinner last night? "Last night I had chicken tacos at Mario Batali's house." What is your next project? "My next project is my wife, Liz, and I are opening up a barbecue joint in Cleveland called Mabel's." When was the last vacation you took, where and why? "The last vacation I took was August and it was with my mom, my dad, my sister-in-law, my nephews and my son in the Hamptons." BY GEORGE DICKIE As interesting as much of his earlier movie work was, it's nice to see Kevin Costner trying to make his latest projects count, too. The actor-director was solid in such recent efforts as "Three Days to Kill" and "Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit," but with as much as he's done in the action genre, those might be more expected of him. Take something like "The Upside of Anger" or "The Company Men," and it's clear Costner also is trying to stay in projects that are more on the cerebral side. That's surely the case with "Black or White," and it's no small thing that Costner is better than the movie is as a whole. It speaks to how dedicated he is as he reunites with "The Upside of Anger" writer-director Mike Binder, with the star playing a lawyer and new widower who's determined to continue to raise his late daughter's own daughter (the engaging Jillian Estel). Someone has a problem with that, though: the child's paternal grandmother (Octavia Spencer), who believes the girl belongs with her ... with racial considerations becoming big elements of the resulting custody battle. "Black or White" poses big questions but ultimately shies away from them a bit, possibly in a bid to be everything to all audiences. In the end, the Spencer character gets somewhat short shrift, and you have to wonder if that's because in the end, Costner is the one with top billing here. Still, a cast of this caliber rises beyond the occasion, also including Anthony Mackie as Spencer's attorney – but to single out one person, without Costner, "Black and White" might not work as well as it does despite the scripting pitfalls. His alter ego faces emotional trials throughout the story, and the actor handles them masterfully. Like the story itself, the film by the same name isn't entirely a black or white matter. Thanks principally to its on-camera talents, though, the result still manages to remain engrossing. BY JAY BOBBIN Kevin Costner tackles a 'Black or White' matter Jillian Estel and Kevin Costner Page 8 March 2 - 8, 2015

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