Cooking With the Stars? American Chef Idol? The Amazing Chef Race?

Not quite, but Schoolcraft College will host a live chef challenge Saturday, April 21 beginning at 7 p.m. in the VisTaTech Center. Even better, proceeds will benefit the Michigan Humanities Council. The council is a nonprofit organization that supports and creates quality cultural programs.

The council will sponsor a traveling exhibit from the Smithsonian Institution and Michigan State University Museum, highlighting the importance of food in our culture. Profits from the chef competition will help fund the exhibit.

Four chefs will compete, each of whom is a Schoolcraft graduate or student. They are David Koshizawa, executive chef of Asian Village in Detroit; Jeff Mellas, executive chef of Portofino Restaurant in Wyandotte; Brandon Taylor, sous chef of Asian Village; and Chunyi Hou, second-year culinary arts student at Schoolcraft.

While guests enjoy a strolling dinner of Michigan-inspired foods matched with wines from Black Star Farms, each chef will complete a menu from a common supply of selected items.

The chefs then have 20 minutes to decide upon a main course, side dish and dessert, using only what they have found and retrieved in the common cupboard before it closes.

There will be a live simulcast of the competition, followed by judging for the winner. Judges are Certified Executive Chef Shawn Loving of Loving Spoonful restaurant in Farmington Hills; Sylvia Rector, food writer for the Detroit Free Press; and Eric Villegas, of Restaurant Villegas in Okemos.

The Humanities Council also is sponsoring a statewide recipe contest for their favorite Michigan food. Recipes for cranberry apple pie from Cheboygan, a sour cream coffee cake with hickory nuts from Chelsea, a caramel apple pie from Dundee, pretzels from Frankenmuth, pasties from Calumet and a red pepper tart from Whitehall are available at www.michiganfoodways.org.

Tickets for the Chef Challenge are available at the Michigan foodways Web site, by calling 517-372-7770 or by calling Schoolcraft College at 734-462-4463. Tickets are $100 each, $50 of which is tax deductible.

Schoolcraft College is a public two-year college, offering classes at the Livonia campus on Haggerty Road between Six and Seven Mile roads, at the Radcliff Center in Garden City and online.