Feeding a crowd of hundreds doesn't make Kenny Seals-Nutt nervous.
In fact, he does well and successfully in the kitchen. He's in his perfect place when dicing tomatoes, making salads and baking cakes.
By the time Kenny, 16, reached his third year of high school at Hickory Grove,
North Carolina, US, he had become president of his school's cooking club. He also opened his own food company, called Modern Fusion.
Kenny said he developed his love of cooking by watching his mother, and his grandmother, who owned a catering business（饮食业）. Kenny helped them both in order to remember their tips: how long to cook chicken so it stays wet, and the right amount of tomatoes to add to the noodles or fishes.
At the age of 5, he cooked his first dish. Taking it for his school lunch, he warmed it up in the school's microwave, while the other kids ate their sandwiches.
“I love to eat, and it started to become more fun to cook than to use a microwave,” he said.
Cooking came easy to Kenny, and he enjoyed adding new ingredients （作料） into common dishes. “It started with a strong interest and I wanted to know more,” he said.
He began to watch the Food Network and read chef（大厨）blogs.
Last summer, Kenny put his skills to the test by working with his grandmother to cater（备办食物）for his uncle's wedding. While she cooked traditional dishes, Kenny wanted to add something new to them.
Now Kenny spends his weekends catering his own events: weddings, birthday parties, baby showers and so on. Kenny's dishes are always a hit.
Chef Frederick Mookie Hicks, owner of a catering business, said Kenny's success comes from his ability in the kitchen. Hicks said he has asked Kenny to cook with him on jobs three times now, and he presents Kenny as a positive example of a good chef to the students in his cooking classes.
“He's so smart at cooking that he doesn't let anything stop him,” Hicks said. “I knew in the first five minutes of working with the kid that he is something special.”
