Meet the high schooler who won a legendary Scottsdale chef's annual cooking competition

The kids seemed upbeat in their matching aprons and chef hats as they strutted around The Farm at South Mountain. They'd been cooking for hours at this point, many waking up as early as 4 a.m. to prepare the colorful, healthy foods they'd dreamt up for the Feeding the Future event.

Multiple chef luminaries were in attendance, including a wild food forager, the owner of Gallo Blanco and James Beard award-winner Charleen Badman. The chef volunteers streamed around a long set of outdoor tables serving fish tacos and tepary bean stew on red school lunch trays.

Participating in renowned chef Badman's Blue Watermelon Project, the young culinarians had spent months working together with local chef volunteers to craft the ultimate school lunch.

Their dishes had to meet all the requirements for the National School Lunch Program, meaning they had to cost no more than $1.50 and contain a certain level of nutrients and calories. Everything on the plates had to be measured, so if a dish was low on calories, they couldn't just add whatever they wanted, because even something as simple as a nut might bring the price up above the requirement, Badman explained. "The middle school kids had the fruit skewers, so I said, 'You have to pick a grain. Do you want toast, oatmeal, cereal or a muffin?'"

The teams had been dialing in their recipes for the past several months. The event was showtime.

Before the guests and families arrived to taste the creations, a group of judges sampled the offerings and determined a winner in the elementary school, middle school and high school categories.

The top three high school teams received scholarship checks of up to $5,000, donated by the Sprouts Healthy Communities Foundation. Other students walked away with master chef kits, farming growing lights and chefs' knives to further their skills.

Ten teams of students displayed their meals and side dishes on long picnic tables — three types of tacos and native tepary bean stew, numerous breakfast items like parfaits and strawberry apple oats, a grilled cheese sandwich and Thai lettuce wraps with island veggie stir fry and "busy bee" bananas. What they'd managed to create was no small feat.

For the event, the local chef mentors, like wild food harvester Tamara Stanger, worked with their students to cook gourmet versions of the school lunch dishes for the gala meal.

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What is the Blue Watermelon Project?

Working with Slow Food Phoenix, Badman launched the Blue Watermelon Project in 2016 to encourage healthier eating in local school districts.

Studies show a correlation between good meals and a more than 17% increase in standardized test scores for math and other subjects.

The project includes a "chef in the garden" class that's made its way into Phoenix school curriculums, and a joint effort with Stanger that adds Indigenous foods like blue corn and tepary beans to school lunch programs.

"I'd like young people to think about what they're eating, to think about where it comes from and what it does for them," Badman said. "I'm not trying to turn every kid that's there into a chef. If you can think about the people making your food, think about how much time they have to prepare this or where the food comes from, I've done my job."

The yearly capstone event and fundraiser, Feeding the Future, was pushed back due to pandemic concerns, but finally took place on Feb. 26. Badman closed her award-winning Scottsdale restaurant FnB for the day and encouraged her staff to come help out at the farm. She even flew in someone who works with a similar program called Brigaid in Connecticut to judge the event.

After a sunny afternoon tasting all of the students' dishes, the event coordinators stood up in front of the crowd to announce the winners. Kids lined up in small groups, awaiting the result.

The first place award for elementary school and middle school teams went to the team from Concordia Charter School in Mesa, which was mentored by Badman herself. The winning students were Kaitlyn Martinez Aguilar, Eli Espinoza-Valenzuela, Sarajana Montejano Ramirez, Armando Soto Sanchez and Sarah Butterfield.

Then they announced the winning high school teams.

First prize for fish tacos

Casteel High School student Maylie Mickelson took first prize for her fish tacos with purple cabbage slaw and pink sauce served with taco seasoned tater tots and paprika pineapple bits.

The meal clocked in at exactly $1.50 per tray, and included local ingredients like fresh cilantro and a half cup of fruit.

Mickelson, who'd been working on her recipe for months with chef Doug Robson of Gallo Blanco, teared up at the announcement as friends and family members streamed in to congratulate her, and she was handed a giant $5,000 check.

She explained that she'd developed the recipe to get her brothers to start eating fish.

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"I make dinners for my family a lot ... I wanted to come up with a way that they would actually like it and actually eat it, because they would always complain. My mom's over there and she can vouch for me on that one," she said. "So I made these fish tacos one day and everybody loved them. I have seven people in my family so I made a ton of them. Everybody was liking them and they asked me, 'Hey, you should make those tacos again.'"

A passion for cooking from a young age

Mickelson, who first tasted fish tacos during a family cruise to Mexico, has been cooking since she was 6 years old. At the age of 8, she went all-out and staged a pretend restaurant for her mom and dad.

"I made spaghetti and garlic bread. I did it all by myself. I set up a tablecloth, I used their wedding china. My dad wrote me a fake check. It said 'Maylie's five star restaurant, for one million dollars. I still have that sitting on my desk in my room."

She's now the president of her school's culinary club and has worked her first restaurant job at High Tide Seafood Bar & Grill in Gilbert.

"For the longest time, I really wanted to open my own restaurant," she said. "Right now I'm doing business and project management. I'm hoping in the future, I may open a restaurant or a hotel, that would be fun. I have some ideas in my head about that."

On the day of the event, she woke up at 5:30 a.m. to get to her school in Queen Creek to load up ingredients she'd prepped the day before.

She was on a team by herself, but her friend and third place winner Aidan Ratay helped. "We were working separately, but together," she said.

The gourmet version of her dish turned out to be the star of the tasting event as well. The chef's version involved a corn tortilla that had been fried like a tostada, smeared with black beans and topped with fresh pineapple, a peppy cabbage slaw and lightly breaded fish.

"I'm still nervous and shaky," she said after her win. "But it's been really fun. I'm glad I stuck with it."

The story behind the food: This 'Top Chef' star is opening a new Phoenix restaurant

Learn more about the Blue Watermelon Project at slowfoodphoenix.org/blue-watermelon-project.

Reach reporter Andi Berlin at [email protected]. Follow her on Facebook @andiberlin, Instagram @andiberlin or Twitter @andiberlin.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Arizona kids and chefs teamed up for this Feeding the Future event